Trump 2.0's vision for Gaza: America's grand Middle East gamble

Express Tribune

18-02-2025

Trump's hardline stance on Gaza, favoring Israel, stirs controversy, displacement fears, and regional instability.
U.S President Donald Trump faces opprobrium as he unleashes a barrage of outrageous decisions and a flurry of provocative statements regarding Gaza. While Donald Trump claimed credit for the Gaza ceasefire brokered before his second term, he doubts its durability as Israel continues to breach it, blatantly.
During his inauguration speech, he highlighted that his proudest legacy would be that of 'peacemaker and unifier'. Nevertheless, his political rhetoric has not translated into concrete actions and the promises now ring hollow as Trump shows preferential treatment towards Israel.
In 2024, Trump announced a slew of aggressive 'Israel-first' hawks to stack his cabinet for the second administration. Trump's nominee for UN Ambassador, Elise Stefanik, has expressed that Israel has a 'biblical right' to dominate the West bank and accused the UN of 'anti-Semitic rot'.
In addition, Trump's pick of Mike Huckabee as envoy of Israel, a pro-Israel hardliner, is also a harbringer of doom for Gaza as he called the two-state solution 'irrational and unworkable.' Similarly, his Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth, also espouses similar views of subjugating Palestinians while lending unconditional support to Israel as well.
With respect to his policy, Trump has so far veered into a disconcerting paradox.
He has lifted sanctions on Israeli settlers accused of attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. He has also called for relocating Gaza's 2.2 million Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan which has sparked widespread outrage, raising concerns over ethnic-cleansing of Palestinians.
Another deplorable move was directing the U.S military to release the hold on supply of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel which exacerbates the security threat of ferocious bombardment on Palestinian population and the civilian infrastructure of the territory.
Moreover, Trump has also signed a punitive executive order to deport non-citizen college students who participated in pro-Palestine protests in order to combat 'antisemitism'. Furthermore, Trump stopped U.S funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and reiterated that Palestinians have 'no alternative' but to leave Gaza, immediately.
Such draconian policies and incendiary remarks illustrate Trump's embrace of Netanyahu, which is a foregone conclusion considering his first term wherein he slashed funding to the UNRWA, shut down the PLO mission in Washington, recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moved the U.S embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and most importantly, endorsed Israeli settlements in the Golan heights, abetting Israeli oppression.
Moreover, Trump's 'Deal of the Century', offered conditional statehood with limited sovereignty, buried the two-state solution, legitimized Israeli colonies in the West bank and ultimately, disappointed the Palestinians who aptly described it as the 'Steal of the Century'.
Similarly, while the Abraham Accords had marked a watershed in Arab–Israeli relations, laying the groundwork for a new balance of power in the region of Middle East, it sought to reshape the region's diplomatic landscape by bypassing Palestinian leadership.
Consequently, as of now, the expansion of the normalization of Arab-Israel ties has frozen as analysts claim that gulf states will emphasize that the normalization with Israel, especially for Saudi Arabia, is contingent upon securing an irreversible and viable path to Palestinian statehood.
Nevertheless, with Netanyahu being the first foreign leader to visit Washington, Trump has prioritized Israel. He has bolstered its political sway in Middle East's geopolitics while relegating Palestinians to the sidelines as the U.S presented an outlandish proposal of transforming the Gaza strip into the 'Riviera of the Middle East' that left the world utterly flummoxed.
According to his grandiose Middle East playbook, Trump envisions opulent golf courses and luxury resorts along the Mediterranean coastline of Gaza.
The proposal for 'humanized migration' - a sanitized term for ethnic cleansing - is being presented as a moral solution to the intractable conflict that has rattled the region. The Gaza plan echoed Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner's, 'waterfront property idea', suggesting last year that Israel should 'clean up' the area and remove the civilians.
As anticipated, the Arab states vehemently oppose Trump's improbable plan as it is divorced from the complex politics of the region.
Jordan fears potential destabilization as it is already a home to a large number of Palestinian refugees and Egypt's fears revolve around Hamas sympathisers of the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. Both the states see the plan as equivalent to liquidating the Palestine cause while jeopardizing their individual peace treaties with Israel. Jordan has rebuffed Trump's push to accommodate displaced Palestinians while Egypt presses for an alternate vision of reconstruction in Gaza for Palestinians without displacement.
Amid this pandemonium, Trump's fantasy proves nothing more than a pipe dream while Palestinians remain banished into an Israeli backyard with no solution in sight.
Notwithstanding the havoc it has wreaked in the region, Trump's support for Israel has been unwavering. Several administration officials, including National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, downplayed Trump's proposal, framing it as support for Palestinian reconstruction while White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denied any plan to deploy U.S. troops to Gaza.
Contrastingly, Trump has endorsed the Israeli far right's push for annexation, marked by settlement expansion and Palestinian displacement, citing Israel's need for more territory. Moreover, out of the tendentious remarks Trump has passed in Israel's support, the most controversial is Trump's recent and explicit threat to 'let hell break out' in the region, had the Israeli captives held in the strip not been released.
With the U.S now set to 'take over and own' the Gaza Strip, Trump has ruled out the right of return to the Palestinians, ignoring their sentimental attachment to the place.
His ludicrous real estate ambitions reflected in the Gaza Plan have also infuriated the Arab world, igniting a regional crisis as he views the Gaza strip through a real estate mogul's lens and not that of a peacemaker. Recently, Netanyahu also poured scorn on Saudi Arabia, suggesting the establishment of a Palestinian state on Saudi territory which was completely repudiated.
Such a fragile political scenario does not augur well for Gaza which is mired in a geopolitical quandary, especially as Trump's inflammatory ravings and fruitless policies push Palestinians deeper into an abyss of relentless bloodshed.
To sum up, Israel's warmongering and morally reprehensible policies have unleashed an apocalypse in Gaza, inflicting irreparable harm while committing a genocidal massacre against the innocent civilians of Palestine.
The risky brinkmanship between Israel and Gaza will inevitably spiral into an escalation in the region. Needless to say, Trump's craven attempts to appease Israel will plunge the Palestinians into a new quagmire of violence and instability.
His contemptible decision to unequivocally support Israel will seal the ineluctable fate of the Middle East.