"You are an extraordinary country. You rose from the ashes of a low moment in the history of humanity, facing threats from all sides, and you are an example to the whole world. If there were more Israels in the Middle East, there would be more peace and quiet."
That’s what I’m talking about. This is the kind of support
for Israel that Trump brings to the White House.
It is unfortunate that blind hatred for President Trump prevents so many from seeing him in that way. It is a hatred based on legitimate concerns about a man obsessed with himself. Someone who appears willing to sacrifice the welfare of the nation for his own personal gain. A man who skirts the law or even breaks it when it serves his purpose. A man whose entire life, both public and private, has been viewed in that light.
I get it. It is almost impossible to give a man seen in that way the benefit of the doubt. It is assumed that every single thing he says and does is self-serving, evil, or, at best, worthless. Any attempt by someone with even a modicum of objectivity to view one of his policies in a favorable light is immediately shot down with an ‘explanation’ about why that policy should not be seen in a favorable light.
I therefore don’t expect to convince anyone with that attitude (and there are many of you) who are hardwired to react that way.
Which brings me to his grandiose, almost bizarre, plans to
turn Gaza into the ‘Riviera of the Middle East.’ And transfer all the refugees out of there
while they are that is being done. It is easy to ridicule that. It will probably never happen.
Moving two million refugees into countries that don’t want them is one problem.
Then there are the refugees themselves, who would rather die in squalor in Gaza
than live in luxury somewhere else.
The rest of the world is beyond disturbed by the abandonment
of what they all believed to be the only solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict:
creating a Palestinian state out of Gaza and Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).
That has also been the conventional wisdom of the U.S. for decades. That idea
has been discarded by the Trump administration. As it should have been. Especially
now after October 7th.
So how is this idea going to work?
The first question asked by the media is: Who is going to
give Gaza to the US? Trump said there is nothing to give. Gaza is desolate
and unlivable. The U.S. is just going to take it. Who is going to stop them?
Hamas?
The next question is: How can we force the refugees to leave
if they don’t want to? And where will they go if nobody wants them?
Trump says they have no choice. They can’t live in an area filled with unexploded bombs all over the place and abandoned buildings that could collapse at any moment. He believes neighboring countries will come around and offer their Arab brethren a parcel of land to live on. Despite their unequivocal insistence that they won’t. And that the displaced Gaza refugees will love their new homes,
Will Trump make any money from this development? He says
he’s not interested in that. He just wants to see an end to the cycle of
violence and has come up with a plan different from the decades-long ‘rinse and
repeat’ approach that never had a chance of success. Trump believes that if you
change the facts on the ground so that Palestinians are no longer refugees,
peace will follow.
As radical and ridiculous as this plan might seem, one might
notice that Arab nations are not outright dismissing it or sticking to the 2-state solution. No one
is talking about Gaza (along with Judea and Samaria) becoming a Palestinian state. Instead, they
are saying they will come up with an alternative plan for Gaza and the refugees.
Is the US serious about implementing this redevelopment
plan for Gaza? This is what Trump wants the world to think. The world
recognizes that Trump is a madman capable of doing anything he pleases without regard
for the consequences. In my view, Trump knows that this is how the world sees him and is sticking to his plan
until someone comes up with a better one. And by better, he does
not mean the same decades-long two-state solution that never had a chance
of working. The following was reported in the Jewish Press:
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday referred to the “day after” in Gaza, stating that his upcoming visit to the Gulf aims to explore an alternative plan proposed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which would replace President Donald Trump’s plan.
Secretary Rubio stressed that if these Arab nations fail to present a concrete proposal, Israel would be forced to act independently. “All the countries in the region say how much they care about the Palestinians, but none of them want to take them,” Rubio said. “If the Arab countries have a better plan for Gaza, that’s great. But obviously, any plan that leaves Hamas there will be a problem.”
What will they come up with? It will be interesting to find
out. Jordan and Egypt are the two countries most likely to take in any
of those refugees. They have to consider
that the U.S. has some financial leverage over them. And that Trump is eager to
use it. It wouldn’t make him too unhappy to reduce the federal budget by
canceling foreign aid to these countries and they know it. (Negligible to budget reduction though it may be.)
So at the end of the day I have no clue what Gaza will look
like, I doubt it will become the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’. Although I can
think of a far worse outcome. For one thing, imagine the jobs that would be
created and the tax revenue it could generate for Gaza.
But one thing is certain. It can no longer be a launching point for terror attacks against Israel. That is the one thing I see coming out of all this that is ironclad.
