A few days ago, the European-Israeli Real Estate developer had a surprising invitation of an old friend, now in the White House. A friend wanted to ask him an informal but detailed questions: about banking regulations involving investments in Palestinian territories, access to energy network and possible connections with the main bay construction giants.
The developer, who requested not to be appointed to talk about private conversations, felt like “Déjà vu”: repeating similar discussions five and a half years ago, when US President Donald Trump was last in power and formulated his bad fateful plan “Peace to Prosperity” for Israel and Palestinians.
That plan 2020 – which proposed a huge grab of the country for Israel, a $ 50 billion renovation fund for Gaza and the Palestinian capital in the dusty, poor suburb of separated from East Jerusalem, a tilted wall – frozen after a complete boycott of Palestinians .
This time, Trump’s plans are even braver. Discovered on Tuesday at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who could barely suppress his joy, the most powerful man in the world expressed his long -term ambition of the Israeli far right: the expulsion of millions of Palestinians from their country.
“We will take over the place, we will develop it, we will create thousands of thousands of jobs and it will be something that the whole Middle East can be very proud,” Trump said.
As for Palestinians who call Gaza home, he added: “We should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts.
The previous edge idea that the impoverished and blocked enclave could become “Dubai in the Mediterranean”, if not Hamas, it seems that she found the audience in Trump’s inner circle.
Last year, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son -in -law and counselor in the Middle East during his first administration, told students at Harvard University that Palestinians from Gaza moved either to Egypt (“with a real diplomacy”) or temporarily in the Israeli desert Negeev would help Israel be winning his war with Hamas.
That, in turn, would help free the coastal land of Gaza, claimed. “The assets along the Gaza coast could be very valuable,” he said, adding that Hamas’s reign made it impossible to invest in education and innovation. “From Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to throw out people and clean them.”
In the history of Trump’s interventions in the Arab-Israeli conflict, which during his first term extended relatively peaceful for four years and now appeared during a poignant ceasefire, a clear pattern appeared.
Where Trump could have abolished long-standing American positions only from Edict, it was quickly done. In 2017, he recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and in 2019 accepted Israeli claims to Syrian golar heights, occupied since 1967. Israeli settlements on the occupied west coast – have long been held as obstacles to peace and violations of the International Law – were suddenly derived legally under US law.
But ideas that required work with Palestinians to build a consensus and force the Israelites to make concessions died on the vine. It is this genre of grandiose proposals, such as the “Peace Plan to Prosperity”, it seems that Trump has fallen on this week on this week.
This time, however, comes after the 16 months of the most fierce war in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Israeli frantic offensive on Gaza, which followed after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, left a large part of the lane in the ruins and launched a humanitarian crisis that was far from the end, even when the first phase of the tribute came into force last month.
Trump’s idea, based on his calls last month to “purify” Gaza, threatens to repeat what the Arabs call a nakb or disaster, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians escaped from their homes during the 1948 war, who was born to Israel. It is the outcome that the belligerent gazans are determined to avoid repeating.
“In the end, the greatest power of Palestinians is right to say no [to a bad peace deal]”, Said a person close to Palestinian leadership, who spoke with the President of Palestinian authorities, Mahmoud Abbas about Trump’s announcement of surprises this week.” We said not before Trump. We will say that again. “
This did not prevent Trump from surpassing aging and unpopular Palestinian leadership. During his first term, he reduced his help to Palestinians and closed their mission in Washington, punishing them for rejection of negotiations.
And after discovering his map in January 2020, the threat that Israel would unilaterally annex the huge parts of the West coast helped to encourage the United Arab Emirates to give up decades of official hostility with Israel and sign Abraham six months later. (Later it turned out that Trump also agreed to accelerate the sale of F-35 jet UAE as a sweetener.)
This opened the appearance that Israel could make peace with its Arab and bay neighbors without making peace with the Palestinians, ending the taboo for a long decade and undermining the cornerstone of the Saudi Arab King Abdullah of 2002 “Arab Peace Peace Initiative.”
Trump is now determined to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, who considers himself a leader of the Sunni Muslim world. At a press conference on Tuesday, he said that American download will facilitate the goal, which made him reconcile him in his first term.
Saudi Arabia did not immediately agree, saying in a statement for hours later that she had rejected any attempts to “move the Palestinian people from their country.”
Real estate developer who spoke with a person at the White House said that the questions asked to be bypassed by the immediate questions in Gaza and seems theoretical. “Let’s see,” he said. “It was a serious discussion. But it was serious [five years ago] too much. “
But he said he was surprised to see the discussions jumping from a possible future development in Gaza by foreign companies to Trump who suggested the expulsion of Palestinians. “It’s all politics, I’m not involved,” he said, distanced myself. “But this is Trump, all negotiations, high levels.”
Diana Butpu, Palestinian lawyer who collaborated with Abbas during the failed circle of negotiations in the early 2000s, suggested the same threat to the extremely destabilizing displacement of 2.3 million Palestinians to neighboring countries was the predecessor For the future, comic book.
“I think it is aimed at Arab states and tell the Arab countries:” To put pressure on Hamas to accept everything we want to see, “she said.” If you do not accept our conditions for what follows, then the alternative is that you will be ejected and sent to Sinai [in Egypt] IU Jordan. “
Indeed, Trump has clearly explained his expectations for Hamas-successful completion of the gradual issues of hostages for Palestinian prisoners, who are now in his third week.
“We would like to get all the hostages out, and if we don’t do it, it will simply make us a little more violent,” he said.
Additional reporting Malaik Kanaaneh Tapper in Beirut
