Trump's Plan for a Palestine Without Palestinians
Arab support would guarantee continuing jihad
By: Salman Rafi Sheikh
US President Donald Trump’s plan to cleanse Gaza of the people of Palestine, whose birthright to the land goes back millennia, is hardly unexpected. While within Israel the far right is jubilant, the Arab world has joined Palestinians including Hamas in a rare show of unity to reject the plan, most explicitly in a six-nation Arab ministerial meeting held in Cairo at Egypt’s request on February 1.
Trump met today with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu to outline a plan to move US interests into Gaza to redevelop it as an international Mediterranean city – always the real estate developer – with the Palestinians relocated to Egypt and Jordan. That plan in fact demonstrates that, while there might be a ceasefire in place, the fire is likely far from actually ceasing. In fact, new fires might erupt sooner than later if this plan is put into motion.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (and Qatar) face the prospect of major internal disturbances if they extend support to Trump’s plans or even grant unspoken support. All of these states are simultaneously vulnerable to Islamist jihadi forces. Their collective abandonment of Palestine would guarantee favorable conditions for jihadists to wage their wars on them. Therefore, if they accept Trump’s plan, they risk many new forms of conflict within their borders and throughout the region. The recent victory of Islamists in Syria is a powerful indication of what could happen.
The far-right Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, described Trump’s plan as “excellent,” confirming his active collaboration with Netanyahu to execute it. “Encouraging migration is the only solution that will achieve peace and security, and alleviate the suffering of Gaza’s residents in the long term,” Smotrich said during a meeting of the parliamentary bloc of his Religious Zionism Party. Trump is thus falling to the Zionist dream. Smotrich had made clear in a statement as early as December 2023 that "What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration," adding that “If in Gaza there will be 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs and not two million, the entire conversation on 'the day after' will look different." More recently, he also called for ignoring the “weak opposition from Egypt and Jordan.”
That was true until a week ago as powerful Arab states kept their silence and weighed their positions carefully. However, in a letter sent to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the five Arab foreign ministers of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE opposed plans to force the people of Gaza out of Gaza. Their joint statement said that “We affirm our rejection of [any attempts] to compromise Palestinians’ unalienable rights, whether through settlement activities, or evictions or annex of land or through vacating the land from its owners … in any form or under any circumstances or justifications.”
Can Arab states resist?
Many of these Arab states are in a difficult position to actually offer stronger opposition. Jordan, for instance, is significantly dependent upon the US for its survival. After Israel, it is the second largest recipient of US aid in the region, receiving almost US$1.7 billion annually. Egypt is the third largest, receiving almost US$1.5 billion. Trump named them as two possible destinations for the people of Gaza because they can easily be extorted into submission.
Saudi Arabia, for the past several months, has been trying to negotiate a deal with the US including Saudi recognition of Israel in exchange for a defense pact with the US, including a provision for Saudia to develop its civilian nuclear program. With Trump now in power, Saudi elites led by Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) certainly see in him a much more workable US president than Joe Biden, who blamed MBS for killing Jamal Khashoggi and wanted to turn Saudia into a “pariah” state before backing off in a burst of realpolitik. But with Trump pushing for ethnically cleansing Gaza, it means the Saudis now face concerted pressure for compromising their support for the two-state solution, which is also one of the key preconditions for Saudi recognition of Israel within the framework of Abraham Accords.
Last August, MBS told US officials that he faces threats to his life over the US push for a deal with Israel. Although many saw in this statement an attempt to increase his bargaining power vis-à-vis the US, there is also little denying the presence of hardliners within the Saudi, Emirati, and Qatari families. The Saudi sultan in particular faces revolt from within his family – not only because his father elevated him at the expense of those in line of succession but also because of his so-called ‘soft’ approach towards Israel. Reports have indicated from the start that MBS’s rise to power was very expensive to many within his family in terms of their relative political status. He fears activating familial political fault lines within the family by agreeing to Trump’s plans.
