If Trump tries to take over Gaza, Palestinians will die where they stand
But Biden did more than enable a war to continue for 15 months. He laid the foundation for something much worse to follow. It was not just a case of impotence; it was malice aforethought.
That has now been put into words and policy by his successor, Donald Trump.
Some, particularly those who voted for Trump in the swing states, have been lulled into thinking that after the great horrors of what happened under Biden’s watch, Trump could only do better.
They were lulled into thinking that Trump was sincere in his desire to shut down the war in Gaza, even for the wrong reasons.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
At his inauguration last month, Trump surrounded himself with the families of the hostages. His Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, had forced the ceasefire deal over the line in the first place, so they assumed Trump would pile pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to carry on with the hostage and prisoner exchange.
How wrong they all were.
Many of those who voted for Trump did not take seriously the genocidal implications of his wish to turn Gaza into the Riviera of the Eastern Mediterranean, nor indeed his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s musings about all that “valuable waterfront property”. Nor did they realise that Trump forms policy on the basis of the last person he talks to.
Clear mandate
When The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s idea to take over Gaza caught even his closest aides by surprise, that is what Trump’s ad-libbing on foreign policy means.
Trump’s ad-libbing must be puzzling even his closest supporters. He ran on a ticket of stopping all the wars Biden engaged in. Just weeks into his term of office, he is not only giving a mandate to Israel to continue its war on Gaza, but he is owning it too.
After just one meeting with Netanyahu, the real-estate-developer-in-chief had pledged to take Gaza over as US property, to turn a “demolition site” into paradise.
He said he would develop it for the “people of the Middle East”; in other words, for Israeli settlers too.
Follow Middle East Eye's live coverage of the Israel-Palestine war
Sitting three feet away, the man who had demolished Gaza could not contain his grin. Trump had just given him everything that even Biden’s instinctive Zionism could not.
Netanyahu leaves Washington with a clear mandate. It is not, as we all thought, to stop the war - but to urge him back to war. This is the inevitable consequence of Trump’s words, if he follows through on them.
The humiliation of all those images of hostage releases with Hamas fighters - in new uniforms and untouched jeeps, firmly in control - is behind the Israeli leader. And so, too, have the considerable military and political forces of the extreme religious right in Israel fallen into line.
The rush of Itamar Ben Gvir, the former national security minister and de facto leader of the religious Zionist right, to rejoin the Israeli cabinet in the wake of Trump’s news conference spoke volumes. Ben Gvir said that if Trump started to implement his plan, his party would rejoin the coalition.
Never before has the dream of a lifetime, the dream of Greater Israel extending from the river to sea, been within touching distance for them.
Trump said and did much more besides. In one day, he tore up the ceasefire deal that had been negotiated over the course of 15 months. Not only did he unilaterally abrogate stage three, which envisages the return of all dead bodies and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, but he also threw into severe doubt stage two, wherein all the remaining living hostages were to be released.
Trump has said he was “not confident” about the Gaza ceasefire’s long-term prospects. On Tuesday, Witkoff confirmed that while the administration was “hopeful” about stage two, stage three was off the table.
Risk of collapse
Assuming this flurry of US U-turns on the deal signed in Doha hold firm, what incentive now exists for Hamas to carry on releasing hostages, even under the current phase of the deal?
We are only about halfway through stage one of the deal, which provides for the release of 33 hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Why would Hamas continue to release any more hostages, knowing that obliteration for them will follow? What worth can anyone put on the documents that the US signs anymore?
This is the clear implication of the reaction of Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau. He said Hamas was committed to the ceasefire deal as long as Israel was, but “any manipulation in implementing the agreement may cause it to collapse”.
And what has Netanyahu placed in Trump’s mind about the occupied West Bank? We will not know for another few weeks, but the signs are ominous.
Asked whether Trump backed Israeli sovereignty over “Judea and Samaria” - which means annexation of areas B and C, comprising more than two-thirds of the illegally occupied West Bank - Trump had warm words.
“You’re represented very well, and people do like the idea, but we haven’t taken a position on it yet. But we will be - we’ll be making an announcement probably on that very specific topic over the next four weeks,” Trump said.
