Walking back statements the Trump makes as president is keeping the White House busy

How to judge US President Donald Trump’s plan to resettle the Palestinians of Gaza and develop it in into a Middle Eastern riviera under American sovereignty? Analyse Trump by his actions not his pronouncements and take him seriously but not literally is the advice of a Washington insider to foreign journalists.

To be fair, his actions on Gaza have been first and foremost that he helped bring about the current ceasefire that provided relief to the people of Gaza and the release of a number of Israeli hostages. Well done the Donald!

The ceasefire is fragile and Trump’s outlandish pronouncement on Gaza last week was designed to please the Israelis more than the Palestinians. He knows that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under pressure from his right wing to resume the war, and Trump’s idea of resettling the Palestinians of Gaza in Egypt and Jordan seems to have placated the war mongers in Israel for the time being.

Taking Trump seriously not literally then, it is obvious that Gaza is uninhabitable and has to be rebuilt and that its population needs to be rehoused in temporary accommodation pending reconstruction, so he dangled the more controversial idea that the Gazans had to be resettled from Gaza leaving the White House to walk back his hint that this would be permanent – resettlement has a permanent connotation.

Temporary accommodation normally takes the form of prefab bungalows that could be constructed just as easily in Gaza as in Egypt and Jordan. Besides, Gazans would probably wish to stay close at hand to assist in the more organic rebuilding of their homes and communities.

Trump was careful not to commit the US to fund rebuilding Gaza and the likelihood is that the oil rich Arab states – Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States – would probably be prepared to fund the reconstruction of Gaza provided the Gazans stay where they are.

His plan that the Palestinians should be resettled and that after the war the US would be handed ownership of Gaza, which he insisted would not require US soldiers, was not intended to be taken literally because neither Egypt nor Jordan are prepared to resettle Palestinians from Gaza. Trump has some leverage with both countries – they each depend on the US for their security – but there is no evidence in the public domain that he is kneeling on them to accept the Gazans.

In the meantime, the White House clarified that Trump’s plan does not envisage the forceful resettlement of the Palestinians which suggests that he is indifferent to where they are rehoused pending reconstruction.

US ownership of Gaza was not meant to be taken seriously because it cannot be done without US soldiers on the ground. And besides the Israelis are unlikely to agree because they want Gaza for themselves, and neither would the Palestinians as they hope it will form an integral part of a recognised Palestinian state.

Trump’s other actions in Israel and Palestine have been more pro-Israeli than any other US president including Joe Biden who was the most Zionist of them all. Last week Trump imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) for issuing arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his former defence minister for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He claimed the cases against them are baseless, but he could not be serious about this because the ICC issued the arrest warrants after a thorough independent analysis of evidence that they used starvation as a weapon of war.

Trump claims there is no moral equivalence between ministers of the democratically elected government of Israel and the terrorists of Hamas which is only true in the sense that under the ICC statute the international court has a complementary jurisdiction with national courts that are more likely to punish war criminals in liberal democracies than in terrorist states.

But given there was evidence that Hamas leaders ordered the atrocities on October 7, 2023 and evidence that the Palestinians in Gaza were being deliberately starved to death on the orders of Israeli government ministers, it would be absurd for the ICC to ignore the use of starvation as a weapon of war just because there is no moral equivalence between Israel and the Hamas. terrorists. The guiding principle for the ICC is to follow the evidence wherever it leads and hang the consequences.

Trump’s other executive act on Israel-Palestine was to lift the sanctions on Jewish settlers who attack and kill Palestinian villagers in the West Bank to force them to leave their lands. He may have lifted the ban to spite Joe Biden who imposed sanctions on thieving settlers, but it also suggests he does not think there is anything wrong with stealing Palestinian land on the West Bank because he is not against its annexation by Israel – his newly appointed ambassador in Israel refers to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria as if it is already part the Land of Israel from the river to the sea. Whatever happened to the West’s precious rules-based-order?

The new expression in vogue in Washington since Trump returned to the White House is to walk back statements he makes as president that need to be explained and refined to make sense or be more acceptable to right thinking people. The question in the Middle East in the next 4 years is whether there is anyone or any country to walk Trump back to a two-state arrangement. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia perhaps?

Alper Ali Riza is a king’s counsel in the UK and a former part time judge