Oil as a bargaining chip?
The Arab states’ biggest weapon is oil. Could they use it as an instrument of foreign policy to build counterpressure on the US? The threat to impose an oil embargo wrought economic havoc in the West in 1973 when the then-eight members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) brought the global economy to a stop with a temporary ban on oil exports from Arab countries to the United States and other countries that supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War.
But this is not 1973. Political elites in the present-day Arab world are too deeply integrated with the West to allow for such a maneuver. Most ruling families not only have investments in Europe but also expensive possessions in the form of real estate, infrastructure, technology and energy companies, driven by attractive valuations and a need to diversify their portfolios. Qatar owns Harrods, a luxury store in Central London, and has stakes in Heathrow Airport. Saudis, on the other hand, have invested billions in football leagues. Its Public Investment Fund owns equities in Amazon, Walmart, Uber Technologies, Live Nation Entertainment, Ermenegildo Zegna NV, and options contracts for PayPal, Meta Platform, Microsoft, Advanced Micro Devices, and Nvidia. In a tit-for-tat game, the West could, theoretically speaking, seize these interests, just as the West did with Russia by freezing its assets and using them to help Ukraine.
What the Arab states can still do is exploit the existing anti-US sentiments across the world, including in China and Russia, both of which are presenting unprecedented challenges to the US for global primacy. Iran, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates are BRICS members and Saudi Arabia’s membership is pending, representing a swing away from western diplomacy
Trump’s actions involving tariff imposition even on US allies and his demands from NATO members to increase their defense spending to 5 percent of their GDP are destabilizing the transatlantic alliance. If these states can mobilize international political opinion and maintain internal unity – something that is thus far visible in the letter they wrote to the US Secretary of State – it might push the Trump administration onto the back foot. Their failure to do so would result in the Middle East descending into more conflict in the months and years to come.
Dr Salman Rafi Sheikh is an assistant professor of politics at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan. He is a long-time contributor on international affairs to Asia Sentinel.
Trump’s plan for Palestinians and their ancient homeland Palestine shows only his white (or is it orange?) supremacist arrogance, ignorance, indifference and rank stupidity. Just about everything he has said in the past just reeks of his inherent rich man idiocy.
You are right about Jordan and Egypt being easily pliable to Trump’s insidious power player over this issue. They are two of the weakest states in the Middle East given they are dependence on American financial largesse just to keep their heads above water. But they are in fact forever drowning in US debt, not grace. Because the US under Trump — as under recent US presidents since arguably Barack Obama. They will easily succumb unless Jordanians and Egyptians rise against their despotic leaders.
I feel the same way about the other Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia under the unsavory despot and brutal dictator Muhammad bin Salman. Just as the US goes to Riyadh and other OPEC states to beg for low oil prices that will badly wound the American economy, so Salman goes to DC begging for US arms and bases. It’s keeness to forge diplomatic relations with Israel is betrayal of Palestinian people and support for murderous Zionist extremists who control the Netanyahu regime, and who are corrupt repugnant Netanyahu’s puppet-masters.
But NATO states will never be able to “inspire” vehement global condemnation against the Trump plan they have not in the past, mostly because maintaining a cordial TransAtlantic Alliance for the sake of access to the US market for their exports and idependence on US technologies, capital and US security protection. Besides, western European economies are in serious structural decline. Europe is persistently weak at the knees.
The chalkenge needs to come firectly from all decent-minded people sick and tired of the US’s rank hypocrisy, overt racism and xenophobia, and imperialism. Is bullying antics are not different from China’s or Russia’s. And it must come from all Muslims everywhere. When the likes of Saudi Arabia’s MBS and his cabsl of rent-seekers sell out to Trump so hideously shamelessly, displaying their inherent immorality, ordinary Muslims must take the lead and condemn Trump for what he is — dumb white corrupt criminal and first-rate twat.