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A Palestinian woman in northern Gaza collects laundry outside her shelter, set up near the rubble of her house, in February. (Mahmoud Issa/Reuters)
Toward the end of last month, President Donald Trumpposted a video on social media that shocked the world. The brief AI-generated clip depicted the creation of what the president himself had described as the “Riviera of the Middle East” — an alternate reality where the Gaza Strip was cleared not just of its rubble and debris but its Palestinian inhabitants, and replaced by gleaming skyscrapers, luxury shopping malls, tourist-thronged beaches shadowed by mega-yachts and a beaming Trump basking bare-chested alongside a similarly pleased and disrobed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The video was supposedly “satire,” but it underscored Trump’s stated ambition. He wants to take over and empty the war-ravaged territory, which has been pulverized by the Israeli military after militant group Hamas launched its Oct. 7, 2023, strike on southern Israel, and relocate its population of more than 2 million people elsewhere. Echoing the desires of politicians among Israel’s right, Trump has suggested that those displaced Palestinians may not be allowed to return to their homeland.
This radical vision looms over the Trump administration’s more immediate interventions in the Middle East. On Wednesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hosted Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right advocate of settlement expansion and annexation of Palestinian land who had been shunned by the previous administration. Their discussions about further economic cooperation were less important than the symbolism of the meeting: A figure who has repeatedly called for Gaza to be flattened and its Palestinians driven out — and who the Biden White House had contemplated sanctioning for his leading role in stoking instability and violence in the West Bank — was now welcome in Washington.
Smotrich applauded Trump’s scrapping of Biden’s sanctions on far-right Israeli settler groups and cheered his calls to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza. “The president’s plan is moving into practical stages,” Smotrich told the Jerusalem Post. “They are looking for host countries, and the process is in motion. This won’t happen overnight, but it represents out-of-the-box thinking.”
That “out-of-the-box” thinking remains a nonstarter for Palestinians and Arab states, who fear mass displacement from Gaza would mark another expulsion into exile for a community haunted by the loss of their ancestral homes and villages in what’s now Israel. Earlier this week at a summit in Cairo, Arab states put forward a major proposal for the revival of Gaza that would allow for the provision of safe, temporary shelters for Gaza’s population as a prelude to a multiyear reconstruction process. The plan calls for the creation of an interim body of qualified Palestinian technocrats to run Gaza, and hinted at the disarmament of Hamas as part of a broader political settlement that allows for the emergence of a viable Palestinian state.
But the plan was rejected by both the Trump administration and Israel. Netanyahu and his allies are not interested in any talk of Palestinian self-determination and are toying with collapsing the fragile ceasefire to further wipe out the remaining cells of the militant group. In defiance of international calls that it honor its agreement with Hamas, Israel has restricted the provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza, where most civilian infrastructure was destroyed, basic services eliminated and tens of thousands of civilians killed amid Israeli bombardments. Israel is “not ruling out the possibility of cutting off water and electricity in Gaza,” Netanyahu spokesman Omer Dostri said this week.
The lack of clarity in the Arab proposal on the dissolution of Hamas was a stumbling block for the White House. But Trump officials also seem convinced that Gaza’s population must move. “The current proposal does not address the reality that Gaza is currently uninhabitable and residents cannot humanely live in a territory covered in debris and unexploded ordnance,” National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes told reporters. “President Trump stands by his vision to rebuild Gaza free from Hamas. We look forward to further talks to bring peace and prosperity to the region.”
On Thursday, even as news emerged that the United States had engaged in direct talks with Hamas interlocutors in Doha, Qatar, in a bid to shepherd through the next phase of the ceasefire, Trump took to social media to threaten more violence. “This is your last warning! For the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza, while you still have a chance,” he wrote, addressing Hamas and calling for all hostages to be released. “Also, to the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD!”
At a White House briefing later in the day, Trump did not rule out the prospect of joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Gaza. Humanitarian officials worry that a resumption of full-fledged hostilities aimed at crushing Hamas will only lead to more catastrophic Palestinian suffering. “It’s really up to Israeli authorities to define who Hamas is,” an aid worker told my colleagues. “That’s the issue from our side: They have typically been seeing anyone who has been affiliated with [Gaza’s] Ministry of Health as Hamas, any of the doctors and nurses. … If you don’t follow an evacuation order, you’re Hamas. Depending on who is interpreting that, that could literally mean every single person inside Gaza.”
Israeli politicians like Smotrich have that maximalist view, and see the entirety of the population in Gaza as a threat. Parallel to the fitful diplomatic efforts to stabilize Gaza, Israeli forces, cheered on by the far right, have carried out a sweeping, punitive campaign in the West Bank as part of a response to an uptick in Palestinian militancy in certain areas.
“Many Palestinians and some Israeli analysts say that the scale and intensity of the operation, which humanitarian groups say has displaced nearly 40,000 Palestinian residents in two months, are vastly out of proportion to the actual threat,” my colleagues reported this week. “And in its timing, tactics and public promotion, these observers see a campaign driven not just by security concerns but also by the political and ideological motivations of Netanyahu and Israel’s increasingly powerful far right.”
Last month, Smotrich offered a chilling warning to Palestinians in the West Bank, saying their towns and cities could resemble the obliterated neighborhoods of Gaza should militancy continue. “They too will be uninhabitable ruins,” he said. “Their residents will be forced to migrate and seek a new life in other countries.”