Trump’s Middle East plan may have legs

 

By James M. Dorsey 

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Credit; White House

US President Donald J. Trump’s approach to managing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may have legs, even if Arabs and Muslims reject his call for the resettlement of Gazan Palestinians.

Egypt, Jordan, and Palestinians have rejected resettlement in no uncertain terms. So have non-Arab Muslim countries like Indonesia and Albania, whom the United States reportedly approached with a request to take in Palestinians.

Palestinians say they voted with their feet with hundreds of thousands of Gazans returning this week to their ruined homes in the north of the Strip.

Even so, Egypt and Turkey, a more strident Middle Eastern state, see geopolitical and geostrategic advantage and commercial opportunity in working with the Trump administration on a plan first tabled during Mr. Trump’s first term in office that falls short of Palestinian aspirations but would serve Egyptian and Turkish interests.

The plan, dubbed ‘the deal of the century,’ is likely to figure prominently in talks in the White House next week when Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu becomes the first foreign leader to visit Washington since Mr. Trump’s return to office.

In his invitation letter, Mr. Trump said the two men would “discuss how we can bring peace to Israel and its neighbors, and efforts to counter our shared adversaries.”

Potentially, the talks, coming as Israel and Hamas prepare for negotiations about the Gaza ceasefire agreement’s second phase involving a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Strip, could put Mr. Netanyahu at a crossroads. The agreement’s third phase focuses on the reconstruction of Gaza.

The agreement’s lack of provisions for the administration of Gaza once Israeli troops pull back is one driver of Mr. Trump’s apparent intention to embed the agreement’s second phase in a broader Middle East deal that would be based on Mr. Trump’s fist-term Middle East plan and would enable Saudi Arabia to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.

The second phase is designed to end the Gaza war by making the ceasefire permanent instead of the temporary halt in the fighting during the cessation of hostilities’ 42-day first phase.

Rejected by the Palestinians, the question is whether Mr. Trump’s proposal for a militarily and politically emasculated Palestinian entity made up of enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements with neighborhoods on the outskirts of Jerusalem rather than East Jerusalem as its capital would provide Saudi Arabia the fig leaf it needs to recognise Israel.

The neighbourhoods would be cut off from Jerusalem by Israel’s West Bank barrier.

Saudi Arabia insists it will not recognise Israel unless the Jewish state commits to a credible and irreversible path toward an independent Palestinian state.

Mr. Trump sees the Gaza ceasefire’s second stage as creating a framework for the implementation of his Middle East plan.

To do so, Mr. Trump will have to drop his call for the resettlement of Gazan Palestinians and, like he did with the Gaza ceasefire, put Mr. Netanyahu between a rock and a hard place.

Mr. Netanyahu is likely to find it difficult to sell the notion of a Palestinian entity to his remaining ultra-nationalist coalition partner, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, even though he joined Mr. Trump at the White House to announce the plan in 2020. Mr. Smotrich was at the time not part of Mr. Netanyahu’s government.

The prime minister’s other ultra-nationalist partner, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, resigned when Mr. Netanyahu agreed to the Gaza ceasefire.

Tellingly, Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, met in Saudi Arabia this week with Hussein al-Sheikh, the secretary general of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the backbone of President Mahmoud Abbas’s West Bank-based, internationally recognised Palestine Authority.

Saudi Arabia reportedly brokered the first face-to-face meeting between a Trump administration official and the Authority.

In November, Mr. Trump spoke to Mr. Abbas by phone in the first contact between the two men since 2017 when the Palestinian leader condemned the president’s moving of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognising the city as Israel’s capital.

Mr. Trump subsequently closed the PLO’s Washington office.

Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly ruled out a role for the Palestine Authority in post-war Gaza.

In a demonstration that they may be down but not out, black-clad Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters armed with automatic weapons poured Thursday into the streets of the Jabaliya refugee camp and Khan Younis for the release in stages laced with symbolism of three Israeli and five Thai hostages in exchange for 110 Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

Mr. Witkoff’s meeting with Mr. Al-Sheikh constitutes a recognition that the Trump administration needs the Palestine Authority if it wants to ensure that Hamas does not regain control of Gaza, a prerequisite for the funding of the Strip’s reconstruction by, among others, the Gulf states and the European Union.

Mr. Trump threw Mr. Netanyahu several bones in advance of what could be a difficult conversation when the two men meet with a series of executive orders, and by supporting the delay of the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon.

The orders lifted the Biden administration’s suspension of the sale of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, exempted Israel from a 90-day deferral of US foreign aid, and counter perceived anti-Semitism on US campuses.

None of this suggests that the Trump administration empathises with the Palestinians.

Mr. Witkoff endeared himself to a Jewish and Israeli audience days before departing for the Middle East when he said the death in 2011 of his 22-year-old son, Andrew, had helped him empathise with the families of Hamas and Islamic Jihad-held hostages in Gaza. Andrew Witkoff died of an opioid overdose. Mr. Witkoff made no mention of the families of the tens of thousands of dead, wounded, and maimed Palestinians in the Gaza war.

Positioning himself as a “peacemaker” deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. Trump sees management of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the key to closer commercially beneficial ties with Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf states.

Similarly, Egypt and Turkey are eyeing the US$18 billion third reconstruction phase of the ceasefire as pregnant with increased opportunities far beyond the construction envisioned in Mr. Trump’s 2020 plan of an airport in Gaza, a port in the Egyptian city of El Arish near the Strip, and an industrial park in Sinai that would employ commuting Gazans.

In anticipation, an Egyptian construction executive was recently quoted as saying it was "already possible to establish a factory for prefabricated houses on the Egyptian side of the Gazan border, which would provide housing for thousands of Gazans, and then build factories for producing cement and other construction materials."

 Source: Middle East Eye

Already, Egyptian companies associated with military intelligence manage the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. They will also be clearing debris, repairing roads, and restoring critical infrastructure, in accordance with the ceasefire.

Last week, the heads of large Gazan families and tribes expressed support for one of the companies, Sons of Sinai, owned by controversial Bedouin businessman Ibrahim al-Arjani.

Earlier, Gazans denounced the company for charging extortionist fees for permits to travel from Gaza to Egypt.

Participation in Gaza’s reconstruction would extend Egypt’s involvement in the Palestinian issue beyond mediating and overseeing the ceasefire together with Qatar and the United States.

Meanwhile, Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted a Turkish diplomat as acknowledging that Turkey will have to “repair relations” with Israel to get a slice of the Gaza cake.

The Gaza war strained Turkish-Israeli relations with Turkey last year halting all exports and imports to and from Israel.

Activists charged that Turkey continued to allow oil tankers to sail from Turkish ports to Israel despite the boycott.

Said a Middle Eastern diplomat: “The facts are what they are. Ideally, things would be different. Practically, we have to make the best of difficult circumstances. Time will tell whether that’s possible.”

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.