“Mad” is how one Middle East source reacted to US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a “takeover” of Gaza. So why would someone well versed in Trumpian tactics and the nuance of Middle East diplomacy give such an undiplomatic assessment?
Simply put, the US president’s apparent policy flip on Gaza – in the views of most Middle East leaders – is in no one’s best interests. Not theirs, not the Palestinians’ – not even Trump’s.
On the worst interpretation, Trump’s radical departure from decades of US foreign policy of supporting the potential establishment of a Palestinian state, that includes Gaza, signals what so many in the Middle East feared, that Israel’s war on Hamas since the group’s October 7, 2023, attack was a front to force Gaza’s 2.1 million Palestinians from their homes permanently.
Saudi Arabia, which as the region’s dominant diplomatic center, as well as spiritual home to the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims – many of whom are enraged by Israel’s actions – has perhaps the most skin in the game. And it was first to respond, within hours.
“The foreign ministry affirms that Saudi Arabia’s position on the establishment of a Palestinian state is firm and unwavering,” the ministry said in a statement. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) “clearly and unequivocally reaffirmed this stance,” it added.
To understand all this, try to think like MBS. He is the ultimate power in his land and brooks no political dissent. Yet, Hamas, which doesn’t exist in Saudi Arabia, is an existential threat to him. It represents political Islam, an anathema for every Muslim autocrat which, given the chance would topple MBS and his fellow Gulf royals in a heartbeat. So he has a vested interest in Hamas’ obliteration.
On the flip side, Israel’s bone-smashing, concrete-crushing war in Gaza has re-awoken Saudi citizens’ dormant pro-Palestinian sentiment. A mindful MBS knows there’d be popular anger if Gazans were expelled.
Does MBS cherish peace in the Middle East, including normalization with Israel? Yes. It’s good for business, fattens his outsized bank balance, and the trickledown keeps his citizens happy.
But what’s also good for his bank balance, beyond oil priced above $80 a barrel, is US investment.
This helps to explain why MBS has not openly and directly criticized Trump’s new Gaza thinking, aside from restating the need for a Palestinian state because he doesn’t want to sour their great relationship.
He’s Trump’s go-to guy in the Gulf. He wants deals with Trump on security and weapons. Trump wants MBS’s investments in the US and for him to normalize relations with Israel.
And that circles back to another of MBS’s headaches, as custodian of Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, he’s on the hook to be seen to be doing the right thing by the Palestinians.
Jordan and Egypt’s dilemma
By comparison the two countries named by Trump to receive Gazans, Jordan and Egypt, are really between a rock and hard place.
They depend on US money to exist.
Both had a massive influx of Gazans during Israel’s 1948 and 1967 wars, absorbing millions of frustrated Palestinians. Both now say a massive influx of Gazans would further destabilize them.
The regional view until now has been to push back hard on the looming Trumpian pressure. Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi says a displacement of Gazans “can never be tolerated or allowed because of its impact on Egyptian national security.”
Jordan’s King Abdullah meanwhile insists we “need to ensure Palestinians remain on their land,” with regional diplomats pointing to the joy of Gazans going home to piles of rubble. That’s because it’s their home, they say.
The Jordanian king, who comes from a durable dynasty devoted to staying on the right side of America, is due in Washington D.C. later this month, and Egypt’s President Sisi, who Trump once described as his “favorite dictator” is expected to visit soon too.
To fully understand what’s at stake, remember that Egypt’s Sisi locked up Hamas’ progenitor, the Muslim Brotherhood, a decade ago – soon after it won elections.
Egypt is a regional lynchpin containing a potential powder keg of radical sentiment that if detonated would ricochet around the region, puncturing European and US interests. This is why Sisi is still in power and why the West turned a blind eye to his brutal post-Arab Spring power grab. The West, and particularly the United States, need Sisi as they do King Abdullah.
A failed Jordan would leave a major power vacuum, effectively opening the door to Iran’s regional proxies, putting them right at Israel’s border.
When he was speaking to the US Congress last summer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his fight against Hamas had to be successful, otherwise “the ability of all democracies to fight terrorism will be imperiled.”
That is perhaps, even by Netanyahu’s standards, a little hyperbolic, with Trump’s pronouncement seeming to fly in the face of that logic: Hamas if expelled would still be in striking distance of Israel.
Trump also seems to have challenged another of Netanyahu’s commitments. In July the Israeli prime minister said: “My vision for that day is of a demilitarized and deradicalized Gaza. Israel does not seek to resettle Gaza.” That’s not what Trump is saying now.
And only a few months earlier Netanyahu had lauded another vision for Gaza, to turn it into a massive free-trade zone with a rail link to Saudi Arabia’s futuristic dream city, Neom.
Here is an idea that neatly dovetails with MBS’s hopes for peace in the Middle East, but one that is equally impossible without normalization – and an independent Palestinian state.
It’s unclear if the US president has trumped Netanyahu’s vision or is playing some part in forcing it through. Whatever Trump’s tough-talking intent is, by undercurrent or opportunism, he has made the previously unthinkable part of the mainstream conversation. A forced expulsion on a scale not witnessed in decades. And one that would be a war crime.