Trump’s Gaza Takeover Plan ... a “ Blow ” for any future Palestinian State

“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too,” US President Donald Trump said during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Feb. 5.

The “Riviera of the Middle East.” Trump envisioned the Strip  which  he wants the US to own and develop .

The Palestinians living in Gaza should move to neighboring countries with “humanitarian hearts” and “great wealth”, Trump said.

Earlier he had called for Jordan, Egypt and other Arab states to take in Palestinians and said they could be split up across a number of separate sites.

For decades , the vision of a Palestinian state has included Gaza as an integral part of it, along with East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Trump’s proposed plan would see Gaza become a US territory that would not belong to the Palestinians anymore but would be open to anyone who wanted to live there.

The reaction to Trump’s Gaza plan was broadly negative outside Israel.

Antonio Guterres ,the UN secretary general , Arab States  , the European Union as well as many other countries quickly rejected the idea of direct US intervention, arguing that it would in effect force out Palestinians from their land and abandon the long-standing US commitment to a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

US administrations under Presidents George W. Bush to Joe Biden have stated their support for Palestinian statehood under the two-state solution.

In 2020 during his first term, Trump announced his Middle East peace plan that would deny Palestinians having their own state.

However, Trump was non-committal when asked recently whether he supports the two-state solution.

His plan on Gaza “doesn't mean anything about a two-state or one-state or any other state,” he said.

It is well understood that Jordan and Egypt are in no position to help facilitate the forced or even voluntary removal of more than two million Gazans out of the coastal enclave and into their respective territories.

 Even if those countries wanted to acquiesce to the president’s blackmail, the US foreign aid that they receive is insufficient to justify the geopolitical, economic, security, and social risks and implications such a move would entail.

Saudi Arabia quickly said it will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, hardening its posture on a long-term  US foreign policy goal.

Besides,  officials from Moscow to London, , reaffirmed commitments that Palestinians be allowed to stay on their land and to the two-state solution.

With such outlandish and extreme declarations Trump  violated decades of established US policy toward the Middle East, international humanitarian law, and diplomatic norms. 

“Any plan to forcibly deport Palestinians outside the occupied territory against their will is a war crime, and when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on the civilian population, it would constitute a crime against humanity” , Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard said.

“President Trump’s comments dangerously dehumanize Palestinians, who for the last 16-months have been victims of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and for decades have been living under illegal occupation and apartheid” , she added.

Trump is a longtime billionaire developer who has recently come to understand the extent of Gaza’s devastation.

He is a property developer used to buying and selling properties, does not understand the depth of Gazans’ Palestinians attachment to their land and their absolute unwillingness to be further denied their rights,  dispossessed and uprooted after what happened to so many of them in 1967 and 1948 Nakba .

Trump’s Gaza plan will bury peace with Palestinians once and for all.