Trump’s support for expelling Palestinians fans Middle Eastern fires

 

By James M. Dorsey

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US President Donald J. Trump risks putting relations with Saudi Arabia and other US partners in the Middle East on a knife’s edge, sending the region into a tailspin, and complicating, if not undermining, negotiations to make the three-phase Gaza ceasefire permanent rather than temporary by  advocating the removal to Egypt and Jordan of 1.5 million Gazan Palestinians . 

Mr. Trump’s advocacy also risks sparking widespread protests across the Middle East and the Muslim world that potentially could destabilise autocratic regimes, complicate the political transition in post-Assad Syria, strengthen Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militia and political movement, Hamas, and Iran at a time of diminished fortunes. 

Mr. Trump compounded the potential impact of his advocacy by simultaneously lifting the Biden administration’s suspension of the sale of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, exempting Israel from a 90-day deferral of all US foreign aid, and supporting Israel’s delay of its withdrawal from Lebanon in accordance with a two-month-old ceasefire that ended fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. 

Most immediately, Mr. Trump’s bombshell support for the worst instincts of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his ultra-nationalist backers, who have long called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, could bring to a screeching halt  Saudi efforts to entice the president to support the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel as the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

Mr. Trump’s advocacy dashes Saudi hopes that his transactional approach to foreign policy, reinforced by the promise of hundreds of billions of dollars in Saudi investment in the United States, would entice him to pressure Mr. Netanyahu to soften his opposition to a Palestinian state. 

President Donald J. Trump talks to reporters on Air Force One. Credit: Bangkok Post

Instead, in remarks to reporters on board Air Force One, Mr. Trump backed Mr. Netanyahu and his ultra-nationalist allies to a degree they could not have imagined in their most fanciful dreams.

Although propagated by Israeli ultra-nationalists, Mr. Netanyahu has studiously avoided publicly supporting the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza or making it official Israeli policy.

“You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing… Something has to happen, but (Gaza is) literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished, and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change,” Mr. Trump said.

Reinforcing Palestinian fears, Mr. Trump said the potential housing in Arab countries “could be temporary” or “could be long term.”

Mr. Trump said he had discussed the removal of Palestinians with Jordanian King Abdullah and would raise the issue with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Egypt and Jordan have consistently rejected moving Palestinians out of Gaza.

No Arab state will want to be associated with a notion that raises the spectre of a repeat of the 1948 expulsion by Israeli force of some 750,000 Palestinians when the Jewish state was established. Palestinians and Arabs refer to the expulsion as the Nakba or Catastrophe.

Days before his advocacy, Mr. Trump set a baseline of US$450 to $500 billion for putting an early visit to Saudi Arabia on his presidential travel schedule.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman hoped the visit would advance prospects for a three-way US-Saudi deal that could rewrite Middle Eastern security arrangements and geopolitics, change Israel’s domestic politics, and lead to Saudi recognition of Israel.

Mr. Trump broke tradition in 2017 when he visited Saudi Arabia rather than the United States' European allies on his first overseas trip as president. He said he would do it again if he walked away from the kingdom with deals with US companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

"I did it with Saudi Arabia last time because they agreed to buy US$450 billion worth of our product. I said I'll do it, but you have to buy American product, and they agreed to do that… If Saudi Arabia wanted to buy another 450 or 500… I think I probably would go there,” Mr. Trump said.

Eager to lock Mr. Trump in, Mr. Bin Salman told the president in his first phone call with a foreign leader since taking office that the kingdom would invest in the United States US$600 billion over the four years of his presidency, $100 billion more than Mr. Trump had in mind.

Not missing a beat, Mr. Trump asked Saudi Arabia a day later to “round out” the investment to US$1 trillion in a video address to the World Economic Forum.

Mr. Trump’s advocacy of the expulsion of Palestinians could bury prospects of a presidential visit to the kingdom and, with it, Mr. Bin Salman’s hopes of influencing US Middle East policy on the back of massive investments.

Mr. Bin Salman conditioned accommodating Mr. Trump’s goal of forging Saudi diplomatic relations with Israel on the back of the president’s engineering of recognition of the Jewish state by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco during his first term in office on Israel’s acceptance of the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

Mr. Trump’s advocacy of a removal of Palestinians from Gaza relegates the notion of a Palestinian state to the dustbin and risks radicalising Saudi, Arab, and Muslim public opinion at a time that much of the region favours a two-state resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, involving the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

A recent poll in seven Arab countries that included Palestine but not Saudi Arabia suggested Arab public opinion, despite watching the horrors of the Gaza war unfold on their screens, would accept a Palestinian state next to Israel, even if many reject recognition of the Jewish state.

A separate poll surveying Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank showed a majority favouring a negotiated resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The polls preceded Mr. Trump’s advocacy of the removal of Palestinians from Gaza.

Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Central Committee, politician, and former information minister, suggested the Palestinian ship had left Arab and Muslim ports. Palestine had graduated from (constituting) a primarily Arab and Muslim cause to “an issue of humanity,” Mr. Barghouti said.

Mr. Barghouti was referring to protests worldwide against the Gaza war, proceedings against Israel in international courts, and Israel’s mounting international isolation.

“If all Arab countries normalise with Israel, this will not stop the Palestinian struggle. We will not stop…There is nothing much to lose,” Mr. Barghouti said.

Screenshot Drop Site News

In the spirit of Mr. Barghouti, Hamas projected itself this weekend as an organized armed force capable of enforcing discipline and securing Gaza City’s Palestine Square during the handover to the International Red Cross of four Israeli soldiers rather than a ragtag remnant of a militia relentlessly battered by the Israeli military for 15 months.

The soldiers were among 251 people abducted during the group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, in which 1,200 others were killed. The attack sparked the Gaza war.

Tens, if not hundreds, of Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters, dressed in crisp fatigues and baklavas or scarves covering their faces and armed with automatic weapons poured into the Square in seemingly well-kept four-wheel-drives and pick-up trucks mounted with machine guns.

The display suggested that Hamas may be down but is not out, despite Israel’s insistence that it would destroy the group militarily and politically.

“The implementation of the (ceasefire) deal is only strengthening Hamas at present and expediting its renewed takeover of the Strip. This is particularly true regarding the return to the organization of civil powers in Gaza, but the situation is also starting to serve indirectly the recovery of its military strength as well,” said Haaretz journalist Amos Harel

Coupled with Mr. Trump’s advocacy, Hamas’ performance was likely to boost the group’s popularity that, according to the survey of Palestinians only, had dropped to 17 percent in Gaza and the West Bank before the last prisoner exchange.

Benefitting Hamas, Mr. Trump’s advocacy will likely reinforce Palestinian endorsement of the principle of armed resistance and support for Hamas’ October 7 attack as a response to more than half a century of occupation, even if many blame the group for Israel’s devastation of Gaza.

“Trump is lighting Middle Eastern fires. Supporting expulsion fuels Netanyahu’s fantasies but is the region’s worst-case scenario. It’s downhill from here if Trump persists,” warned a Western diplomat. “I shudder at what could lay ahead.”

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.