Donald Trump’s first two weeks in the Oval Office have featured plenty of jaw-dropping moments. Even so, his proposal of an American “takeover” of Gaza on Feb. 4 was extraordinary.
He combined sinister ideas — ethnic cleansing and a lethal indifference towards Palestinians’ rights — with unorthodox improvisation over one of the world’s most intractable problems.
In his first term Mr. Trump brokered the Abraham accords between some Arab states and Israel, and in January he helped bring about the temporary ceasefire in Gaza that had eluded the Biden administration for a year.
It is possible his latest intervention also shakes up the Middle East. The danger is it will embolden hardliners and deter America’s allies from supporting his efforts to promote stability.
Mr. Trump explained his plan immediately after a meeting in the White House with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister.
Diplomats had expected Mr. Trump to press a reluctant Mr. Netanyahu into advancing to the second stage of the ceasefire in Gaza, in which all hostages would be returned and Israeli forces would stop fighting and exit Gaza.
Instead Mr. Trump proposed that 2 million Gazans be urged or forced to leave the strip for Jordan, Egypt or elsewhere. American troops might have a role, he said.
After the deportations, the president said, the enclave would be rebuilt by America, with outside cash, to become “the riviera of the Middle East,” at which point some Palestinians might return.
He implied that, in return for prosperity, they should forget their historical dispossession and abandon their dreams of statehood.
Mr. Trump’s broader vision is to extend the Abraham accords to Saudi Arabia, and to use this new American, Israeli and Sunni Arab grouping to contain Iran’s regime, which is close to getting a nuclear bomb.
Hours before his remarks on Gaza, Mr. Trump issued an order reinstating his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran by enforcing sanctions to squeeze its oil exports to zero.
It doesn’t take a Nobel peace prizewinner to spot the problems with Mr. Trump’s plan.
Morally, it is a call for conquest and ethnic cleansing that places no weight on the Palestinians’ right to self-determination or self-government. By proposing it, Mr. Trump is giving succor to the might-is-right worldview of Russia and China.
Practically, it is a non-starter. American voters have no appetite to send more troops to the Middle East. America’s record of nation-building there is poor, as Mr. Trump has previously noted.
The Arab nations being asked to host uprooted Gazans would struggle with the influx. The public backlash over a Palestinian displacement could even endanger their leaders’ hold on power.
No wonder Mr. Trump’s officials began to walk back his plan the next day, asserting that he had not promised to use American troops, and that the Palestinian displacement would be temporary.
