If the idea is dangerous, the impulse behind it is perhaps worthwhile. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty
Only Donald Trump can unselfconsciously talk about one of the world’s most obstinate political and humanitarian crises in terms of its real estate opportunities. Only Trump can be taken seriously while doing so. And so here we are.
“We’re going to develop it, we’re going to create thousands and thousands of jobs,” he gushed while discussing Gaza’s potential to become the Middle East’s “Riviera”. This followed comments he made immediately after his inauguration about its “phenomenal location on the sea — best weather”.
The Palestinians who live in Gaza would, he continued, be taken in by Egypt and Jordan. Both countries, he was certain, would “open their hearts and will give us the kind of land that we need to get this done and people can live in harmony and peace”.
Benjamin Netanyahu, standing next to him, was clearly taken by surprise, though clearly also not unpleasantly so. These words were, he said, “worth paying attention to”. Trump, he added, “sees a different future for that piece of land that has been the focus of so much terrorism… I think it’s something that could change history”.
In contrast, allies and adversaries across the world mainly reacted with the same horror that was written across White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’ face as Trump outlined his vision. Hamas called the plan “racist” and vowed to prevent its implementation, while the Palestinian Authority described it — not incorrectly — as a severe breach of international law.
Jordan and Egypt were similarly outraged. Both receive huge amounts of US aid (third and fourth largest recipients respectively in 2023), which means that Washington does have considerable leverage. But when you consider what is being asked, and of whom, then even those colossal sums are likely to be inadequate.
Let’s start with Jordan. When it became an independent state, in 1946, it did so as a largely Palestinian one — led by a British-installed Hashemite monarchy. Today, one in five Jordanians is of Palestinian descent, while more than two million Palestinian refugees already live there. For Amman to absorb more would threaten its very viability as a Hashemite state.
There’s also a deeper anxiety here. Back in 1970, during the Black September conflict, Jordanian forces and Palestinian groups clashed after a failed assassination attempt on King Hussein and the hijacking of four planes by a Palestinian terror group. A massacre ensued, and only ended with the expulsion of the PLO from Jordan. The Hashemite monarchy internalised a lesson: give the Palestinians any room in the country and they will try to take control. Import a million or so now, and the result might not be so favourable. King Abdullah may not want to go against Washington, but if it’s a choice between that or the end of his monarchy then there is no choice.
Egypt is, arguably, even more vulnerable if there were a Palestinian influx. The idea that President el-Sisi, who overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood in a coup, will now import its offshoot, Hamas, is hardly serious. Nor can he afford to be seen as complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Polling by the Washington Institute a year ago found that 97% of Egyptians agreed Arab states should “immediately sever all diplomatic, political, economic, and any other contacts with Israel, in protest against its military action in Gaza”. El-Sisi has maintained relations with Israel. But imagine his people’s reaction if he helped Jerusalem empty Gaza.
An angry population is a destabilising one. And Egypt is already an economic basket case, suffering from inflation, a nosediving currency and substantial debt. If it collapses, the region and the world will suffer the consequences. And if there is one state in the world that has a particular interest in Egypt holding together, it is Israel. To have 112 million desperate and enraged Egyptians next door would probably be a threat greater than any it has yet faced.
The shock of Trump’s Riviera has reverberated beyond Palestine’s immediate neighbours. Normalisation with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been a longstanding goal of both the Trump and Netanyahu administrations, but after Trump’s words Riyadh was unequivocal: there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel without a Palestinian state. I know from multiple sources that the Saudis don’t actually care about the Palestinians; and that their crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is keen for normalisation with Jerusalem. But Trump’s real estate plan has left Riyadh with no alternative but to publicly support a two-state solution (which was not necessary for the signing of the Saudi-supported Abraham Accords). Since this is out of the question for Netanyahu, Trump has inadvertently pushed normalisation further out of reach.
That the “plan” would be a gross violation of international law is probably irrelevant to Trump. But if he were to succeed in turning Gaza into a riviera, what does he think the millions of displaced Gazans would do? They would consider it a second Nakba. Gaza city would become a seafront paradise where residents sipped Negronis under rocket fire from Egypt and took cold plunges as Hamas terrorists emerged bellowing from tunnels across the border. US troops would be stuck there for decades. A surely less-than-ideal scenario for a man who has repeatedly stated his desire to end US involvement in foreign wars.
Netanyahu understands all this. He is a sociopath with a messiah complex; he genuinely believes his destiny is to save Western civilisation from the scourge of radical Islam. He is also the man who, before October 7, brought Israel to the brink of civil unrest. But he is also incredibly smart and probably the most able state leader in the world right now. His assessment that Trump’s proposal was “worth paying attention to” was pointedly mealy-mouthed — in contrast to his fascistic former coalition partner Itamar Ben-Gvir’s enthusiastic assessment that Trump’s plan represents “the only solution”.
But if this idea is dangerous, impetuous and unlikely to see the light of day, the impulse behind it (even though borne from instinct rather than design) — to think about a seemingly unsolvable problem in a new light, however crazed, is perhaps worthwhile. As policy, Trump’s Gaza plan is a disaster; as a thought experiment, it’s absurd. But such an unthinkable suggestion might actually kickstart the sort of unorthodox, disruptive thinking that has eluded more measured, knowledgeable and sharper minds — and which has helped to keep peace so tortuously at bay for almost 60 years.
David Patrikarakos is UnHerd‘s foreign correspondent. His latest book is War in 140 characters: how social media is reshaping conflict in the 21st century. (Hachette)
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SubscribeWhy not let the Gazanians vote to decide if they would like US investment to redevelop their region? They are free to decline.
It wouldn’t be their region though would it, because Trumps plan involves forcibly removing them and annexing the territory, presumably to give to the Israelis
That’s for them to decide.
What are the options? Another martyrdom operation on their children?
How many more will you sign off on?
As I said, Trunps plan isn’t a choice. It involves forcibly removing them, which means they don’t get to decide
Like always he probably wants to negotiate. And in negotiations you don’t start where you want to end up.
