President Trump said the following during an Air Force One press gaggle the other day about Gaza: “People are dying there, and everything is demolished. We need to clean that place out.” He then continued later and expanded on his thought: “When you look at the Gaza Strip, it’s been hell for so many years. There have been various civilizations on that strip. It didn’t start here. It started thousands of years before, and there’s always been violence associated with it. You could get people living in areas that are a lot safer and maybe a lot better and maybe a lot more comfortable.”
President Trump has already floated the idea to Egypt and Jordan as well as Albania and Indonesia. As expected, none of the countries floated by President Trump has agreed to take the nearly 2 million Arabs that have made Gaza their home since the 1950s when the Egyptian leadership originally sent most of them there.
Despite the expected pushback by Egypt and Jordan, Trump has insisted that at the end of the day, those two countries will accept the Gazans. After all, Trump can just pull security and financial assistance to both places and their regimes would fall in an instant and both el-Sisi and Abdullah know this. The fact is, they also know that by “cleaning Gaza out” the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews over the Land of Israel ends. True, there are more Arabs in Judea and Samaria, but those Arabs also can relocate to better pastures as well – like to Jordan or Saudi Arabia.
Just by bringing up relocation as a viable option in solving the historic conflict, the president has made it go mainstream - even amongst the elite in Israel. In a briefing delivered today to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said: “The Gazans can exit through the Rafah Crossing into Egypt, but only one way and they can not return to Gaza. The ISA, using cameras, will closely monitor those who cross the Rafah Crossing into Egypt.” Before Trump’s comments about relocating Gazans, it would have been unthinkable for anyone in a position of power outside the rightwing to mention anything about Gazan Arabs moving out for good.
Statements Trump makes are never trivial. The president knew Egypt and Jordan would say no, but by suggesting relocation as a real possibility Trump exposed the Arab neighbors of Israel as hypocrites – especially when Europe has been flooded by Arab refugees from Syria. He is wondering why Egypt and Jordan cannot merely reciprocate for their own “brethren.”
While it’s true the Arab countries do not want the Gazans, my bet is on President Trump to make it happen. Like I wrote in my article: Is This Trump’s Big Solution For Gaza, Trump sees the world through the eyes of ra eal estate developer and given the fact that the Gazans have repeatedly destroyed what he believes is a lucrative piece of real estate he wants others to take a crack at it – namely his partners in the Gulf.
Once again, President Trump is merely floating the solution that deep down most rational people already know is true - he is just not afraid to say it.