US President Donald Trump’s proposed solution of moving 2.3 million Gazans (though he said 1.8 million) to Egypt, Jordan, and other countries is as radically unlikely as his open desire to conquer or annex Greenland.
It just isn’t going to happen. So, the real question from the Israeli perspective is: What good or harm will come from this idea?
Before we jump into that idea, we will briefly review why it will not happen.
It is not that Egypt and Jordan do not like the idea of taking in Gazan Palestinians en masse and that they are against this because of some amorphous commitment to a Palestinian state that may or may not exist for a long time.
It is because the Egyptian and Jordanian regimes view large masses of Palestinians in their country as the end of their regimes, possibly leading to the Muslim Brotherhood taking over.
Put differently, they are terrified of Hamas and its cousins, the Muslim Brotherhood, and that these groups will kill them and their constituencies.
These fears are not theoretical.
Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization plotted to take over Jordan in the 1970s.
The Muslim Brotherhood, with assistance from Hamas, took over Egypt from 2012-2013 (the Brotherhood won one election but afterward acted in various theocratical and dictatorial ways.)
And while some Gazans might go, the vast majority won’t.
Some of it is Palestinian nationalism, some Hamas ideology, and some of it is a natural inclination by some people not to leave the land they were born, no matter how blown up it looks.
Trump’s standard leverage: sanctions and the threat of force – usually without any real intention of using force - will not bend Egypt, Jordan, or the majority of Gazans in areas where what is at stake for them in their minds is survival.
He might have a better chance of taking over Greenland, and given that the US isn’t really going to use military force there either – he must have realized he is seeking certain concessions rather than actually conquering glaciers in the artic or having the US take over a desert wasteland in the Middle East with no oil.
Back to whether the impact will be positive or negative – which leads to what the real concessions he wants are.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s real game is to get normalization with the Saudis without having to actually agree to a Palestinian state or without having to agree to such a state in anything other than the vaguest future terms – like he did when Trump suggested such a state in 2020.
Put differently, Netanyahu wants Trump to get the Saudis to drop the Palestinian Authority from the Gaza formula.
Trump surprisingly quiet on the topic of the Palestinian Authority
Interestingly enough, Trump did not say much of anything about the PA on Tuesday, positive or negative.
In some ways, this could be a win for Netanyahu. There is no way he would have visited Biden without getting a mouthful about the importance of the PA to any Gaza solution.
On the other hand, Trump did not nix the PA.
One could misinterpret from his comments about moving Gazans out of Gaza that he would never endorse the PA there.
Also, Trump indeed said the Saudis would not demand a Palestinian state for normalization (though they have made it clear repeatedly that they do.)
But this is Trump’s moment to cozy up with Israel. At another moment, he will cozy up with the Saudis.
The truth is, he does not really care what brings stability to the Middle East – he just wants to get credit and a Nobel Peace Prize for doing it.
So if and when he becomes convinced that the Saudis mean business about the PA, Netanyahu may suddenly find himself facing the pressures of “hell” coming down on him.
If and when Trump sees that he will not be able to build a viable governing alternative to Gaza without Saudi, Egyptian, UAE, and Jordanian support – Jerusalem will start taking the heat.
In Netanyahu’s ideal world, simply Trump tossing out the wild scenario of Gazans leaving Gaza, along with taking over Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal, would be enough to get the Saudis to lower the price he needs to pay the PA for someone other than Hamas taking Gaza off Israel’s hands and for normalization with Riyadh.
Trump has gotten some sizable concessions from Mexico and Canada simply by threatening them with crazy seeming tariffs, and he and Netanyahu nabbed normalization with the UAE in 2020 partially due to threats of Israel annexing the West Bank.
But whether he can pull the same thing off with the most influential Sunni power in the Middle East is a far different question.