Unless you’re Obama with healthcare…
Why should Palestinians have a choice? The only moral course of action, the only way this century-old war to exterminate the Jewish homeland will be brought to an end in a just way, is to say to the Palestinian Arabs that it’s all over. Things can’t go back to a status quo. They will never get a state; they don’t deserve a state; they proved to us they never wanted a state, other than as a springboard to destroy Israel. If they are defeated, they don’t get to choose.
It is never a good idea to lose a war. It is even worse to lose two wars, and it is a disaster to lose as many wars as the Arabs.
At some point this will have consequences. Ask the losers of world history (Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Turks, Finns, Poles, Italians, Japanese, Serbs, etc). The Gazans are finding that out now.
Any plan that doesn’t curtail Israel’s aspirations to control the whole Palestinian region is a sham. That is why the two state solution has never gotten up…Israel repeatedly breached resolutions about Palestinian territory and the world sat it on its hands and let it happen.
I wonder how many Palestinians wouldn’t rather spend their threescore-and-ten building their lives somewhere other than the rubble that Gaza now is, and wouldn’t jump at the chance to move elsewhere for the chance of a better life.
Maybe they do all desire to return to penury and destitution, living in the ruins of what used to be their houses, ruled by Hamas and seeing their children go off to pointless deaths in a jihadi cul-de-sac. They get bonus payments, apparently, for dead kids. And Heaven awaits, sultanas and all.
So tough choices.
But is it really so absurd that Trump is pushing a plan that would at least give individual Palestinians that choice? Or is it absurd that Western liberals would deny them that choice?
Is it not absurd, in fact, that the UN, and geniuses of similar ilk, has spent decades financing a terrorist government of a quasi-state, seen the consequences, and decided that somehow a return to this situation is in everyone’s best interests.
Trump’s thinking on this is way outside the Overton window, sure. The author claims that as policy the plan is a ‘disaster’. Take a good long look at Gaza, and tell me what current bien pensant policy is then. Trump’s plan has at least the advantage of looking like good sense at the outset.
As a thought experiment, it is absurd only to those incapable of seeing beyond the bounds of an Overton window that will leave their lack of imagination behind as it moves.
One could add to that a slightly different angle.
Progressives who’d throw their hands up in the air at the idea of ‘allowing’ those in Gaza who might wish to migrate to another land to escape the constant turmoil inflicted upon them by their leaders, or who might balk at the idea of neighbouring states being unsettled by the arrival of Palestinians from Gaza, are the very same progressives who take pride in the influx of migrants into western democracies, and balk at those who object on the grounds that such influxes result in an unsettling of local populations.
In other words, it’s one law for the plebs of Gaza, and another for the plebs of their own democracies. For progressives, hypocrisy not only knows no bounds, it’s compulsory.
Its an Ouroboros. A snake eating its own tail.
How many Palestinian’s we taken in as refugees in UK LL?
You’ve indicated it’s compulsory, but let’s just test the reality. How many?
My dear watson, it’s not “how many Palestinians” it’s how many migrants, irrespective of race, nationality, skin colour. You know the answer is: far too many, already.
In fact, your comment displays the very.mindset i’ve just described. Thankyou!
Hundreds of thousands of incompatible Muslims. So we need to start deporting the ones we have not importing more. Palestinians must stay in Muslim majority countries. I know the UK will be one soon enough but let’s not try and accelerate the process.
Ironically I bet you love the blueberries those migrants pick, so instead of rotting on the ground, they can be served on your table. Even the US Chamber of Commerce has staunch reservations about Trump’s emigrant idiocy.
As thought experiments go, here’s one for you, Mr. Dakin.
Suppose a bunch of rioters burned your neighbourhood to the ground. Then some bright spark wanted to pack you off to another country, so your neighbourhood could be turned into a theme park and golf course. How would you feel about that?
I would want the rioters to be dealt with by the authorities, but when the authorities are the rioters and stop someone else from dealing with them as well and others naively support them then I would want to leave because it will go on forever and ever.
No it wouldn’t. A Palestinian state would stop it. As everyone on the world has said.
Not true. The Arabs would see it as weakness and start attacking Israel all over again. Remember this is about way more than land.
It is? Like what?
Well if I voted the cause of the rioters actions into power (Hamas) and understood that the bright spark and the rest of the world had had enough of us and our 7c Death Cult I might at least understand where they were coming from.
Fair enough. Here’s what I honestly think.
I’m living in a neighborhood that’s been taken over by a gang. Outsiders send money in, but it’s hijacked by the gang. A lot of the neighbours broadly support the gang, most are just scared. The gang has taken over the schools too, and my kids are coming home talking about the glory of dying for the gang, and full of hatred.
I’d already want to leave.
Even before said gang went on an ill-advised hate-filled assault which brought down such retribution on the whole neighborhood that my house is a ruin, and likely to remain so, and there’s no water, no electricity, and as before, the food and money that’s being sent by well-meaning outsiders is being once more grabbed by the gang.
At this point, there is nothing, no reason whatsoever for me to want to stay, or to want my children to stay. My neighborhood is rubble, it’s my ‘home’ only inasmuch as it’s the same map coordinates as my home used to be.
I would jump at the chance to go get a job, live in safety, save some money and maybe, if those map coordinates ever do become liveable again, the kind of place they build hotels, golf courses, swimming pools, cinemas, other enjoyable or even luxurious things, then maybe I can go back and retire there.
Either way, I would remain forever grateful to the bright spark, and providence in general, that got me out of there, and no doubt my children would thank me too.
The un are busy setting up another martyr doom genocide.
Hey, everyone gets paid.
It’s the perfect big government gig.
I think Trump generally thinks out loud, makes an absurdly aspirational proposition and then achieves like 10-25% of it.
Better than going backwards. He’s so progressive!!
One problem is that the Palestinians in Gaza have no place to go. No one is going to take them in. No one is going to build them safe, beautiful homes in thriving communities. If they leave they have lost what little they had.
