Egypt – Defend Democracy Press

What are implications of Trump’s Gaza plan, mechanisms to confront it?

Arab analysts and academics discuss the implications of US President Donald Trump’s plan to displace Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and strategies to counter it.

Feb 16, 2025

As US President Donald Trump’s administration continues to pressure Arab states to adopt a plan for the forced displacement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to countries such as Egypt and Jordan, the Arab response has been firm and unified in its outright rejection of the scheme due to its implications on the security of these nations and the region as a whole, as well as its denial of Palestinian rights.

The Arab consensus has emphasized the necessity of Palestinians remaining on their land and achieving their legitimate aspirations, foremost among them the right to establish an independent state.

Trump’s contentious proposal outlined a plan to force Palestinians out of Gaza to neighboring Egypt and Jordan while placing the enclave under “long-term” US ownership.

He sparked outrage by touting Gaza’s real estate potential, suggesting its redevelopment into a “Middle Eastern Riviera.”

Trump has even said in an interview for Fox News Channel‘s Bret Baier that Palestinians would have no right to return to Gaza under his US “takeover” plan, which he unveiled in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week.

In this context, Al Mayadeen Network launched an open coverage to express solidarity with Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia and to reject Trump’s displacement plan, given its political, military, and strategic risks and repercussions.

Dr. Mohammad Abu Rumman, a professor of Political Sciences at the University of Jordan, told Al Mayadeen that “what Israel failed to achieve militarily, it is now trying to accomplish diplomatically and politically through a plan to displace Palestinians and eliminate Hamas and the Resistance’s weapons in Gaza.”

He stressed that this plan strengthens “Israel’s” regional dominance and advances its long-term objectives through political maneuvers.

On her part, Amani al-Tawil, director of the African Program at the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, stated that Trump is solely focused on ensuring that “Israel” leads the region and becomes its primary actor and prioritizing economic and investment interests while disregarding the humanitarian aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.

Al-Tawil warned that Trump’s displacement plan could trigger chaos in regional and international relations, with profound political, military, and strategic repercussions, posing significant threats to regional and global security.

Meanwhile, Abu Rumman emphasized that “we are witnessing major transformations,” noting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “now feels a strategic superiority in the region, to the point of brazenly discussing the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state in Saudi Arabia.”

Displacement of Palestinians violates sovereignty of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia

Similarly, political writer and senior official in the Kuwaiti Progressive Movement, Ahmad al-Deyain, underscored the importance of a unified Arab stance against the displacement plan.

He highlighted the need for coordination among Arab states and the reinforcement of political and economic support for the Palestinian people to counter these schemes, underscoring that “the Arab position must remain cohesive in rejecting the displacement of Palestinians.”

Al-Deyain further stressed that Trump and Netanyahu’s remarks on displacement constitute an infringement on the sovereignty of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia and undermine the Palestinian cause and the broader Arab order.

He described these statements as an attempt to pressure Arab states into making concessions that would compromise Palestinian rights, ultimately affecting regional stability.

In the same context, Ashraf Abu al-Houl, managing editor of the al-Ahram newspaper, highlighted Saudi Arabia’s pivotal role in safeguarding Palestinian rights, describing the kingdom’s opposition to Trump’s displacement plan as “a historic stance”.

He added that Saudi Arabia’s significant religious status reinforces its steadfast rejection of the displacement plan and its commitment to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

Abu al-Houl stressed that Saudi Arabia places the issue of occupied al-Quds and its holy sites at the forefront of its priorities, insisting that the city remain under Arab and Muslim control, free from Israeli interference or domination.

Ramifications of Trump’s plan extend beyond neighboring countries

Political writer and expert Dirar al-Bustanji emphasized that the unified Arab rejection of the displacement plan serves as a fundamental pillar in defending Palestinian rights and preventing any attempts to annihilate the Palestinian cause.

He stated that this stance reflects the solidarity and unity of Arab nations in confronting plans aimed at altering the Palestinian cause’s core dynamics and undermining Palestinians’ rights to their land.

