Jeremy Bowen: Trump's Gaza plan won't happen, but it will have consequences
2025-02-06
Category: news

Donald Trump's plan for the US to "take over" and "own" Gaza, resettling its population in the process, is not going to happen. It requires the co-operation of Arab states that have rejected it.They include Jordan and Egypt - countries that Trump wants to take in Gaza's Palestinians - and Saudi Arabia, which might be expected to foot the bill. Western allies of the US and Israel are also against the idea.Some - perhaps many - Palestinians in Gaza might be tempted to get out if they had the chance. But even if a million left, as many as 1.2m others would still be there.Presumably the United States - the new owners of Trump's "Riviera of the Middle East" - would have to use force to remove them. After America's catastrophic intervention in Iraq in 2003, that would be deeply unpopular in the US.
It would be the final end of any lingering hope that a two-state solution was possible. That is the aspiration that a conflict more than a century old could be ended with the establishment of an independent Palestine alongside Israel. The Netanyahu government is adamantly against the idea, and over years of failed peace talks, "two states for two peoples" became an empty slogan. But it has been a central plank of US foreign policy since the early 1990s.The Trump plan would also violate international law. America's already threadbare assertions that it believes in a rules-based international order would dissolve. Russia's territorial ambitions in Ukraine and China's in Taiwan would be turbocharged.
What will it mean for the region?
Why worry about all that if it is not about to happen - at least not in the way Trump announced in Washington, watched by a grinning and clearly delighted Benjamin Netanyahu?The answer is that Trump's remarks, however outlandish, will have consequences. He is the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world - no longer a reality TV host and political hopeful trying to grab headlines.Short-term, the disruption caused by his stunning announcement could weaken the fragile ceasefire in Gaza. One senior Arab source told me it could be its "death knell".The absence of a plan for Gaza's future governance is already a fault line in the agreement.Now Trump has provided one, and even if it does not come to pass, it presses very big buttons in the minds of Palestinians and Israelis.
It will nourish the plans and dreams of ultra-nationalist Jewish extremists who believe all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river, and perhaps beyond, is a God-given Jewish possession. Their leaders are part of Netanyahu's government and keep him in power - and they're delighted. They want the Gaza war to resume with the longer-term objective of removing the Palestinians and replacing them with Jews.The finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said Trump had provided the answer to Gaza's future after the 7 October attacks. His statement said that "whoever committed the most terrible massacre on our land will find himself losing his land forever. Now we will act to finally bury, with God's help, the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state."  Centrist opposition leaders in Israel have been less effusive, perhaps fearing trouble ahead, but have offered a polite welcome to the plan.Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups may feel the need to answer Trump with some kind of show of force against Israel. For Palestinians, the conflict with Israel is driven by dispossession and the memory of what they call al-Nakba, "the catastrophe".  That was the exodus of Palestinians as Israel won its war for independence in 1948. 
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More than 700,000 Palestinians either fled or were forced from their homes by Israeli forces. All but a handful were never allowed back and Israel passed laws it still uses to confiscate their property.Now the fear will be that it is happening again. Many Palestinians already believed Israel was using the war against Hamas to destroy Gaza and expel the population.  It is part of their accusation that Israel is committing genocide – and now they might believe Donald Trump is adding his weight to Israel's plans.
What could be Trump's motivation?
Just because Trump says something, that does not make it true or certain. His statements are often more like opening gambits in a real estate negotiation than expressions of the settled policy of the United States.Perhaps Trump is spreading some confusion while he works on another plan. He is said to crave the Nobel peace prize. Middle East peacemakers, even when they do not ultimately succeed, have a strong track record of winning it.As the world was digesting his Gaza announcement, he posted on his Truth Social platform his desire for a "verified nuclear peace agreement" with Iran.The Iranian regime denies it wants nuclear weapons but there has been an open debate in Tehran about whether they are now so threatened that they need the ultimate deterrent.For many years Netanyahu has wanted the US, with Israeli help, to destroy Iran's nuclear sites. Doing a deal with Iran was never part of his plan. During Trump's first term, Netanyahu waged a long and successful campaign to persuade him to pull the US out of the nuclear deal Barack Obama's administration signed with Iran.If Trump wanted to throw the Israeli hard-right something to keep them happy as he makes overtures to the Iranians, he has succeeded.But he has also created uncertainty and injected more instability into the world's most turbulent region.