Yeah Carlos, you sound like Europeans talking about the Jews early let century. Poor Jews, no one wants to take them. I know, why not create a homeland for the Palestinians!!
What?
Martin, Why recreate what they already have had for centuries????
What about sending them all to Greenland?
It will soon be a US state with all the ‘goodies’ that entails.
Don’t they say “A change is as good as a rest”?
I think it is a great idea. Lots of space, no Jews. Dig in (pun intended) through the tundra land!
Quite. Trump’s suggestion neatly emphasises how all Israel’s neighbours see the Palestinians as trouble and want nothing to do with them. Making any objections they might have to whatever Bibi’s next move might be self-evidently self-serving.
Israel’s existence shows that the Europeans saw the Jews as nothing but trouble and wanted nothing to do with them after the war
That’s right. Freud would understand Israel’s actions very well.
You seem to have not read the paragraphs outlining why the majority of Palestinians can’t relocate to other adjacent Arab nations whether they’d like to or not. Imagining a fairytale and claiming it as grand strategy is infantile.
That does not mean there is an easy alternative. The Palestinian Leadership have 3 times in 60 years rejected deals that gave them a significant proportion of the land they covet. Each time though the proportion offered was reduced, in part through their own failure to grasp peace and accept they could not have it all. Whether one can blame all the people or just the leadership for these historic missed opportunities a separate debate, but IMO this point is not made often enough by western supporters of the 2 State solution.
Nonetheless to believe the solution is mass ethnic cleansing and then we all live happy ever after is for the simpletons. Perhaps though more could be done to broker a deal with likes of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi, managing Gaza as a Protectorate guaranteeing security for Israel and some form of civil society for Palestinians without Hamas. The difficultly here is the Turkey-Egypt tension where Hamas have been part used by Erdogan too as he has more sympathy with the Brotherhood than Sisi. But nonetheless somewhere here perhaps a deal the US could help broker…if it had someone with real ability and awareness in the White House.
To you point “to believe the solution is mass ethnic cleansing ……is for the simpletons”:
I would only observe most countries that we view as stable democracies were formed precisely by this ethnic cleansing. It’s the only system thats proved to work -hopeever much people throw their hands up in horror. E.G post WWII, countless millions were forcibly migrated all over Europe/Middle East/Asia. Churchill negotiated much of the transfers and noted that to have a significant ethric minority in any country would make it unstable – hence why ethric Ukraines were expelled from Poland, et c
Also the separation of India and Pakistan
Say China bombs England. You return to Coventry or wherever. Many buildings left, albeit ruined. Someone says to you, wouldn’t you rather live away from all this dastardly rubble old chap? Yr ancestors all lived on their land, or nearby. What say you?
Yup – we could split up and go to Denmark, Germany, Italy, Normandy, France etc, because that’s where our ancestors came from so we have a god-given right to do so!
Martin, Did I miss something or didn’t this already play out in recent history
Trump’s vision should inspire people in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East to think of how a transformation from war-ravaged hell-hole to prosperous vacation spot could be accomplished. It shouldn’t be an American territory, but it could be a territory of Egypt under the auspices of a pan-Arab governing body. Imagine Saudi, UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco getting together to help the Gazans by offering them a choice of moving to one of those places or participating in the construction of Club Gaza. And then funding the reconstruction, ensuring jobs and futures for the people who remain.
I shudder at how easily westerners refer to those in the Middle east as nothing more than chess pieces that they can move about at whim. The historical reality is uncontestable: Israel exists because the West wanted nothing to do with Jews fleeing Hitler in WW2 and, after the war ended and the Holocaust was revealed in all its horror, the British came up with a clever plan to assauge their guilt and ‘deal’ with the problem – let’s ‘give’ them Palestine and completely and conveniently forget that it is already inhabited. (As an Australian I am more than familiar with the Brits foisting those it does not want on populations far out of sight, and claiming that the original inhabitants had no claim to their homeland, or indeed, even existed).
It amazes me that so many who will argue against immigration on the grounds of maintaining cultural integrity (generally of white westerners) again see no problem with it when it comes down to brown or black people and their culture. Pack their bags for them and send them off to somewhere else. Who wouldn’t want that?
We should all know of course that Trump’s ‘Riviera’ is all the more disgusting as before the latest destruction of Gaza, it was indeed akin to a Riviera of the middle east. He speaks as if it was some sort of Third world shanty town that never had any value or sophistication, much as the world viewed Iraq and Iran before the disaster of western ‘intervention’ . It was a beautiful and sophisticated place, as a google of Gaza before and after will attest
TBF it WAS an Egyptian territory. How’d that work out?
This is of course how Trump operates, moving the Overton window on any issue by throwing out apparently outrageous ideas which would previously have been unthinkable. Journalists and academics have still not understood this modus operandi, and so once they’ve finished throwing up their hands in horror the idea starts to become part of the acceptable discussion. Whether it eventually happens is irrelevant, the frozen consensus has been smashed and outside-the-box thinking becomes the norm.
You could ask that exact same question to those in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans and get the exact same answer. It is their home. I am wondering who vetted this comment. “Trump’s plan has at least the advantage of looking like good sense at the onset.” I am guessing more than 60 percent of Americans were shocked and mortified by this ragingly Trumpian solution to everything. Making money for Emperor Don. What is scripted on the back side of the rock you crawled out from to make you possibly think that?
You can’t understand what motivates the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank without understanding history. Many on the WB and almost all in Gaza, were ethnically cleaned from their homes in what is now “Green Line” Israel, (i.e. the pre 67 borders), during 47-48. What the Palestinians call the Nakba, (Literally catastrophe). These were villagers who had lived in these villages for generations. Many fled for their lives in the wake of the massacre at Deir Yassin, those who tried to stay were often expelled. (See the story of Elias Chacour, Melkite Archbishop, who along with his brothers and father were rounded up and escorted across the border by the IDF in 48-49). These people were not allowed to return after the ceasefire in 48. (A major reason why the proto-IDF assasinated Count Bernadotte in 48 as he was pushing for the “Right of Return”). At any rate, most of those in Gaza have been living in exile from their native villages for the last 75 years. The have no intention of being removed a second time.
