Trump's Gaza plan threatens Israel

(JNS) — Say what you will about former President Joe Biden’s policies, but he was the most knowledgeable U.S. president on the Middle East. Donald Trump, on the other hand, may be among the least informed. Ironically, he is now proposing the one move Biden should have made after the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023—relocating Gaza’s civilians to Egypt and Jordan—that could have saved thousands of Palestinian lives and averted the humanitarian issues.

The problem? Trump’s plan is too late, and if implemented now, it could pose a grave threat to Israel’s security.

Trump has no idea what to do about the Palestinian issue. He says he doesn’t care if it’s one state, two states or whatever. It’s doubtful he read his own peace proposal that laid out a roadmap for the establishment of a Palestinian state with guardrails for Israeli security. That plan was dead on arrival in his first term; Israel objected to Palestinian independence, and the Palestinians rejected its size and the conditions for its creation. Trump has not expressed a commitment to resurrecting that plan. Instead, he wants to claim that his policies have ended fighting in the Middle East while side-stepping the Palestinian issue.

His latest idea now appears to be only tangentially related to peace. He says he wants to move the Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip to facilitate its reconstruction. Even assuming that the ceasefire holds (which is unlikely given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to resume fighting), moving civilians now won’t undo the devastation or improve Israel’s global image. Worse, instead of allowing Palestinians to choose where to go or housing them in isolated Sinai encampments to avoid destabilizing Egypt, Trump’s plan would dump hundreds of thousands of people into the heart of Egypt and Jordan. This reckless move threatens two critical peace partners and could create instability that short-sighted supporters of Gaza’s depopulation fail to appreciate.

Arab governments, backing Jordan and Egypt, immediately rejected the proposal. They insist that this is because of their fealty to the Palestinian cause, but what concerns them most is their knowledge that wherever Palestinians settle, they cause trouble for the regimes. Does anyone remember when Kuwait expelled 300,000 for supporting Saddam Hussein?)

Cairo convinced Biden to agree in the first weeks of the war to keep the Palestinians in the coastal enclave because Egypt President Abdul Fattah el-Sisi knows that Gazans (contrary to all the claims of their innocence) support Hamas, which is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization that has sought to impose an Iranian-style theocracy in Egypt for more than a century. Besides their ideology, these Palestinian civilians would be a problem because they would arrive as destitute refugees Egypt could not afford to support. Peace with Egypt was the game-changer for Israeli security, as it took the largest and most powerful Arab country out of the conflict. The last thing Israel wants is the introduction of a potential threat to the regime.

Some Israelis on the right are more excited about the idea of transferring Palestinians to Jordan because it is consistent with their long-standing argument that “Jordan is Palestine,” as well as obviates the need for negotiations over Judea and Samaria. Rather than a solution, however, it is far more dangerous to Israel than granting West Bank Palestinians independence.

First, introducing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees would pose an even greater threat to the stability of Jordan than to Egypt, where even several hundred thousand Palestinians would be a tiny percentage of the total population of 113 million. Palestinians already constitute a majority—some estimate as high as 70 percent—of Jordan’s population of 11 million. Historically, Jordan was part of the Palestinian territory under British control; however, King Abdullah is determined to ensure that it remains a Hashemite kingdom under his family’s dynastic rule. He was 8 years old when the PLO attempted to overthrow his father during Black September in 1970 and has no desire to tempt fate. Interestingly, Palestinians don’t recognize their potential in Jordan or fear failure, so they also object to Trump’s plan.

Having a peace treaty with Jordan is vital to Israel’s security. One reason I’ve always been baffled by the enthusiasm for making Jordan the Palestinian state is the failure to recognize how much more threatening that would be than a tiny state in the West Bank. Should a state be established in the West Bank, it would be surrounded by Israel, which would allow the IDF freedom of action and the ability to control what moves in and out of the entity.

By contrast, Palestinians controlling Jordan would have immediate and unrestricted access to a highly trained, U.S.-armed military. It could forge alliances with Israel’s enemies. Even without the influx of Palestinians, Jordan has a problem with Muslim extremists. Importing Hamas supporters could facilitate their takeover. Jordan might ally with the new Syrian regime, and Iran and Hamas would have a strategic position to launch attacks against Israel from a much larger and more powerful base. Moving Gazans also does nothing to relieve pressure on Israel to “end the occupation” unless Israel allows Jordan to annex parts of the West Bank so that it truly becomes the Palestinian state. This would create a new and more dangerous situation for Israel.

Instead of pressuring Egypt and Jordan to take in refugees—risking their stability and Israel’s security—Trump should prioritize strengthening Israel’s alliances with its peace partners. He must allow Israel to destroy Hamas and ensure that it is replaced with a regime that will offer Gazans the freedoms they have been denied and Israel the security it requires.