US President Donald Trump’s whirlwind start to his second term has swept Israel into yet another cyclone of condemnation. It was stunning to see how quickly the world blamed Israel for Trump’s pronouncement about emptying Gaza to redevelop it. Outsiders claiming they know what Trump intended should climb the “big beautiful” wall he promised to build on the Mexican border in 2016 – but didn’t.
Historically, presidents often fail to fulfill central campaign vows, let alone improvisational riffs. Everyone “knew” Barack Obama would shut down Guantanamo Bay’s terrorist detention facilities.
When he was elected in 2008, lawyers defending the terrorists formed a conga line and chanted “Hey, Hey goodbye” to Guantanamo and George W. Bush. On his second day as president, Obama issued an executive order shutting it down within a year. Sixteen years later, some terrorists remain in Guantanamo.
As kids we learned that when a big wave comes, if it hits you hard, it could sweep you away, but if you ride it, you can go far. Rather than going hysterical whenever Trump speaks, the pro-Israel community should try shaping the debate Trump’s press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched.
In 98 words, Trump’s desire to “do something different” exposed more Palestinian hypocrisy and the international community’s sclerotic approach to the conflict.
As soon as Trump suggested they leave, Gazans forgot their claims to Israeli land and bonded with Gaza as their enduring homeland. And, predictably, the world panicked that America was abandoning the “two-state solution” everyone keeps yapping about without acknowledging how such thinking caused October 7.
On Facebook, the human rights activist (and my Never Alone coauthor) Natan Sharansky mocked the world’s outrage. “Many people see the ‘out of the box thinking’ of Trump about changing the future of Gaza by resettling the Gazans, improving their life conditions, and rebuilding Gaza – as something absolutely unrealistic and out of touch with the reality of the Middle East,” he chided.
“With all my doubts and fears, I think this ‘crazy’ idea is much less crazy than the idea of the Oslo Accords – if we bring [the] ruthless dictator Arafat from Tunis to Ramallah and give him enough land, money, and weapons, without the Supreme Court, human rights organizations, and free press, he will defeat Hamas and live with us in peace and security (in the words of our prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres); or the idea of the disengagement – we will leave Gaza, build the fence between us,” and if there is even “one shot from their side, we will destroy them, and the world will be fully on our side. (I quote prime minister Ariel Sharon from our conversations).”
Challenges highlighted by Trump's diplomatic tsunami
Trump’s diplomatic tsunami highlights three overlooked challenges. First, Gaza is now a toxic waste site. The EPA estimates it will take weeks to clean the 3,100 properties destroyed in the Pacific Palisades, which needs an “unprecedented lithium-ion battery cleanup,” NBC Los Angeles reports. Few were thinking about how to detox Gaza – literally and ideologically – until Trump spoke.
Moreover, rather than joking about “Gaz-a-Largo,” we need serious conversations about Hamas’s tunnels – as part of a broader redrawing of the Gaza map to include a permanent buffer zone along Israel’s border which no Gazan should dare enter.
Unless we want to see the October 7 replay Hamas keeps promising, why invest even one dollar in rebuilding until its 400 miles (640 km.) worth of tunnels are blocked or destroyed? Having been attacked, then having counterattacked successfully, Israel has earned the right to ask how to guarantee that, in reconstructing Gaza, Palestinians don’t recreate their threat to Israel.
This is the greatest debate Trump’s provocation should trigger. Gaza needs to be rehabilitated. How that is done as Hamas continues to seek Israel’s destruction, and two million people remain there, is a logistical, conceptual, diplomatic, and political mystery.
But Israel’s one defining post-October 7 lesson must be a vow never to return to the assumptions of October 6. Rather than shrieking every time Trump speaks, it’s worth redirecting his often off-the-wall ideas into out-of-the-box conversations that will outdo the status quo.
ALAS, INSTEAD of riding this Trumpian wave to a potentially better outcome for all, the internal Israeli anguish brigade automatically felt guilty that we were responsible for Trump’s transfer idea.
Meanwhile, the Bash Israel Firsters kept trying to blame Israel for anything bad that happens. Before I spoke at the University of Ottawa on February 10 as part of my “To Resist the Academic Intifada” book tour, anti-Israel forces tried blocking my speech. “Gil Troy is not welcome on our campus,” they declared.
Their charge? That I am an “ethnic cleanser” who “endorsed Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza.”
This claim imputed to me a prophetic power I didn’t know I had. The article the anti-Israel haters referenced said nothing about Trump’s Gaza plan, because I filed it on February 3. Trump made his remarks the next day, February 4.
This farce is a sad indicator of what passes for academic debate today – and what’s happening in politics today, too. Indignation is addictive, but it’s also blinding and binding. Watching people use their hatred for Trump, for Israel, or for any opponents, to avoid growing, being self-critical, brainstorming, is depressing.
Big problems don’t just require big solutions. They require great leaps of creativity, of hope, and of faith in our fellow citizens that, together, we can avoid yesterday’s mistakes and paralysis to build a better tomorrow.
The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His latest book, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream, was just published.