Oh and peace is possible under the current regime?
Patrikarakos is brilliant, as ever. Are there shades here of Idries Shah’s book, “Wisdom of the Idiots”? Should we bring to bear, the teachings of Sufi mysticism? It would be fresh thinking, that’s for sure.
That short character-sketch of Netanyahu is masterly. It says so much with so few words.
Is Wisdom of the Idiots just Gnosticism?
Oh, so the sharp thinking liberals have kept the peace in Israel and Gaza for the last 60 years have they?
I must have missed that. Or maybe they are talking about a different middle East…
The recent Gaza solution did not work.
The two state solution will not work
What would you suggest?
Why not have America buy every Palestinian a puppy! By golly, that would shorely flood Gaza with rainbows and fairy floss farts in a trice!
Why won’t the two state solution work?
Because two dogs can never share the same bone.
Because, as has been obvious for some time, the Palestinan Arabs do not actually want a state of their own except as a launchpad to achieve what they really want, which is the destruction of Israel and the mass genocide of the Israelis.
Which is not to say that every single Palestinian Arab wants this, but that their collective will, as refracted and crystallised in their political and paramilitary institutions like the PA and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, still nurtures this as its overriding end.
There will be no peace until the morale of the Palestinan Arabs, as well as their conception of what is possible, is reduced to something like that of the Germans in May 1945. They are nowhere near there yet.
I would suggest a one state solution.
Secular. No ethno nationalist Jewish state. Y know, kinda like Palestine was before, but better. 7 million Jews. 7 million Palestinians. Let the breeding wars begin!!
If the best that can be said about this latest bit of Trumpian mouth-garbage is ‘Well, it might be crazy, but gee it could get the grown-ups thinking laterally…’ then it’s not worth paying the price: which is destroying any last shred of US credibility – which means bargaining power – that remains under this fool. The point about playing Jester to disrupt a corrupt Court is that as a Jester, ‘crazy talk’ is all you have. When you’re the King, with real power, but you start spit-balling farcical lines as your primary strategy, too…boy, are you in the wrong job.
But Americans knew that of Trump – natural-born reality TV C-lister – already. Yep, it’s sure gunna be a loooooong four years having Alan Sugar as President.
So your opinion is that John Biden or Kam Harris project more strength to the world than Trump?
Or are you saying strength is a liability in negotiations?
Did I say either? Um, no. Are you a simpleton who can only think it binaries? I will assume not.
It is possible to think that Biden, Harris and Trump are all equally incompetent, weak and destructive to American interests.
Biden was a hypocritical creep, Harris a walking woke punchline,…and Trump is a colossal ass clown. Already he has blown every wad in his miserably weak arsenal. He has shown the world he is, yes after all, a loud mouthed blowhard and a fraud. A Lame Duck President after three weeks! Quite the anti-achievement, MAGA.
Israel is insane if it thinks Trump’s America is its champion.
I stopped reading at the word “simpleton”. Many others will have done the same and just registered a down tick. If you want your comments to be read, then I’d suggest a change of approach.
I’m sure we’ll both survive your non-readership of me, Ian. Chrs.
Notice that in this archaic screed from Patrikarakos that, as usual, there is no mention of the people of Gaza, and what might be the humanitarian thing to do, considering that their homes are ruble and they continue to be ruled by a homicidal, terrorist death cult. The entire purpose of the “Palestinian” refugee camps, such as Gaza, was to ensure a perpetual torment for the Israelis, thus satisfying the structural antisemitism of the West’s Left and also providing a useful distraction for the region’s autocrats.
Notice also that neither Patrikarakos nor any other establishment pundit has any solution (other than endless terrorist ferment on Israel’s borders). Trump made the only reasonable, practical suggestion in my lifetime. Thus Trump’s message to the people of Gaza – entirely moral and justified in my view: Live in peace with Israel, or go into the desert.
That is a useful focusing message for the brainwashed denizens of Gaza to absorb – and may lead to something actually positive,
Live in peace or go to the desert?
You just said that. It’s forever recorded.
Are you aware that the Israeli fascist right have said? They have called for this all along? Ever wonder how the totally superior and “moral” IDF, with all their AI and teenage dork operation naming, have actually increased the numbers of Hamas? Ever think that it wasn’t about that? Obviously it was ethnic cleansing all along. God bless President Homer Simpson for continuing to say the quiet part out loud.
You are aware that the Arabs have been engaged in ethnic cleansing for over a thousand years now?
Like the British, or worse?
Just like the Romans, make a desert and call it peace!
Developing Gaza is a brilliant, common sense idea, separating the problem from the drama, creating an opening for solution(s) . . . Brilliant on so many levels:
-Motivating assistance from neighboring countries.
-Opening the door to imagining a future free of ideological struggle and victimization.
-Planting a seed for hope . . .a seed which might divide the Palestinians . . afterall, the pressures of group conformity will make it excruciatingly hard for any Palestinian to speak in favor of such a plan. But the idea may yet grow into something over time.
I am beginning to wonder if Trump may be a genius, after all.
The fact that Trump is actually creating dialogue between warring nations is a win. For a brief second it reminds one side that the other side is human. He thinks out loud with absurdly high aspirations. Better to have high aspirations and not meet them than put your expectations at the floor.
I understand Peace through Capitalism is a stain on the Socialist Global Revolution but maybe just consider it.
How is he creating dialogue? To that requires both sides to be talking to each other. All he has achieved is for the Israelis to cheer and the rest of the world to condemn the plan as idiocy
This kind of dialogue is normal in mediations like this. I’ve been a mediator, and I’ve been mediated. It’s often a messy process, but with a good mediator it can work well. And Donald Trump is a great mediator — a master of the art of the deal.
