Trump's Gaza Gambit
by Portfolio Armor
Wednesday, Feb 05, 2025 - 21:19
Well That Didn't Seem To Make Anyone Happy
President Trump's statement yesterday that America would "own" Gaza didn't seem to make anyone happy, including the man standing next to him at the time, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
OK this is interesting. Bibi seems none too pleased as Trump talks about the US "owning" Gaza. I think he's negotiating against Netenyahu in real time.
Hard to know if this is earnest, or a negotiating tactic, or some other third thing…
Whatever the case, Trump’s greatest quality is a willingness to flip the board over, reset the pieces, and restart the game again under completely new rules.
Never seen anything like it.
All of the unspoken stuff that constrains what can be done, under Trump, simply becomes no longer true.
He has the uncanny ability to just cut right through all of it and make new outcomes possible.
It’s a kind of magic.
What Trump's Gambit Gets Right
What Trump gets right intuitively, is that it makes no sense to return to the status quo ante. This is something we pointed out on October 7th, 2023 ("A Moment Of Clarity In The Mideast"):
The Insanity Of The Status Quo
Under the Oslo Accords, both the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank are considered to be the territory of the Palestinian Authority, but Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2007.
In the West Bank, although the peace process has been stalled for years, the old land-for-peace formula still at least has a pulse; in Gaza, Israel forcibly removed the last of its settlers in 2005. Some of those settlers ran high-tech greenhouses they used to profitably sell produce internationally. A group of American Jews, including former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, bought the greenhouses from the settlers and donated them to the Palestinians in Gaza. They were prompted looted.
For the last 16 years there's been no hope of peace between Israel and Gaza, where 2.3 million Palestinians are boxed into a densely populated strip with Israel on two sides, Egypt on one, and the Mediterranean on the other.
After discussing who benefited from the status quo, we concluded that rather than bomb and invade Gaza (as Israel ended up doing for the next 15 months),
The smarter approach for Israel would be to issue an eviction notice to Gaza, giving the rest of the world ample to time to welcome the Gazans to their countries. The international community would of course object, but there is historical precedent for this. After the war that followed the establishment of Israel in 1948-1949, hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled from Muslim countries, while similar numbers of Arabs were expelled from what became Israel. Around the same time, millions of ethnic Germans were expelled from parts of Europe back to Germany, in the wake of World War II (The expelled Germans fared much worse than the Jews and Palestinians, with hundreds of thousands of them being killed in the process).
There would be no need for unnecessary deaths in this case, if international supporters of Gaza agree. There will be some Gazan holdouts, no doubt, but Israel was able to humanely remove its own recalcitrant settlers from Gaza; perhaps Egyptians or other fellow Arabs could do the same with Palestinians in Gaza.
There will certainly be a lot more death if the status quo of keeping millions of mutual enemies in close proximity continues.
Why Should The Palestinians Have To Leave Gaza?
Some of the loudest voices now saying the Palestinians shouldn't have to leave Gaza were calling it an "open air prison" before the October 7th attack. That seemed a bit histrionic at the time,
But if one were to concede it was a prison, why would these people want Palestinians to remain prisoners there? Some will respond by asking why the Israelis shouldn't have to relocate instead. The answer is that getting the Israelis to leave the Mideast was the objective of several Arab countries for the first quarter century of Israel's existence, and then the objective of multiple Palestinian militant groups for decades more, culminating in the October 7th attack. It didn't work.
Even if a handful of diehards want to continue to fighting Israel, why shouldn't the rest of Gaza's residents get a fresh start somewhere else, instead of living through an endless cycle of attacks and reprisals?
Even if a handful of diehards want to continue to fighting Israel, why shouldn't the rest of Gaza's residents get a fresh start somewhere else, instead of living through an endless cycle of attacks and reprisals?
What Trump's Gambit Gets Wrong
No one really wants America administering Gaza--especially Americans. This is Trump rhetorically flipping over the chess board, as Lomez suggested above. Let's look ahead to a possible endgame.
A Win-Win Endgame
The best-case scenario for Gaza would be for it to be peaceful, prosperous, and a source of pride for Palestinians--A second Dubai on the Mediterranean.
Dubai (Nextvoyage/Pexels)
How do we get there from here? Like this:
How do we get there from here? Like this:
- Mahmoud Abbas, now in the 19th year of his 4-year term as President of the Palestine Authority, asks Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Ruler of Dubai, Vice President, and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, to make Gaza a protectorate of Dubai. Gaza will fly the Palestinian flag, and Abbas will be its head of state, but Sheikh Mohammed's men will actually govern Gaza. The Israelis will be okay with this, because the United Arab Emirates signed a peace treaty with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords.
- Trump's Mideast envoy (and fellow real estate developer) Steve Witkoff coordinates the launch of a real estate investment trust (REIT) with the sovereign wealth funds of Dubai and the Saudis. The REIT could be called The Gaza Redevelopment Trust. The Palestine Authority gets an equity stake in it.
- Egypt gets an equity stake in the REIT too, in return for temporarily housing the Gazans in refugee camps in Sinai.
- The United States gets an equity stake too.
- The Gazans go to Sinai.
- The Gaza Redevelopment Trust goes public in a giant IPO, with The Trump Organization committed to supervise/license local developers. The Israeli government buys into the IPO.
- Gaza gets redeveloped as a second Dubai. Abbas and other senior Palestine Authority figures get luxury condos in Trump Tower Gaza, as do senior Egyptian government officials.
- Equity holders in the REIT all profit, including the Gazans, via the Palestine Authority, which uses some of its profits to buy land for and develop a permanent home for the Gazans somewhere on the Egyptian or Saudi coast.
Everyone in the region profits from the new Gaza, and has a stake in making sure it stays peaceful and prosperous. And America makes a little profit from the deal too.
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kt comments:
Above 8 points are sheer bullsh*t. The one MIGHTY significant thorn in any silly wish for a smooth lucrative business venture is religion, where Israeli ultra religious wants Judea & Samaria (including and especially the West Bank) for their own, comes what may.
And on the other side, nearly 80 years of brutal Jewish-Israeli invasive oppression suffered by the Palestinians will not make this business plan appeal to the Arabs in the least, not even a wee iota.
Gaza has been an open air prison only because of flabbergastingly cruel Israeli oppression and domination - thus the Palestinians' solution would be to rid themselves of their bete noire.
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