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For weeks, Arab leaders have been waiting anxiously to gauge how US President Donald Trump would respond to the Middle East’s biggest crisis in decades, wary of his unpredictability, his lack of understanding of a complex region and his unabashed pro-Israel bias.
But none in their wildest dreams would have expected the extraordinary, surreal proposal that he unveiled to a stunned world when he took the podium at the White House alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday.
Not satisfied with advocating the forced permanent resettlement of more than 2mn Palestinians in Gaza, Trump dramatically upped the stakes by announcing that the US planned to take over the besieged strip — and that he would use American military might if necessary.
The idea is so outlandish that there will be a temptation to dismiss it as yet more Trumpian folly. It would be in violation of international laws the US has long sought to champion and uphold. It would risk drawing American troops back into combat in the Middle East — something Trump had pledged to avoid.
It would outrage Washington’s Arab allies, its European partners and the global south. The US’s battered credibility would take another dive. It would upend the chances of Trump’s dream of securing a grand bargain — and his desire to secure a Nobel Peace Prize — with a deal that would lead to Saudi Arabia and other Muslim states normalising relations with Israel.
And it would create another catastrophe for the long-suffering Palestinians that have for generations called Gaza home. Where would they go? Nobody knows. No Arab country would dare accept them and be seen to be complicit with the forcible displacement of their Palestinian brethren.
The bitter legacy of 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes or fled in the fighting that accompanied Israel’s founding, remains raw across the Muslim world. Palestinians refer to that period as the Nakba, or catastrophe, and many Gazans are descendants of those displaced.
Nobody in the region — with the exception of Israel’s far right — can countenance a repeat.
Yet this is Trump, the real estate mogul and former reality game show host, who has already threatened to seize the Panama Canal and take over Greenland.
He has long appeared to view the Middle East through his own prism of dealmaking and real estate projects, egged on by staunchly pro-Israel acolytes he has surrounded himself with in his new administration, and Netanyahu, who presides over the most far-right government in Israel’s history.
A year ago, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former Middle East White House adviser, was talking about Gaza’s “waterfront property” saying it could be “very valuable”.
On Tuesday, it was the president saying that he imagined the impoverished, war-shattered, densely populated, narrow Mediterranean strip could be “the Riviera of the Middle East”.
“We’re going to develop it, we’re going to create thousands of thousands of jobs and it’ll be something that the entire Middle East can be very proud of.”
Netanyahu could barely conceal a smirk as he stood beside Trump, praising the most pro-Israel president in the US’s history for “thinking outside the box”.
“I think it’s something that could change history,” Netanyahu said.
Ever since Israel launched its thunderous offensive in Gaza in response to Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack, Palestinians and their Arab neighbours have feared that Netanyahu’s ultimate aim was to make the strip uninhabitable and drive the Gazans from their land.
Far-right ministers in his government openly talk about the need to resettle the strip Israel withdrew from two decades ago. Now they appear to have the world’s most powerful leader in their corner.
Rattled Arab leaders will hope that Trump’s proposal is all part of some opening gambit or negotiating chip in his plans to broker a wider deal that would lead to Saudi Arabia agreeing formal diplomatic ties with Israel.
In his first term, Trump brokered the so-called Abraham Accords, transactional deals that led to the United Arab Emirates and three other Arab states normalising ties with Israel. And he has made clear he wants to expand on that foreign policy success.
But Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has repeatedly said that can only happen if there is the establishment of a Palestinian state, that includes Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Many in the Arab world are hoping Prince Mohammed can lean on his relationship with Trump and the leverage Saudi Arabia could hold in delivering the “grand bargain” to rein in his wildest policies.
Riyadh was unusually quick and emphatic in its rejection of the forcible displacement of Palestinians on Wednesday. The kingdom’s leaders are wary of the rage simmering in the region as a whole generation of young Arabs — Prince Mohammed’s main constituency — have watched aghast as Israel has pummelled Gaza over the past 14 months.
The pressure will be on the Saudis and their Arab partners to convince Trump of the calamity his scheme risks unleashing.
What Trump wilfully fails to understand is that for all the devastation, poverty and suffering, Gazans are proud to call the strip their home. It is integral to their identity — the land where their children have been born and raised, where they have buried their loved ones and stoically built and rebuilt lives through cycles of conflict. They want to get on with their lives in peace, not another Nakba.