The problem in the Middle East is the Palestinians. The Israelis want peace and would give up a lot for it, as they have been willing to do for generations now. But the Palestinians won’t give up their dream of a state stretching from the river to the sea, and they are never going to get that.
And Israel is not going to wait patiently on the Palestinians. Israelis can be selfish and grasping themselves. They too dream of a state stretching from the river to the sea, but for them, the state is Israel. Meanwhile, most Palestinians are not jihadists like Hamas, or corrupt like Fatah. They just want to live in peace, but they are caught between their fanatical leaders and their avowed enemy.
So the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza has been brutal. Israel’s actions even before the Gaza War violated international law, as do the inexorable Israeli settlements and the almost casual and cruel persecution the settlers and the Israeli defense forces inflict on Palestinians. Myself, I am not surprised that Hamas launched its terrorist attack when it did. The provocation had been building and the lid was clamped too tightly onto the pot for it to let off steam. An explosion was inevitable.
But it was absolutely the worst thing that Hamas could have done for their own cause. No one could hold Israel back from bombing the hell out of Gaza and committing war crimes in the process. Now Gaza is destroyed, and it needs to be rebuilt. That will take 15 to 20 years, a generation, just to get it back to where it was before the first bombs fell.
Some people don’t seem to realize what a hell hole Gaza is now. There’s no electricity, no Internet, no water, no toilets, no schools, no hospitals, no housing. Nothing but rubble as far as the eye can see. I say none even though there is some because there’s not enough structure and infrastructure left to build around. The entire place has to be leveled so it can be rebuilt from the ground up.
So what do the Gazans do while that is happening? You can’t live in a house while it’s torn down and rebuilt. And who pays for the rebuilding? No one has a plan but Donald Trump, and his plan is a pipe dream. But at least he has people talking seriously about the problem, even if in angry denunciation (the Arabs) or barely hidden glee (the Israeli right), and that’s a start.
That’s dialogue, isn’t it?
(I wrote a lengthy reply to your comment but it got caught in UnHerd’s gizzard and won’t be coughed up until tomorrow.)
I don’t believe it is to be honest. Creating dialogue would be serious suggestions that both parties could use as a starting point.
If Hamas says they want to drive all the Jews from the Middle East thats classed as ethnic cleaning and terrorist, so why is Trump jabbering on about driving the Palestinians from Gaza any different?
No, I’ve done a lot of negotiation and mediation and the worst way to start out is with serious suggestions that both parties could use as a starting point. Then you get into a zero-sum game, or worse a negative-sum game, rather than a positive-sum game, a win-win scenario.
You can see the problem with the way JD Vance approached the question of Ukraine. He jumps in with a proposed plan that locks him into a poor negotiating position while Russia and Ukraine are both still far apart with unrealistic proposals and not talking.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, approached it perfectly. He proposes no plan, and when asked if he wants Ukraine wants to win, says he doesn’t think in terms of winning or losing but he wants to stop the dying. He’s not locked into any position, and can explore a lot more ground.
Negotiations need to proceed at their own pace. You can’t rush them. They need not necessarily take a lot of time, but there does need to be several rounds of back and forth, a lot of disagreement and shouting, a lot of smoothing over and conciliating, before a deal can be struck. The process is very important. The substance, not so much.
So it was the right first step is to get people talking even if the dialogue is not in the least productive. Everyone weighed in. Israel, Hamas. Egypt. Jordan. Saudi Arabia. They all said their piece. Now things can go from there.
And Donald Trump never said anything about driving the Palestinians out of Gaza. You need to stop putting words in his mouth that he didn’t say.
Excellent. A most intelligent reply.
I’m going to save it to pass on to my children.
.
You condemn every plan as idiocy. It’s not like your mind isn’t fixed. Trump could declare the fax machine an outdated form of communication and you’d attack it.
“Netanyahu . . . is a sociopath with a messiah complex.”
No he’s not. There is too much of this kind of thing on UnHerd these days. It’s getting to be like Substack, a place I rarely go anymore to avoid the superficiality and glibness that is swamping any serious thinking.
I don’t like Donald Trump’s Gaza-viera plan either but he’s not proposing ethnic cleansing and he is just throwing his plan out there for thought. It has as much heft as a practical plan as Elon Musk’s plan to put men on Mars. Both are wispy and pleasant pipe dreams that have no chance of happening in real life.
How is removing all the Palestinians from Gaza not classed as ethnic cleansing?
Donald Trump did not say that he would remove all the Palestinians from Gaza.
What’s so odd about ‘ethnic cleansing’?
It’s what human beings do and have been doing since Day 1.
And after WW2 we got together and determined that there were principles we should as humans being aspire to, you know, the Nuremburg Convention and all that. That we should become more civilised. But you do you
I strongly agree with the first part of your comment. I am particularly fed up with the epithet “narcissist”. Big words for lazy minds.
Absolutely! That was such a cringeworthy bit in the article. (I wrote a comment on this)
You’re right: “narcissist” and “sociopath” (non-existent as a medical term, btw) have become lazy and empty labels, just like “f___ist” or “r___ist”.
Usually their use means “I don’t agree with X./I dont like X., therefore X. is a narcissist [and/or other words from the list above]”
Recently have read a complaint from someone calling their boss a narcissist because the boss wanted the complainant to come to work on time (oh horror! ;-))
Carlos, the plan he is “throwing out there” is ethnic cleansing! I’m starting to think you are a bot Carlos. With some gnarly bugs.
Yes, I also cringed when reading this bit and wrote a comment on this before I saw your post.
Some lazy labelling, apparently to make the article more dramatic is really a cheap trick.
Changing the subject: thank you very much for replying in detail to my question about breaking up big companies. Highly appreciated! I wrote a reply to you in the BTL comments to the article in question, don’t know of you have seen it.