Al-Bustanji further pointed out that the ramifications of this plan extend beyond neighboring countries and pose a broader threat to the entire Arab region, adding that Riyadh recognizes that the dangers associated with the plan go far beyond the immediate vicinity of Palestine.

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Between American Threats and Arab Positions, Palestine in the Eye of the Storm

by Marwan Emil Toubassi (*)

Feb. 13, 2025

The Palestinian cause is facing a critical moment, with escalating Israeli aggression and renewed American and Israeli military threats that could lead to more violence in Gaza and across the region. As Trump’s deadline approaches for Palestinian resistance to hand over Israeli prisoners, Netanyahu has intensified threats of military operations in Gaza. This coincides with the potential revival of a forced displacement plan for Palestinians, aligned with the “New Middle East” initiative aimed at neutralizing the Palestinian cause.

Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt, are under immense pressure from the U.S. and Israel. Despite their delicate relations with Washington, these countries are trying to maintain their commitment to Palestinian rights. The recent visit of King Abdullah II of Jordan to Washington emphasized the ongoing tension and highlighted Jordan’s firm stance on supporting Palestinian rights, while seeking a pathway to engage the U.S. administration about Israeli policies threatening Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.

Saudi Arabia has adopted a cautious diplomatic stance, trying to balance its relations with the U.S. while maintaining support for Palestine. Any shift in its position could have significant implications for its regional security interests. At the same time, Egypt faces a similar dilemma, as the threat of forced displacement into Sinai would severely undermine its national security. The Egyptian government has been navigating a fine line, balancing American pressure with its role as a key player in Gaza’s future.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and Israel continue to push for solutions that favor Israeli interests, ignoring Palestinian sovereignty. Trump’s threats of escalating military actions in Gaza, combined with Netanyahu’s reluctance to move forward on prisoner exchanges, represent a dangerous step towards further destabilization in the region. These actions not only target Palestinians but also undermine the political sovereignty of surrounding Arab countries.

Gaza remains the focal point of this confrontation, with the threat of forced displacement looming. Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and the destruction of Palestinian villages only exacerbate the situation, drawing a direct connection between these aggressive policies and the broader regional implications. Palestinians have shown incredible resilience in the face of these challenges, but the pressure continues to mount.

For Palestine, the path forward must involve a unified political response that resists all forms of external pressure and continues to defend their rights to self-determination. The unity of the Palestinian people and their resistance to these ongoing schemes remain the strongest defense against the dismantling of their rights and land.

In conclusion, the Palestinian struggle continues to face unprecedented challenges, but the resolve to defend their land and sovereignty remains strong. The next steps must ensure that Palestinian rights are upheld against external manipulation, and the broader Arab world must show solidarity to preserve the cause of Palestine.

(*) Former Ambassador of Palestine to Greece

Trump appears to shift on Gaza saying he ‘tasked’ Arabs to draw up a plan

The White House seemed to reframe the administration’s position on Gaza, giving it more room for negotiation

By Yasmine El-Sabawi in Washington

12 February 2025

The announcement followed Trump’s meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah on Tuesday, after which the king said he took a firm position in private, despite not pushing back in public.

“The king would much prefer that the Palestinians stay in place with the additional land to be used for new development, which would greatly create jobs at levels never seen before, but the president feels it would be much better and more majestic if these Palestinians could be moved to safer areas,” Leavitt told reporters.

“The president remains wholeheartedly committed to seeing peace in the Middle East, and our Arab partners in the region have been tasked with coming up with a peace plan to present to the president,” she said.

No timeline was offered.

The move could signal that Trump is now open to ideas from Arab governments, even though he stood by his own plan to empty out Gaza and build a beach resort there in his response to a reporter on Tuesday.

“I think we sort of have gone down the line. We know pretty much what is going to be presented,” Trump said, appearing to brush off those plans.

“I think it’s going to be something that’s going to be magnificent for the Palestinians. They’re going to be in love with it. I did very well with real estate. I can tell you about real estate. They’re going to be in love with it.”

Until the White House’s announcement, it was understood that Egypt, in talks with major Arab countries, was drawing up an alternative plan for Gaza on its own accord, in an attempt to steer the US president away from the forcible transfer of a population and a US “takeover”.

