Trump is Forcing the World to Face Its Hypocrisies on the Palestinians and Gaza Trump’s radical Gaza plan—U.S. ownership, mass relocation, and a “Riviera” rebuild—forces the world to confront long-ignored Palestinian hypocrisies. By Fred Fleitz
You could see heads exploding in the Middle East, the international media, and among Republicans and Democrats during President Trump’s February 4 joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he raised stunning new proposals for the U.S. to take over, “own,” and rebuild the Gaza Strip so it can become “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Trump also repeated his earlier call to relocate two million Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt and Jordan.
Predictably, Trump’s critics harshly condemned his proposals, calling them unrealistic, imperialism, ethnic cleansing, morally bankrupt, etc. But just like their rejection of Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine, his critics offered no solutions for the hypocrisies Trump raised about the Gaza crisis.
On February 5, Trump’s advisers responded to questions about Trump’s new Gaza ideas. White House Press Spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt noted that President Trump has not committed to sending troops to Gaza and will not spend U.S. funds rebuilding it. National Security Adviser Michael Waltz said President Trump’s ideas would “bring the entire region to come with their own solutions.”
Yesterday, the president clarified but also doubled down on his new Gaza proposals. In a February 6 Truth Social post, the president said no U.S. soldiers would be needed for his plan, Israel would turn over Gaza to the U.S. after the fighting ends, and Palestinians would be resettled in a safer area. President Trump added about his Gaza reconstruction proposal:
“The U.S., working with great development teams from all over the world, would slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth.”
Trump’s out-of-the-box ideas to solve the Gaza crisis are part of his radical Middle East strategy, which is much broader, more serious, and more ambitious than his predecessor’s confusing and feckless policies, which caused the deterioration of Middle East security.
At the heart of President Trump’s radical Middle East strategy is his belief that the world must face and resolve several hypocrisies about the Palestinians and Gaza.
Even the anti-Trump Wall Street Journal editorial board believes this. Although it unsurprisingly slammed Trump’s new Gaza proposals as “preposterous,” the Journal’s editorial board conceded in a February 5 editorial that the president’s Gaza ideas “have the virtue of forcing the world to confront its hypocrisy over the fate of the Palestinian people.”
The hypocrisies President Trump is focused on include:
- “Gaza is a hell hole.” President Trump said this week about war-torn Gaza, “They’ve lived like hell. They lived like you’re living in hell. Gaza is not a place for people to be living, and the only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is because they have no alternative.” I would argue that Gaza was a hell hole before the Israel-Hamas War because it was run by the corrupt, dictatorial Hamas terrorist group, which diverted billions of dollars in aid to weapons, military training, and underground tunnels as part of its obsession with destroying Israel and killing as many Israelis as possible. Trump spoke an uncomfortable truth about Gaza today: it has become an unlivable hell hole and a humanitarian catastrophe.
- No one wants to save the Gaza Palestinians. President Trump has been clear that despite the desperate plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, no nation has stepped forward with a plan to save them. Many states have sent humanitarian aid and called for Palestinian rule of Gaza. But no state has offered to rebuild the Strip or allow refugees from Gaza to relocate to their territory, even temporarily. On the other hand, although Trump’s Gaza ideas are controversial, he floated proposals to create a new Gaza that would give its residents better lives and a future. Hopefully, Trump’s ideas will form the framework for an international plan to save the Palestinians in Gaza and, as National Security Adviser Waltz has suggested, encourage other states to offer their own solutions.
- Allowing Gaza to be ruled by Hamas after the war ends so it again becomes a platform to launch terrorist attacks against Israel is unacceptable. Many nations—including the U.S. under the Biden administration—were insistent that Israel end the war and withdraw from Gaza but proposed no guardrails to prevent Hamas from resuming control of the Strip. Israeli leaders will not permit this to happen. Trump’s proposal for “great development teams from all over the world” to rebuild Gaza could become an alternative to a post-war power vacuum in Gaza that Hamas would exploit.
- The two-state solution is dead. The most important conclusion to draw from President Trump’s Gaza ideas is that they represent a complete rejection of the two-state solution. Despite the Biden administration’s insistence on pushing this concept, Israeli officials have been clear that after the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre against Israel, there will be no separate and sovereign Palestinian state until the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are deradicalized. This is unlikely in the foreseeable future. Trump’s proposals to remove the Palestinian population from Gaza and an international development effort to build a new Gaza decisively move the United States away from the two-state solution. It also demolishes the argument that the only way to establish a prosperous and stable Gaza is through Palestinian statehood.
The dust still has not settled on President Trump’s new ideas to solve the Gaza crisis. Many states, experts, journalists, politicians, and others oppose his proposals. Some are enraged. The president’s Gaza reconstruction proposals would be a hefty lift to win congressional approval. Egypt and Jordan are still refusing to discuss taking in Gaza refugees. But President Trump succeeded in getting the world talking about decades-old hypocrisies concerning the Palestinians and Gaza that have caused instability in the Middle East to grind on year after year. This may be the actual reason why President Trump floated his out-of-the-box Gaza ideas.
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Fred Fleitz previously served as National Security Council chief of staff, CIA analyst, and a House Intelligence Committee staff member.
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