Basically, it was to thank you for the very interesting and eye-opening explanation 🙂
“But such an unthinkable suggestion might actually kickstart the sort of unorthodox, disruptive thinking that has eluded more measured, knowledgeable and sharper minds for almost 60 years — and which has helped to keep peace so tortuously at bay for so long.”
The last sentence is the most important. Trump will disrupt fossilized failure and force actual progress. Most of this article excuses that failure. More knowledgeable and sharper minds? What’s the test?
“I know from multiple sources that the Saudis don’t actually care about the Palestinians…”
I don’t have any sources, and I could have told you that. None of the Arab states care about them.
Calling Trump’s statements on Gaza a plan is too much; they were a tactic to try and achieve something else. Which hopefully the countries of the Middle East will work out among themselves. Anything has got to be better than the current situation or hanging on – literally for grim death – to a solution we fancied would sort things out but which is already dead.
But, yes – by all means feel free to indulge in Trump derangement for two weeks before considering this. I’ve started to look at the repeat bouts of hysteria over Trump and Musk and wonder whether there isn’t some kind of erotic dimension to it. The way people throw themselves into it so gaily at every opportunity, there must be some primeval urge driving it.
I also wondered about the choice of Jordan and Egypt.
The gulf states would seem a far more obvious option – culturally close, with shared religion and language. They are affluent, sparsely populated, and have a continual need for labour. It would also remove hamas from the Israeli border.
The gulf monarchies may be understandably wary of a psychopathic death cult, although Qatar seems to be fine with this.
Interesting thought. Maybe that’s where this negotiation is headed. I suppose at this point what’s not being said might be as important as what is.
The Palestinian Christians are part of the death cult? Define sneaky cult. How about killing thousand of innocent children and women? Death cult? How about naming creepy operations “daddy’s home” and “mowing the lawn.” Death cult?
Why would Bibi make sure that Hamas got all this money. He likes death cults?
You’ve taken the propaganda to heart haven’t you? You are totally de humanising 7 million people as death cultists. Same thing that Hitler and other “civilised” Europeans did not too long ago.
Where to send the Jews? Funny eh?
The article has convinced me. The only solution is to decant the so-called Paledtinians and turn Gaza into some kind of Club Med. The problem is that no Arab country wants them.
EGYPT with a population of 118 million would hardly notice another 2.
Besides it is on an umbilical cord of US Aid and could be ‘squeezed’ if absolutely necessary.
Yeah, just like no European country wanted the Jews!! History eh?? Bloody hell.
It does seem as if the Roman solution maybe the only answer here.
As Tacitus put it so perfectly: “ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant”.*
*Agricola:30, The rousing speech of Calgacus the leader of the Brittunculi (Britons) before the battle of Mons Graupius. 83/84 AD or 836/837 AUC.
If Trump is so keen to ‘clean’ the people out of Gaza so that he can own it and develop it as a ‘Riviera’, why doesn’t he ship them them all to the USA and give them citizenship?
Alternatively ‘clean’ the West Bank of its 750,000 (or so?) illegal settlers, thus freeing up enough homes to start off the resettlement of the Gazans there and create the Palestinian state which should keep most of the stakeholders content. The Israeli settlers can go to Israel, which should will be happy to receive them back, and then on to the Gaza strip when Trump has rebuilt it as a seaside paradise.
Okay David got it, his plan would threaten the peace and stability that Gaza has historically enjoyed… have you any thoughts on a better idea? Shall we keep the Gaza population locked in the apocalyptic death spiral they’re in and keep sending them money to build bombs and dig tunnels? Yeah you’re right, that’s much better.
The Husseini Clan conducted a civil war against the Nashashibi Clan in the 1920s who wanted to negotiate with the British and the Jewish settlers. Member of the Husseini Clan actually sold land to the Jewish settlers. The acts of violence by supporters of the Husseini Clan led , Order Wingate, the first Special Forces officer in the 1930s to create the special Night Squads. Palestinians rejected every deal, the Jewish settler did not. Moshe Dayan, a sergeant in it said ” Wingate trained the Jews how to fight”. f The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a Husseini, supported Himmler and the Final Solution.
Nashashibi family – Wikipedia
Many Jewish people fought in Commando/Airborne /Special Forces units in WW2, so gaining skill and combat experience:Palestinians Arabs worked for Hitler.
The Arab countries in 1948 broadcast to the Palestinians to leave their homes to better able to destroy Israel: they lost. The Palestinians murdered King Abdullah of Jordan in 1951, the only person to defeat Israel in 1948. The PLO tried to take over Jordan in 1970 and insulted the wives of Beduin Officers. They were expelled. The PLO started the civil war in Lebanon in 1975.
In 1990 Arafat support S Hussein in the invasion of Kuwait and lost the support of Saudi Arabia , Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar. Every peace settlement from the 2000 Camp David Accord under Clinton, Jeddah ,etc has been rejected by the Palestinians. Israel left Gaza in 2005 and the advanced horticultural buildings left were destroyed by the Palestinians The Saudi audited the PLO accounts and there was so much corruption they stopped the funds.
Name one Arab country which would trust the Palestinians to live in their midst and not cause conflict ?
The best part of this article is the last three sentences.
Amen. What many are conveniently ignoring is that the Palestinian people have lost in these battles several times now. For eons. When you poke a much larger enemy in the eye and they retaliate and win, you lose. Based on the recorded history of the world, they are owed nothing but being conquered. Yet, this time this small enclave of people, who have spent their entire existence wishing to kill Jews, are being offered yet another chance to change and live in peace. What loser of war ever gets this chance even once? This is the most generous offer given to the loser in the history of mankind. The other option is to let the cancer continue to metastasize and be dealt with, yet again, down the road. It’s time to end the insanity.
The only intelligent thought in the article is the last three sentences. And as far as I can see most thoughtful people drew that conclusion as soon as Trump dropped his dead cat…
The so called two state solution is an illusion. However public their support of the Palestinians the reality is that Arab states know it to be an impossibility. The Palestinians are just a useful stick with which to beat Israel. They will not be consulted over their future, that is decided for them by Hamas.
