Separately, Trump and Hamas let the cat out of the bag

 

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US President Donald J. Trump and Hamas have separately opened a Pandora’s Box that could fuel Middle Eastern fires for years to come.

Hamas did so when it unleashed Israel’s assault on Gaza with its October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

With more than 50,000 dead and tens of thousands wounded and/or maimed for life, Palestinians have paid a stark price.

Israel’s assault has devastated the Strip and opened the door to Israeli reoccupation 20 years after the Jewish state withdrew its forces from the territory.

Mr. Trump played his part when he called in February during Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s first visit to Washington this year for resettling Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians elsewhere and turning the Strip into a high-end luxury real estate development.

In doing so, Mr. Trump allowed Israel to adopt a plan long envisioned by ultra-nationalists but not the general public as its official policy.

Now, the Pandora’s Box could come home to haunt Mr. Trump as he prepares to visit the Gulf next week.

Pictures of starving Palestinian children, barely functioning medical facilities, and a war-ravaged uninhabitable territory that Israel is about to devastate further don’t make for good optics as Mr. Trump tries to nail down up to US$2.4 trillion in Gulf investments in the United States.

Add to that, the most recent fallout from the Gaza war with escalating tensions following the Yemeni Houthi rebel missile attack on Tel Aviv’s Ben Gorion Airport and Israeli retaliatory strikes against Sana’a Airport and Yemeni infrastructure.

The Houthis assert their attack was in response to Israel’s more than two-month-old blockade of the entry into Gaza of food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods.

The problem for Mr. Trump and Gulf leaders is that the  escalation and the optics could force the Arabs to be more forceful and public during Mr. Trump’s trip in demanding that the president use his leverage to pressure Israel to lift the blockade of all humanitarian aid for Gaza imposed om March 2, if not end the war.

To prevent Gaza from overshadowing the Trump visit, US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said he hoped to clinch a ceasefire deal before or during the president’s trip.

That may be a long shot.

Hamas Political Bureau member Basem Naim suggested this week that the group saw no point in further negotiations as long as Israel maintained its blockade.

Hamas’ Basem Naim tells AFP: No further negotiations

"There is no sense in engaging in talks or considering new ceasefire proposals as long as the hunger war and extermination war continue in the Gaza Strip," Mr. Naim said.

Hamas and Israel remain miles apart, with the Palestinian group demanding that a ceasefire lead to an end to the war and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and Israel insisting that the war will continue until Hamas surrenders, releases its remaining hostages, and agrees that its leaders go into exile.

Hamas still holds 59 of the 251 hostages it and other Palestinians kidnapped during the group’s attack on Israel.

Some Hamas officials have hinted that the group was willing to compromise by agreeing not to be part of a future Palestinian administration in Gaza, put its weapons arsenal in the custody of Egypt, and release its hostages in a prisoner swap if Israel ends the war, withdraws from Gaza, and drops its policy of ethnic cleansing.

However, the group has failed to give its willingness the heft of an official policy by issuing an unequivocal statement that spells it out.

Mr. Trump has so far refrained from exerting pressure on Israel even though Israel violated a ceasefire agreed in January under US pressure.

Last week, Mr. Trump briefly appeared to want to be seen twisting Mr. Netanyahu’s arm when he said he was pressuring the prime minister to let food and medicine into Gaza.

This week, Mr. Trump seemed to support Israel’s plan to corral Gaza’s inhabitants into an area between the Strip’s southern cities, Khan Younis and Rafah.

The area would be the Strip’s only Israeli-controlled food hub where American companies would distribute to families one food package a week.

The scheme would impose further hardship on an already traumatised population.

Israel has insisted that bypassing the existing distribution infrastructure of the United Nations and other humanitarian organisations would ensure that Hamas is unable to confiscate limited supplies allowed into Gaza.

Insisting that Israel-backed groups, not Hamas, have attacked humanitarian convoys entering Gaza before the March 2 blockade, the group has stepped up its patrols in areas populated by displaced Gazans to enhance security and cracked down on armed gangs.

Israel’s distribution plan is part of this week’s Israeli Security Cabinet decision to launch a massive ground invasion in Gaza if Hamas does not agree to a ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages by the time Mr. Trump visits the region.

Following the Cabinet decision, ultra-nationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich didn’t mince his words, spelling out Israel’s parameters in the next phase of the Gaza war.

“There will be no withdrawal from the areas we’ve taken control of, even in exchange for the hostages… We are occupying Gaza to stay—no more going in and out. This is a war for victory, and it’s time to stop fearing the word ‘occupation,’” Mr. Smotrich said.

“We occupy—and then talk about imposing sovereignty,” Mr. Smotrich added.

The invading troops would be tasked with flattening any buildings that remain standing in the already war-devastated Strip.

Israel’s occupation plan appears designed as much to seize full control of Gaza as to increase pressure on Gazans to ‘voluntarily’ emigrate and Egypt to accept the Palestinians, in line with Mr. Trump’s Gaza resettlement plan.

Israel has adopted the plan as Its official policy. Widely condemned Egypt, like Jordan, has categorically rejected resettlement.

Toeing the Israeli line, Mr. Trump said in his latest remarks, “We will help the people of Gaza because they are treated very badly by Hamas.”

Depriving Gazans of unfettered access to food, medicine, and other humanitarian essentials also serves Israel’s purpose of persuading Gazans to revolt against Hamas.

Encouraged by last month’s anti-Hamas protests and a recent opinion poll that ranked Hamas in single digits, Israel hopes that Gazans’ increasingly dire circumstances will spark a revolt against the group.

This week, tribal elders and notables called on Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to open border crossings with Gaza to allow humanitarian aid to enter to counter what they described as “widespread famine.”

The National Assembly of Tribes, Clans, and Families in Gaza described Egypt as “the lifeline through which the people of Gaza breathe.”

Hundreds of aid trucks have piled up on the Egyptian side of the border since Israel imposed the humanitarian blockade.

The problem is that opening the border wouldn’t help. Even if Egypt allowed humanitarian goods to pass through its border post, it wouldn’t get passed the Israeli military, which created the Philadephi Corridor that runs parallel to the Egyptian-Gazan border to cut the Strip off from Egypt.

The next 10 days could be decisive.

An Israeli official suggested that “the window of opportunity for a ceasefire and hostage deal will close when Trump heads home. Without a deal, the ground offensive is a foregone conclusion.”

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.