During a press conference Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump proposed that the United States take control of and rebuild the Palestinian territory. While the real estate developer-turned-president has said he envisions Gaza as the “Riviera of the Middle East,” Arab states and others quickly rejected the idea of direct US intervention, saying it would effectively displace the Palestinians from the land and abandon the long-standing US commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Trump’s plans and goals to break with many of the traditional domestic and global norms that were adopted in the post-World War II era have never been a secret. And Tuesday night’s political declaration is not part of a strategic master plan to reach a Hamas agreement with better terms for Israel and the United States. Nor is it a strategy to coax Egypt or Jordan into being more accommodating to US preferences in the region, as some commentators have assessed.
The plan the president has announced is one of fundamental reordering of the world and US interests in it. Does the president really believe his plan can ultimately be carried out? Maybe, maybe not. If it can’t, then it could indeed serve as a jumping-off point for negotiations with the Arab states on Gaza, making the outcome the same whether he intended the plan to be a serious proposal or not.
Trump’s comments are counterproductive to the prospects for regional stability, for moderate Sunni Arab states, and for the prospects for normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, as the kingdom issued a statement Wednesday saying it will not rejoin the Abraham Accords unless there is a Palestinian state.
Read also:
The Defeat of USAID Means a Radical Change in the US Geopolitical Paradigm
Brookings: Big Tech Appears to Have Found an Answer to EU Legislative Restrictions