Trump's Unworkable Gaza Plan has Real Life Consequences

It's not just Trump noise. There are consequences for the hostages and people of Gaza.

It’d be easy to dismiss Trump’s plan for the U.S. to take over Gaza and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” as just another distraction while he and Elon Musk continue to run roughshod over the U.S. government. And to a great extent that is true. After all with firm opposition from Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, the Arab States, European allies, and even Senate Republicans expressing concern, this crazy plan is never happening. Just more Trump bloviating. Though it is important to continuously remind people that actively displacing two million Palestinians from Gaza against their will is an act of ethnic cleansing - even if the plan itself is an unrealistic pipe dream. But my real immediate concern, is that Trump just dramatically complicated the Phase II ceasefire and hostage negotiations, and increased the likelihood that the war will restart. That is a huge problem.

As a reminder, part of Phase II is an agreement on post-conflict governance in Gaza. On the Israeli side - especially in Netanyahu’s coalition - they are taking Trump’s plan seriously. The far right is jubilant. Even Gantz came out in support. Expectations have now been significantly raised in Israel that an agreement to end the war will involve the U.S. taking over Gaza and moving out Palestinians. When that proves unworkable because of a Hamas rejection, Netanyahu has all the pretext he needs to go back to war arguing that the other side was unreasonable and turned down the deal. And if he decides to instead cut a workable deal, it will be a lot harder for him to keep his right wing allies on side when the President of the United States is talking about pushing two million Palestinians out of Gaza.

Hamas is also taking this proposal seriously. They are looking for a way out of the war at this point and don’t want to resume fighting. But if they believe that their options are either: 1) agree to the displacement of huge swaths of the Palestinian population from Gaza; or 2) keep the remaining hostages and restart the fighting - they will be willing to restart the fighting.

My hope is that this is all just another crazy BS Trump plan that goes nowhere, and that as we come up on the 42 day deadline for Phase II, his desire to be seen as peacemaker and prevent the war from restarting, causes him and Witkoff to apply the necessary pressure on all sides to continue the hostage deal/end the war. But I’m worried that his performance yesterday makes that much harder, and pushes the parties further apart on any Phase II deal.