Trump and Gaza: No laughing matter

By all accounts, Donald Trump believes he can win the Nobel Peace Prize by becoming a “peacemaker,” a word he used when being sworn in last month – first in the Middle East, then over Ukraine and Russia. His latest gambit, seeking to “own” (his word) the Gaza Strip and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”... well, it inevitably generates that kaleidoscope of reactions that so typifies Trump’s world – everything from chuckles, to astonishment, to fear… all at the same time.

Just listen to members of the US Senate on the night Trump stood alongside Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu (‘Bibi’ could barely conceal his own mirth) and took responsibility for the nightmare that is Gaza. “That’s just insane… hilarious… kinky… so, so problematic” – that’s how senators from both sides responded.

But don’t get distracted. What the President of the United States says he wants to happen in Gaza is downright dangerous and could have dire consequences for a region that has triggered one war after another for decades. 

Take Trump’s opening salvo. That the two-million-plus people of Gaza should be moved out of “that hell-hole, that demolition site,” as he so delicately put it, to neighbouring countries, chiefly Jordan and Egypt. No matter that the leaders of both countries – one a King, the other a military dictator – have said “No Way!,” knowing full well that the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees could bring their governments down. 

Trump, however, persists. “It’s as if he’s not even bothered enough to listen to anyone who knows, or to read a simple advisory of the way, for example, the kingdom of Jordan, lives in constant fear of a new Palestinian exodus,” says one US State Department Middle East specialist. “Jordan is overwhelmingly Palestinian already. Another tide of refugees, and the King stares at being overthrown.” In short, chaos on Israel’s frontline across the River Jordan with the Palestinian West Bank in between.

Sorry to raise this Mr President, but what about respect for international law and order? The future of the Gaza Strip, like the West Bank, not to mention the Golan Heights, is enshrined and defined by a series of United Nations resolutions that establish the lands won by Israel in war cannot be formally annexed or seized, that they remain territories to be returned, decided in peace.

“We’ll own the Gaza Strip,” said President Trump, even suggesting he would send the US Army in to make it so. “We’ll make it a beautiful place for world people, yes, people of the world, to come.” Even allowing for the hyperbole of a real-estate mogul never knowingly undersold, this assumption of property takeover had the world at large – from Beijing, to Moscow, to Brussels, to Riyadh – condemning the suggestion outright. Some though, think China and Russia, could see a greenlight for them on their own ambitions, say Taiwan or in the Baltics.

Once again, the sense of the world’s new leading voice not listening to “common sense,” the very variable he constantly claims to have, is writ large. At the core of Trump’s grand vision for the Middle East is that he can chivvy, cajole and persuade the Arab world’s premier-league player, Saudi Arabia, to do business with Israel and accept the Jewish State, a goal that probably would win him that Nobel Prize. Within minutes of his latest gambit over Gaza, the Saudis were saying: Not for us, the only way forward is with a two-state solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict, namely a Palestinian state in the land that was once Palestine, the West Bank, Gaza.

On that front, Trump has no answers when asked to endorse the idea of a Palestinian homeland-cum-country. So sure of himself when it comes to building a beautiful beach-front paradise from the ruins of Gaza, the president dissembles when asked to explain his position on the two-state solution, a policy that has been at heart of US diplomacy for decades. “You can’t just keep trying, making the same mistake over and over again, trying something when it doesn’t work,” he said. It sounded to this Middle East veteran like a death-knell in the White House for the idea of side-by-side co-existence.

We need to credit Trump, in my view, for bullying the Israeli government into accepting the present ceasefire in Gaza, with the ensuing release of hostages, and for daring to launch himself as peacemaker into a conflict that has infuriated and dismayed so many predecessors. I worked at the White House when Bill Clinton and then George W. Bush made such brave attempts to engineer the Holy Land into homelands for both Israelis and Palestinians, only to find themselves at a loss for words and initiatives when both sides walked away.

Reality check. I’ve spoken to two longtime Palestinian contacts in recent days, one from the West Bank, the other from Gaza. Can they see their people fleeing the land for a home elsewhere, whatever destination this White House comes up with? The answer is no. “Do you know how many times we have walked from this shelter or that, in the course of our lives?” responded the Gazan. “We will not leave now. To which his West Bank colleague adds: “I see tens of new volunteers every time the Israelis kill one of us. We look at war without end.”

My Irish grandmother always used to say that “there’s none so deaf as those who don’t want to hear.” Mr President, you’re tone-deaf to the very people you must hear if you truly believe in the idea of peace. And if you want that Nobel Prize, for once, listen up.