Trump's Gaza plan is not America First

President Trump’s most recent pronouncement about the Gaza Strip and the people who live there brings to mind Abraham Lincoln's definition of a hypocrite as a man who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy on grounds that he is an orphan.

Trump is correct in saying that the residents of Gaza are “living in hell.” But in the same breath he supports the policies and actions of the foreign state that has turned the Gaza Strip into hell. Trump is comfortable with the United States helping Israel to “murder” the Gaza Strip — and is increasing the supply of weapons to do so — while pretending to be merciful and compassionate toward the remaining people of Gaza who so far have survived the Israeli onslaught but are suffering immensely.

The hypocrisy only adds a further gloss to what already was morally indefensible support for ethnic cleansing. As debates about whether Israel is committing genocide get bogged down in semantics as a digression from substance, it is undeniable that Israel is conducting ethnic cleansing. The words as well as actions of senior Israeli officials make clear that removing Palestinians from Palestine is Israeli policy.

The United States formerly opposed ethnic cleansing. During the wars in the 1990s that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia, the United States, after some hesitation, decisively opposed Bosnian Serbs’ ethnic cleansing of Muslims, going so far as to lead a military intervention that ended the Serbs’ deadly campaign. But now the United States is not only condoning but actively supporting Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing.

The moral depravity of what is happening to the Palestinians is linked to multiple negative consequences for the United States to the extent Washington associates itself with the Israeli campaign. The consequences include lessened ability to achieve goals that require the cooperation of Arab states and increased motivation of terrorists to strike the United States.

Although these consequences had already existed due to longstanding U.S. toleration of Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinians, unwilling removal of the subjugated population from Palestine altogether would amplify the emotions involved and the related ill effects on the United States. Such removal evokes painful memories of the Nakba or “catastrophe” in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven from their homes in the war in 1948 that followed Israel’s declaration of independence.

Trump’s assertions that Palestinians would be “thrilled” to move out of Palestine and that other Arab states would be willing to accept them bear no resemblance to reality. The strong attachment of most Palestinians to their homeland despite the miserable conditions in Gaza has been demonstrated by the determination of internally displaced families to return to north Gaza during the current ceasefire despite awareness that many of their homes had been turned to rubble.

As for acceptance by other Arab states, when Trump last month suggested that Palestinians should go to Egypt or Jordan, both those states strongly rejected the idea. Both have compelling reasons for their rejection involving their own internal security and domestic politics, in addition to repugnance over the injustice to the Palestinians.

Jordan sees a fresh mass influx of Palestinians as an existential threat. It would upset an already fragile internal situation that involves a large Palestinian population — many of them refugees from the original Nakba — living under a Bedouin-led regime. Such a displacement would be contrary to the understandings Jordan thought it had reached when signing its peace treaty with Israel in 1994. The displacement would risk collapsing a regime the United States has counted on as a reliable friend in a critical part of the Middle East.

When Trump said that some “really nice places” could be built for ethnically-cleansed Palestinians, he made it sound like moving from a crummy apartment in Queens to an attractive condo in mid-town Manhattan. Absent from his remarks was any appreciation for a sense of home and of place, especially for Palestinians who are attached to a homeland where their families have lived for centuries.

Some six million Palestinians, mostly displaced by Israel’s earlier wars, already live in other Arab countries. The conditions in which most of them live are not “really nice.” Many are refugee camps, in name, as well as in reality, with all the squalor that implies. Even with a turnover that has gone through multiple generations since 1948, the sense of being a Palestinian and being a refugee displaced from one’s homeland has, for most of these people, not been extinguished.

Moreover, as demonstrated by the massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by an Israel-backed militia during an earlier Israeli invasion of Lebanon country in 1982, even displacement to a neighboring Arab country does not mean safety from Israeli aggression. Such thoughts are probably going through the minds of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who during the past year have been driven by Israel out of their homes only to be attacked again in what supposedly were “safe zones.”

Notwithstanding the unreality of Trump’s ideas about ethnically cleansing Palestinians out of Palestine, this does appear to constitute a major part of his administration’s policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has now voiced the idea more than once, and it is consistent with his practice, dating back to his first term, of going all-in with the policies of the Israeli government. Thus the ill consequences of such ethnic cleansing, as summarized above, need to be a major part of policy debate going forward.

The other part of Trump’s comments following his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — about the United States “taking over” the Gaza Strip — is no less outrageous but of a different character. Even some congressional Republicans — who so far have been in lock-step support, or at least tacit acquiescence with, almost everything else Trump has done so far this term — have expressed reservations about the idea. That alone should get Trump’s attention. So will the fact that such involvement runs counter to Trump’s own declared intention to reduce U.S. costs and commitments overseas, especially ones that involve a new war.

Thus the comment about taking over Gaza cannot yet be taken as administration policy. But for the record, such a policy would be a disastrous mistake. It would mean, besides taking on a huge reconstruction burden, a costly counterinsurgency in a militarily difficult area where Hamas is still alive and kicking. In some respects, such a military operation would be worse than the U.S. war in Iraq, because the United States could not even pose as a liberator opposing an oppressive regime but instead would be acting in concert with the oppressor.

Some have suggested that the “takeover” comment was a bargaining ploy — an extreme demand designed to get Hamas and Saudi Arabia to agree to something more moderate for the future of Gaza while giving Israel a reason to extend the current ceasefire. Possibly, but that theory gives Trump credit for more complex strategic thinking than he has displayed in the past. More likely, the comment reflected a combination of Trump’s focus on an individual idea that fascinated him, his instincts about what has served him politically or generated applause lines, and what the last person in the room said to him.

Trump’s vision for Gaza replays one that his son-in-law Jared Kushner voiced almost a year ago about how the “valuable waterfront property” in Gaza could be developed as long as the people could be removed first. As a fellow real estate developer, Trump can relate to that idea. The notion of a U.S. takeover also sounds consistent with the sort of imperialist designs that Trump already had regarding Greenland and Panama.

The fact that the comment came in a joint press conference after meeting with Netanyahu is significant. Some observers expected there would be friction and disagreement in the meeting, and behind closed doors there possibly was. But Trump’s default instinct on anything involving these issues is to continue to be seen going all-in with Israel. A beaming Netanyahu, who at the press conference piled compliments onto Trump, showed that this meeting met both leaders’ need for positive optics.

Trump’s declared doctrine may be “America First,” but on anything involving the Middle East his policy is Israel First. Or more accurately, it is a policy of deference to almost anything the government of Israel, with its right-wing extremists, wants, even if those wants run counter to the long-term peace and security of the Israeli people as much as the other people of the Middle East.