Now, Washington is indicating that it was Trump that asked them to do it.

The Arab plan

A summit between the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia is set to occur on an unspecified date before the 27 February “emergency meeting” on Gaza in Cairo, Al-Araby TV said on Wednesday, citing Egyptian sources.

Those sources told the broadcaster that Egypt’s proposed plan so far includes the rebuilding of Gaza within three to five years without displacing its residents.

The plan would reportedly unfold in two stages: a cleanup of the rubble, followed by the reconstruction of residential complexes. The effort would begin in Rafah, in southern Gaza, which borders Egypt, and then move further north and encompass the entire Strip.

In a statement released by the Egyptian president’s office on Wednesday, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi reiterated once again in a phone call with King Abdullah that Gaza must only be rebuilt with its residents present.

As to who will fund the plan, Egypt is seeking the participation of the Arab world, the European Union, and the United Nations, Al-Araby TV said, leaving the US out of the equation.

Trump’s decision to “own” Gaza and develop it himself has suggested that unless Washington can benefit economically from Gaza, it wants no part in rebuilding it using taxpayer dollars.

Trump administration officials have also pursued an almost wholesale cut to foreign aid since the president took office three weeks ago.

Visits postponed

In an interview with Fox News earlier this week, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Egyptian and Saudi leaders would soon be visiting the White House to meet with Trump about Gaza.

No such meetings, however, have been announced by Washington.

But by Wednesday, the Reuters news agency reported that Sisi would forego his visit entirely if Trump did not pivot from his “Riviera of the Middle East” plan for Gaza.

Trump originally called for Egypt and Jordan to take more than 1.8 million Palestinians from Gaza.

Also on Wednesday, The Financial Times, citing a person familiar with the matter, said Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan had “postponed a scheduled trip to Washington after Trump announced his plan”.

The kingdom has scaled up its rhetoric against the US and Israel in recent days, especially after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed in an interview that Saudi Arabia has “a lot of territory” that it could simply give to Palestinians.

State broadcaster Al-Ekhbariya described Netanyahu as a “Zionist and the son of a Zionist . . . who inherited extremism in his genes,” while Al-Arabiya asked if the prime minister was experiencing a state of hallucination.

The Saudi press had already spent much of last week lambasting Washington, saying the kingdom “does not accept bargaining or auctions” when it comes to Palestine and that it will not pursue diplomatic relations with Israel without the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Ceasefire on edge

Within hours of Trump’s comments to Fox News on Sunday that Palestinians will not have a right to return to Gaza after the US “takeover”, Hamas announced it would not release the seventh batch of captives scheduled to take place on Saturday.

The group cited Israeli ceasefire violations, among them nearly 30 air strikes, nine sniper attacks, a refusal to pull back from agreed lines along the Philadelphi Corridor, the non-delivery of mobile home units, and the blocking of cash transfers to banks.

However, the announcement’s timing was also seen as a response to Trump’s remarks.

The White House on Wednesday said Trump told King Abdullah to ensure that Hamas understands the “severity of the situation” if the captives are not released by Saturday’s deadline.

Trump also indicated that despite the agreed phased captive swaps within the ceasefire deal, he wants “all hostages, including all Americans, by Saturday, and asked for the king’s assistance”.

It’s unclear how much of that may materialise.

Egypt’s Al-Qahera TV reported on Wednesday that Egypt and Qatar – the two Arab mediators between Israel and Hamas – are communicating with the parties to the Gaza ceasefire amid US and Israeli pressure to resume military operations.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said the government is prepared to fulfil Trump’s displacement plan if the captives are not released on Saturday and warned of a “new Gaza war”.

But in an added twist late on Wednesday, far-right Israeli lawmaker and former Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir said that the release of three captives by Hamas – as previously agreed – “would suffice”, even if Israel has the green light from Trump to “unleash Hell”.

For its part, Hamas said it will remain committed to the deal only if Israel does the same.

“Our position is clear, and we will not accept the language of American and Israeli threats,” Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesperson, said.