¨the Palestinian Authority described it — not incorrectly — as a severe breach of international law.¨
At this point to describe something as a breach of international law is more of a commendation than a criticism.
So, do the Gazans have Gaza as their home, or are they refugees? They cannot be both.
Is Trump’s idea any more absurd than the idea that there’s ever going to be a two-state solution? Isn’t the definition of insanity trying the same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different outcome on the next try? All you have to know is that Jordan and Egypt don’t want to take the Gazans, their own coreligionists, because of their own bitter experience. I’m sure most of the Arab world prefers the Palestinians to be Israel’s problem in perpetuity but something is going to have to give.
Thus, China is fiercely fighting the plan to displace the Palestinians, to nullify the (Israeli Ben Gurion Project), as it is the most dangerous secret plan that China is trying to expose its disguised methods under the pretext of war or creating a safe place for civilians to live, according to the claim of US President “Trump”, while the only intelligence truth in this dangerous strategic and international game, according to the awareness of Chinese intelligence institutions through the Chinese State Council, which is responsible for the work of the Chinese intelligence agency, is this dangerous plan, under American supervision, to seize the entire Gaza port and link it to the Israeli Ben Gurion port, as an alternative to the Belt and Road project in international trade, as an American and Israeli intelligence project in the Middle East region to confront the Chinese Silk Road project and to limit the influence of the Egyptian Suez Canal, as it connects India and Europe through railways and maritime transport across the Middle East.
https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/02/03/how-gazas-displacement-plan-could-shake-chinas-bri-and-suez-via-israels-ben-gurion-port/
An ambitious plan like the Ben Gurion Project requires ambitious thinking. Think of it as a supply side measure to kickstart global economic growth.
Wow! That is the longest single sentence I’ve seen in a long time.
I believe there’s a definition for insanity as continuing to do the same thing while expecting a different outcome.
What a load of twaddle. Let’s just keep doing the same old thing shall we. See how that sorts things. There will never be a peaceful 2 state solution, particularly not now, until Hamas stop trying to kill all Jews. Hamas don’t need or want a state, they have done well enough the way things are. Money to be made from gullible foreign governments and cowardly middle eastern governments.
This is a time when taking Trump seriously instead of literally is in order. He put forth an outlandish proposal with the idea that someone will step forward with a counter-measure that does not involve a US presence in that region. Second, it was a loud signal to Bibi that the fighting is done and it’s time to figure out the next step. Finally, miles of Mediterranean seafront is an opportunity only fools can screw up or ignore. Gaza has its path to prosperity in plain sight, if only some poeple’s blind hatred of Israel can be put aside.
True, but another thing that needs to be put aside is the idea that Jews have the divine right to all of Palestine even if they are atheists.
Yes! Absolutely right!
— Netanyahu [..] is a sociopath with a messiah complex; he genuinely believes his destiny is to save Western civilisation from the scourge of radical Islam—
Is someone who wants to stop the scourge of radical Islam a sociopath?
Yes or no?
And if yes, based on what criteria?
Is David Patrikarakos a psychiatrist/clinical psychologist trained specifically in Cluster B personality disorders?
If yes, did he make a clinical assessment of Netanyahu based on DSM-5 and in-depth interviews?
This intellectually lazy labelling (and the wrong terminology, btw), aggravated by bundling of stopping Islam with ASPD, is all you need in order to draw your conclusions about the quality of this errr…article.
You have a point there. Perhaps we should temper our language and just refer to Bibi as a corrupt imperialist war criminal.
For goodness sake, all he wishes to do is defend his homeland. There would be peace the moment those who surround Israel stop attacking it.
You know that.
So he has no thoughts about being remembered as the chief Zionist who expanded greater Israel? Naive, lad. There are many videos of him for 30 years ago spelling out his intention to hoodwink the idiot evangelical Zionists and the U.S in general.
Unfortunately he considers his homeland to be all of biblical Israel and like Joshua he feels it’s his duty to expel of exterminate any Canaanites who live there.
Agree with you completely!
Thank you, Julia
“But Trump’s real estate plan has left Riyadh with no alternative but to publicly support a two-state solution”.
First, they’ ve always publicly supported a two-state solution. Second, just like all politicians they’ve got to perform an outrage spectacle for their local audience and forget about it next week.
The idea of population transfer is effectively the only way to resolve ethnic conflicts ( what else do you do in the int’l order of nation states?). It successfully worked more than once. Success of course measured only by the following stability, not by individuals compelled to leave their homes. Does it need to be an ethnic cleansing in the fashion of 1948? Not at all, voluntary exodus will work just fine with enough financial incentives, especially from the ruins, destruction, hunger and crime-infested area.
Now the author’s right, Jordan and Egypt have very limited ability to absorb 2mln Gazans, however, give a strong incentive to move them to the West Bank, simultaneously give a very strong disincentive to Israeli settlers to stay there, like removing the army, also, recognize Palestinian state and the region has a chance especially when Iranian meddling is at its low.
If only it were that simple. If the refugees of 48 had been offered that kind of deal, the hostilities in the area would have ended well before the 67 war. Instead, Israel had doubled down on its greater Israel rhetoric and no one in the region trusts Israel to do anything but “creatively interpret” any deal that is made.
I like the idea of those people going away to come back and work in a rebuilt and prosperous Gaza.
However, their life’s mission is to destroy the Jewish state and murder all the Jews in Israel.
So if they are permitted to stick around, then unfortunately they will.
Seems to me that regardless of the actual results, the entire conversation has now shifted from “The poor Palestenians” to, “No one wants the Palestenians to come to their country because their radical nutcases that destabilize countries.” Pretty dang effective PR jiu-jitsu it seems.
“Trump’s Riviera would tear the Middle East apart – His Gaza plan makes peace impossible”
Did the author somehow miss, or have they perhaps forgotten, what happened on October 7th?
“helped to keep peace so tortuously at bay for almost 60 years.”
Whaaat????
