Mar-a-Gaza and the Art of the Deal

Bloviation or 5-dimensional chess? You tell me.

Photo by khalid kwaik on Unsplash

The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it. . . Everybody I have spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent in a really magnificent area that nobody would know. . . . And I don’t want to be cute. I don’t want to be a wise guy. But the Riviera of the Middle East, this could be something that could be so. . . magnificent.

The Palestinians, people like Chuck Schumer, would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region. . . . The U.S., working with great development teams from all over the world, would slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth.

If we could build them through massive amounts of money—supplied by other people, very rich nations, and they’re willing to supply it—if we can build something for them in one of the countries—and it could be Jordan, and it could be Egypt, it could be other countries—and you could build four or five or six areas. . . you build really good quality housing, like a beautiful town, like someplace where they can live and not die. - Donald J. Trump

One of the many things that Trump has “flooded the zone” with in his first few weeks is his seemingly off-the-wall statements about Gaza. During a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Tuesday, Trump stated that he would back the resettlement of Palestinians into Egypt and Jordan and convert the Gaza Strip into a destination vacation resort.

"The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip. We'll own it ... We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal ... the Riviera of the Middle East."

During a subsequent press conference on Friday, he doubled down on his prior remarks, asserting that Gaza will be given to us by Israel and that his proposal to take responsibility for the Gaza Strip, currently under Hamas control, and resettle its population elsewhere has been very well received.

All it takes is a brief perusal of the usual suspects in the media to discern that this has almost universally been panned as unhelpful crazy talk.

Trump's Gaza comments hand jihadist terrorists a 'rallying cry,' experts say.

This kind of language is only is going to galvanize groups that want to kill Americans.

I think every CIA station chief in the Middle East woke up this morning with a migraine headache because there’s a potential for a generational counterterrorism nightmare here.

Bill Maher, the always iconoclastic host of Real Time, is virtually the only public figure with a different perspective, supporting the idea that the war-torn territory "could be something else" in the future.

Now I don’t know whether this is all crazy talk from a blowhard or 5D chess from a master. It’s complicated. And a resort? Beirut, Lebanon, after all, used to be exactly what Trump is talking about now. How’d that work out?

However, given that this plan originates from the President of the United States, it's intriguing and warrants at least some consideration. I think that if you want to try and understand where Trump is coming from with this, as opposed to just assuming that he’s a buffoon, you need to evaluate this in the context of his book, The Art of the Deal, which serves as sort of a roadmap to all things Trump.

Like an aggressive lawyer, Trump approaches negotiations by placing his initial position significantly on his side of what he wants. If Trump's initial position aligns with 80 percent of what he wants, and he ends up only dividing the difference, he wins big. I think that’s a lot of what’s in play here.

There’s something else in play here as well that potentially indicates an acute awareness of the situation by Trump. I think that Trump feels the same way about Hamas as I do, which is to say that neither of us are big fans. I think that he’s as disgusted with the pro-Palestinian protests here by woke, geopolitical ignoramuses as many. And I think that he’s watched the recent spectacle of sick and emaciated Israeli hostages released by Hamas being made to walk to freedom in front of jeering crowds with the same level of disgust shared by a lot of us.

So how to illuminate the hypocrisy demonstrated by many defenders of Hamas in a manner unmistakable even to the most woke and clueless? By name-checking other countries in the region as potential destinations for resettlement of refugees from Gaza and getting the wealthy host countries to help pay for it. That’s genius, because not one state in the region wants refugees from Gaza on even a temporary basis. Indeed, when Israel went into Gaza shortly after October 7 to go after Hamas, surrounding Arab states closed their borders specifically to keep Gazans from fleeing into their countries.

Everyone who understands the dynamics in Gaza knows that Hamas has overwhelming support from the citizens of Gaza. Everyone knows that most Gazans believe that Israel does not have a right to exist, and that from the river to the sea is a lot more than merely a quaint description of the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea—it’s a rallying cry for the eradication of Israel and it’s Jewish population. The last thing that any relatively stable Arab country wants is to allow a population rife with terrorists to emigrate from Gaza into their country. That’s just bound to work out well for them.

I think that Trump and the people around him probably get all of this. And they just “pants” all of Gaza’s neighbors and defenders of Hamas on college campuses everywhere with this scheme. If so, it’s a pretty slick political move.

So, I don’t know. Bloviation or 5-dimensional chess? You tell me.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com