Trump's Palestinian Plan Has Triggered a New, United and Angry Arab Front - Opinion - Haaretz.com
U.S. President Donald Trump's ambitious proposal to transfer Gaza's residents outside the coastal enclave is neither new nor innovative. It has, however, inspired a new united front amongst Arabs, none of whom are willing to accept the Palestinians.
While pan-Arabism historically placed the Palestinian cause front and center for their operational political program, the reality is that Arab states have always prioritized their own particularistic self-interests first – making their instrumental use of the Palestinians a façade.
The concept of transferring the Palestinians isn't new either. A similar discussion occurred regarding the evacuation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) from Lebanon in the summer of 1982. "The Palestinians will be a hotbed of trouble throughout the Arab world," responded Syrian foreign minister Abdel Halim al-Khaddam at the time. The outright opposition to absorbing significant numbers of Palestinian refugees continues to unite disparate Arab states together.
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For Arab states, the plight of the Palestinians is the one issue which perpetuates pan-Arabist sentiment. Today's Middle East is a far cry from the apogee of political Arab nationalism, where Arab states under the leadership of Egyptian strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser sought to build an actionable political program that would unite the Arab world.
While political pan-Arabism effectively collapsed following the Six Day War, and while today there is little desire to politically unify the disparate Arab states as there once was, the Palestinian issue remains a tried and tested mechanism to rally the masses in the game of Arab politics. It was therefore not surprising that immediately after Trump's initial statements the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority issued a joint statement forcefully and vociferously rejecting Trump's idea.
On the one hand, the Trump proposal could finally inject some new thinking into the sclerotic peace-process by pressing Arab states to take more open responsibility for Gaza's reconstruction, and addressing the need to replace Hamas as Gaza's governing authority.
But Trump's predilection to view the Middle East as one large real estate transaction only further underscores his delusion. The result is a regional response to Trump's Gaza plan that unites the Arab states in their opposition to absorbing Palestinians from Gaza.
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White HouseCredit: AFP / Andrew Caballero-Reynolds
For Egyptians and Jordanians in particular, the prospect of absorbing nearly two million Palestinian refugees holds significant political and economic repercussions. Jordan, already with a significant portion of its population of Palestinian origin, has seen its economy strained with its intake of over a half a million Syrian refugees. The Hashemite Kingdom remembers the PLO's rebellion of Black September in 1970, and would be loath to absorb additional Palestinians which could leave them in a similar battle against extremists.
Likewise, in Egypt, the military regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has no desire to fund the re-settlement of the Palestinians, particularly those with ties to the ousted Muslim Brotherhood amid its growing public debt and plunging revenues from the Suez Canal due to the Houthi blockade.
But perhaps the state in the most precarious position is Saudi Arabia. President Trump entered into the White House with outsized expectations that he would push to expand the Abraham Accords with a blockbuster deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Trump then let the cat out of the bag and openly declared that the Saudis were not demanding a Palestinian homeland, a volte-face from their longstanding policy. Suggestions by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that a Palestinian state could be established on Saudi territory only added fuel to the fire.
Palestinians carry defaced pictures of U.S. President Donald Trump in the West Bank city of RamallahCredit: Nasser Nasser, AP
Indeed, the Saudis have in practice tied to decouple themselves from the Palestinian issue, embracing backchannel diplomatic ties with Israel over their shared Iranian threat, and common business interests between the petro-state and the start-up nation. Yet, even with these efforts, there are limits to how far the Saudis can go in their abandonment of the Palestinians, with their status as the custodian of Islam's two holiest sites and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman's ambition to lead the Arab world.
For the Arab states, their outright opposition to the transfer and absorption of Palestinians has created a pan-Arab consensus despite their differing interests. What was true in 1982 remains true today – national stability trumps (no pun intended) shared responsibility for the Palestinians – and a total abrogation of the classic pan-Arabist idea.
Jesse R. Weinberg is a Neubauer Research Associate at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and a doctoral candidate in history at Tel Aviv University.