He added that the group’s chief negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, was already in Cairo on Wednesday to discuss “the implementation of the ceasefire agreement”.

Hamas Announced Postponing Prisoner Exchange: Why and Why Now? – Analysis

By Robert Inlakesh
Feb 11, 2025

On Monday, Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman, Abu Obeida, issued a statement asserting that in light of Israeli ceasefire violations, it will be postponing the prisoner exchange planned for the coming weekend. While this is now being framed as the potential reason for the agreement’s collapse, it is instead a negotiating tactic at a crucial juncture.

“The handover of the Zionist prisoners who were scheduled to be released next Saturday…will be postponed until further notice,” announced the military spokesperson of Hamas. This message was also accompanied by “we affirm our commitment to the terms of the agreement as long as the occupation commits to them”.

While Israeli politicians instantly began claiming that Hamas had violated the ceasefire agreement, with the infamous partner in Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, Itamar Ben-Gvir, calling for an immediate bombing campaign, nothing has materially changed on the ground yet. However, provocative statements like Ben-Gvir’s are predictable and also important in this equation.

Following Abu Obeida’s statement, in which he accused Israel of violating the ceasefire terms, the Hamas movement decided to publish a list of multiple Israeli violations of the deal, including:

“Delaying the return of displaced persons to northern Gaza.”
“Targeting civilians with shelling and gunfire, resulting in numerous casualties across the Strip.”
“Obstructing the entry of essential shelter supplies, such as tents, prefabricated houses, fuel, and equipment needed for rubble removal and body retrieval.”
“Delaying the delivery of critical medical supplies and resources necessary for restoring hospitals and the health sector.”

While Hamas stated that it had itself recorded the above-mentioned ceasefire violations, these have been well documented by rights groups, journalists and have been mentioned by United Nations officials. Yet, Israel’s violations began some 15 minutes after the planned implementation of the deal – on January 19 at 8:30 AM (local time).

Killings of civilians through airstrikes and sniper fire continued throughout the following weeks, amongst the other ceasefire violations, however, Hamas had chosen not to open fire; or even release threatening statements in retaliation such as what occurred today.

Why is Hamas Doing This Now?

The knee jerk analyses that are being offered by most analysts in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas statement are almost entirely centered on a kind of he-said-she-said approach to the issue. As these disputes rage on about who violated the ceasefire and which side seeks the collapse of the deal, it is important to look deeper into the context.

As noted above, Hamas had chosen to not fire a single bullet or rocket, nor threaten to postpone the release of Israeli captives, through weeks of daily Israeli ceasefire violations. There were moments when Israeli forces were executing children, delaying the return of displaced Palestinians to their homes for 24 hours and restricting essential items from reaching the Gaza Strip, all of which would have given Hamas the moral imperative to obstruct the deal in order to end such violations of the agreement.

If Hamas held off from retaliation for emotional, legal and moral reasons, then it indicates that their statements from today were strategically calculated and not simply reactionary. The timing of the Qassam Brigades spokesman’s statement happened to coincide with the return of the Israeli negotiating team from Doha, which also appears to be connected.

Within the past week, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has changed the composition of his negotiating team, reportedly floating the idea of an extension to the first phase of the ceasefire agreement. These amendments to the course of the negotiating process have been compounded by US President Donald Trump’s threats to take over the Gaza Strip, in addition to ethnically cleansing the territory’s population.

Israel has also now withdrawn its forces from the Netzarim Corridor that intersects northern and central Gaza, deserting what would be a key military position should they seek to return to the territory, while most of the displaced refugees from the north of the territory have also returned to their destroyed neighborhoods.

Another factor to consider is that the Israeli PM has managed to keep his far-right coalition together so far, yet, key lawmakers from within the Religious Zionism bloc have threatened to collapse the government should it approve phase two of the three-phase ceasefire agreement. Interestingly enough, Donald Trump’s rather outlandish and highly illegal proposals have managed to persuade Netanyahu’s hardline coalition partners that the ceasefire is a good deal, quite possibly helping to save it.