It’s now obvious that Gaza is no longer about a fight between one Palestinian resistance group and Israel. It is no longer even about Gaza.
At a moment in history when Palestinian identity and the demand for Palestinian self-determination are at their highest - totally as a consequence of what Gaza and the occupied West Bank are suffering - Trump and Netanyahu are laying plans for a forcible mass transfer of the Palestinian people that would dwarf all the others that have taken place since 1948.
Existential threat
Trump’s second term represents an existential threat to all Palestinians, wherever they live, and to the majority of the population that now lives between the river and the sea. It must also be obvious that Trump’s plans represent a huge security threat to Europe itself.
If the arrival of one million Syrians doomed former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right government and ushered in a new period of German history where the extreme right once again threatened democracy, how could millions of Palestinians disturb the peace of Fortress Europe?
Perhaps European leaders are at last realising how stupid and lame it was of them to back Israel to the hilt in its war against Gaza, and where this policy now leads them. Europe is at last realising what every Arab and Palestinian knew from day one was the real goal of this war: the forcible transfer of millions of Palestinians from Palestine.
Trump blithely and imperiously swept aside Saudi, Jordanian and Egyptian warningsagainst pursuing this policy with Israel. He was foolish to do so.
Within hours of Trump saying: “Saudi Arabia is going to be very helpful. And they have been very helpful. They want peace in the Middle East. It’s very simple,” the kingdom issued its strongest statement yet. The Saudi foreign ministry underscored the kingdom’s “firm and unwavering” stance on Palestinian statehood, contradicting Trump’s claim that Saudi Arabia was not making such a demand.
The statement continued: “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia also reaffirms its unequivocal rejection of any infringement on the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, whether through Israeli settlement policies, land annexation, or attempts to displace the Palestinian people from their land.” It described its position as “non-negotiable”.
This is the strongest - and quickest - reaction the kingdom has made to an announcement by a US president in living memory. And it is no accident that this statement was released.
Cause for war
King Abdullah of Jordan is about to descend on Washington with a similar message. According to senior sources who spoke with Middle East Eye, Jordan would consider Israel opening its eastern border and forcing through a mass exodus of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank a “casus belli” - a cause for war.
Jordan is being clear-sighted on this. Many major wars have started on smaller pretexts.
Jordan receives $1.45bn in US aid and military assistance annually, and MEE understands it is fully willing to forgo this crucial aid if the price of continued financial assistance is accepting one million more Palestinian refugees.
The Egyptian army is equally determined not to accept a single Palestinian who has been forced out of Gaza. Both Jordan and Egypt know it could be curtains for their regimes if they did this.
We have now reached a stage in this conflict where the war aims of Israel and the religious Zionist backers of Trump are laid bare.
There are no fig leaves to hide behind. It can no longer be called a war to defend Israel, if it ever could have been. It’s no longer about defeating Hamas.
The clear and stated objective of this war is to force a mass transfer of the Palestinian population from Gaza and the occupied West Bank. It is to deal a terminal blow to Palestinian statehood and alter the demographic balance of the lands that Israel claims are theirs for good.
Blinded by arrogance
Israel might call this “voluntary transfer”. Trump and Kushner might call it redevelopment. But it cannot be called anything other than its real name: ethnic cleansing on a scale unseen since Nazi-occupied Europe.
Every Palestinian understands this. And for this reason, they will not move. The world can now be confident that if this war resumes in Gaza, Palestinians will die where they stand.
One day of work at the office for Trump portends suffering and killing on a scale unimaginable even by the standards of the last 15 months. And it’s about to happen in real-time before our eyes.
What Trump proposed on Tuesday has been attempted by Israel several times before. Zionist militias tried to force Palestinians out of Gaza in 1948. Israel tried again during the Suez Crisis and after the 1967 war. It failed each time, and it will fail again.
Netanyahu finished his news conference by saying: “The Bible says that the people of Israel shall rise like lions. And boy, did we rise. Today, the roar of the Lion of Judah is heard loudly throughout the Middle East.”
He is blinded by his own arrogance. If he is not stopped, the lions of the Middle East are about to descend on the small state of Israel as never before. And every Israeli will feel it.
The views expressed in this article belon
g to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.