Trump was convicted by a jury and got away scot free. No wonder he thinks he can do and say anything no matter how outlandish. It’s school playground bullying taken the ultimate level.
Lots of complaining, but no better alternatives? Nothing but the old two-state non-solution? Hamas appears now to be a generational mindset for the Palestinians.
As you say, an angry population is a destabilizing one, and so one might expect there to be no regional takers for even temporary migrants.
BUT WHAT IF there was a way to alter the hateful mindset of Hamas, as by employing their members (and Palestinians) as construction workers to rebuild? No helicopter money, but by using measurable performance metrics and trickle-funding, likely requiring Arab construction firms known to be effective as Primes. Relocate the UN there. Draw regional investment.
Oh, what a wonderful world it could be. Ideas are needed, not complaints.
Netanyahu understands all this. He is a sociopath with a messiah complex; he genuinely believes his destiny is to save Western civilisation from the scourge of radical Islam.
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David, let me paraphrase you:
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Patrikarakos understands all this. He is a sociopath with a messiah complex; he genuinely believes his destiny is to save Western civilisation from the scourge of radical Judaism.
.
P.S. My paraphrase sounds stupid. I know it and agree with it. What about yours?
I shudder at how easily westerners refer to those in the Middle east as nothing more than chess pieces that they can move about at whim. The historical reality is uncontestable: Israel exists because the West wanted nothing to do with Jews fleeing Hitler in WW2 and, after the war ended and the Holocaust was revealed in all its horror, the British came up with a clever plan to assauge their guilt and ‘deal’ with the problem – let’s ‘give’ them Palestine and completely and conveniently forget that it is already inhabited. (As an Australian I am more than familiar with the Brits foisting those it does not want on populations far out of sight, and claiming that the original inhabitants had no claim to their homeland, or indeed, even existed).
It amazes me that so many who will argue against immigration on the grounds of maintaining cultural integrity (generally of white westerners) again see no problem with it when it comes down to brown or black people and their culture. Pack their bags for them and send them off to somewhere else. Who wouldn’t want that?
We should all know of course that Trump’s ‘Riviera’ is all the more disgusting as before the latest destruction of Gaza, it was indeed akin to a Riviera of the middle east. He speaks as if it was some sort of Third world shanty town that never had any value or sophistication, much as the world viewed Iraq and Iran before the disaster of western ‘intervention’ . It was a beautiful and sophisticated place, as these images attest.w w w .youtube.com/watch?v=tir36oMKWEM
Sorry this has been posted 3 times. Some sort of system glitch
I shudder at how easily westerners refer to those in the Middle east as nothing more than chess pieces that they can move about at whim. The historical reality is uncontestable: Israel exists because the West wanted nothing to do with Jews fleeing Hitler in WW2 and, after the war ended and the Holocaust was revealed in all its horror, the British came up with a clever plan to assauge their guilt and ‘deal’ with the problem – let’s ‘give’ them Palestine and completely and conveniently forget that it is already inhabited. (As an Australian I am more than familiar with the Brits foisting those it does not want on populations far out of sight, and claiming that the original inhabitants had no claim to their homeland, or indeed, even existed).
It amazes me that so many who will argue against immigration on the grounds of maintaining cultural integrity (generally of white westerners) again see no problem with it when it comes down to brown or black people and their culture. Pack their bags for them and send them off to somewhere else. Who wouldn’t want that?
We should all know of course that Trump’s ‘Riviera’ is all the more disgusting as before the latest destruction of Gaza, it was indeed akin to a Riviera of the middle east. He speaks as if it was some sort of Third world shanty town that never had any value or sophistication, much as the world viewed Iraq and Iran before the disaster of western ‘intervention’ . It was a beautiful and sophisticated place, as a google of Gaza before and after will attest
There never has been peace there for very long and there never will be.
The Palestinians have been given and offered everything inc in 1939 the whole of Israel and turned it all down.
No one wants a two state solution now. No one wants the Palestinians because they are major trouble.
So why not develop it? Obviously, it would have to be Muslim free or they would start killing everyone again. How to get around that is the problem. Someone mentioned Somalia the other day which is not a bad idea … so long as it isn’t Europe or the West.
Why not move Israel into the U.S.? If we’re talking about outside-the-box solutions, this surely is one, but it has the advantage of an idea that has been considered before.
I think President Trump’s statement is to say, “Okay you don’t like my plan, what is your plan to rebuild Gaza and what to do with the Gazan while the rebuilding is underway.”
So let’s see who has a better plan, including who pays for the rebuilding, where to put the Gazans in the meantime (if that means in tents in Gaza, say so) and what happens with Hamas.
Sipping Negronis under rocket fire sounds like adventure tourism at its best. Would the bellowing Hamas personnel be offered Negronis as well, or would that be culturally insensitive?
❝keep peace so tortuously at bay for almost 60 years❞? There has been war in Israel since 1948 (at least) which is 76 years.
I could not get beyond “That the “plan” would be a gross violation of international law is probably irrelevant to Trump. Netanyahu understands all this. He is a sociopath with a messiah complex; he genuinely believes his destiny is to save Western civilisation from the scourge of radical Islam.” The most recent hostage release clearly shows that Palestinian society is entirely constructed around a poisonous and murderous hatred of Jews and the desire to remove them from the face of the earth. Why removing them is a gross violation of the international law? If Trump and Bibi can do it, that would be a mitzvah to the civilized world.
“Let’s start with Jordan. When it became an independent state, in 1946, it did so as a largely Palestinian one . . .Today, one in five Jordanians is of Palestinian descent”
That portion of this paragraph makes no sence. If it was largly Palestinian 75 years ago and now only 1 in 5 Jordanians are Palestinians, WHAT HAPPENED? Did the IDF come in and ethnicly cleans Jordan.
Methinks that perhaps the author is using different definitions of what a Palestinian is within the paragraph.
BTW the Hashimite rulers are often thought of as being Imposed on the country by the British and are not regarded as representative by many within Jordan.
….