Emboldened by the American President’s hardline rhetoric, Netanyahu has since gone on a number of tirades in which he has not only endorsed the idea of ethnically cleansing the people of Gaza to neighboring nations, but has even said that Saudi Arabia should carve out part of its territory to make a Palestinian State.

These extreme threats have now managed to ironically unite West Asia, not with Israel but against it. Contrary to the claims of Netanyahu and Trump, about Riyadh abandoning its position on requiring a viable path to a Palestinian State in exchange for a normalisation agreement with Tel Aviv, it has only doubled down. In fact, the condemnatory rhetoric of Israel, coming from Saudi Arabia, is the strongest in decades.

Hamas has been center stage in this sudden, seemingly overnight regional shift, which has certainly factored into their decision to begin applying pressure on the Israeli negotiating team.

The Hashemite ruler of Jordan, King Abdullah II, has been publicly starkly opposed to the US-Israeli proposal to transfer hundreds of thousands, if not close to a million Palestinians, out of Gaza and into his territory. While the Egyptian military has reportedly been mobilizing to deal with any major destabilizing development. Both Cairo and Amman fear the potential repercussions for the survival of their leadership should a mass displacement from Gaza occur.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has also been placed in a difficult position. Like Jordan and Egypt, it is friendly to not only the US, but also Israel. Yet, taking into consideration the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, in addition to the popular moods of the Saudi people in support of the Palestinian cause, normalizing with Israel right now and enabling a major regionally destabilizing event that could even cause the collapse of the Jordanian Monarchy, is a risk they are not willing to currently take.

Another major factor here is both the warming of relations between Riyadh and Tehran, combined with the recent weakening of the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance. This essentially means that there is little to gain from joining an anti-Iran alliance, likely re-igniting its frozen conflict in Yemen, with little role for it to actually play. In such a scenario, Saudi Arabia would be fully subordinate to the US, which limits future opportunities in the emerging multipolar world. Saying this, the threat of destabilization inside Saudi Arabia goes both ways, if they go too far in opposition to the Americans and Israelis, they could also incur their wrath.

Hamas decided to release its statement, doing so with a region that is now united against the Israeli-US invasion/ethnic cleansing plan. The Arab and Islamic nations will soon likely adopt a joint platform and help in putting forth urgent proposals to see the Gaza ceasefire’s implementation through the second and third phases. This includes throwing their weight behind the success of a post-war administration in the Gaza Strip.

Israel on the other hand has little leverage in this situation, other than to implement plans that will inflict mass regional destabilisation and return to carrying out its catastrophic genocide in Gaza. This is why, so far, the Israeli threats against Gaza have been centered around what their response will be if there is a failure to exchange prisoners on Saturday, which is five days away.

If Israel carries out airstrikes in the coming days, it has two options, to completely collapse the ceasefire or to just carry out random raids that will kill civilians, but not in a way that would lead to the ceasefire’s dissolution. However, there is also a trap in the Israelis deciding to carry out any significant raids on Gaza, because this will then give Hamas – and perhaps its ally Ansarallah – the excuse to respond in kind.

If Hamas fires volleys of rockets toward Israeli settlements, possibly even Tel Aviv, it will serve as a great embarrassment to Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu and could even encourage his extremist allies to threaten the collapse of his coalition. In the minds of Netanyahu’s partners like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, they believe that Hamas must be crushed and the entirety of the Palestinian population be driven out. Therefore, Hamas’ rocket fire could trigger emotional reactions from them that put Netanyahu in a difficult political position.

Meanwhile, the families of Israeli captives who are still held in Gaza have already taken it upon themselves to blockade main roads in Tel Aviv, demanding the implementation of the ceasefire agreement.

Hamas is currently in a position where it must try its best to negotiate the entry of sufficient aid into Gaza, while also ensuring the war ends and a post-war administration is formed so that the territory can be revived and rebuilt. Although it may be a dangerous gamble on their behalf, it appears to be an attempt to use the current climate to pressure the Israelis to allow the passage of sufficient aid, while also paving the way to the success of the next phases of the ceasefire deal.

The wildcard here is a potential US-Israeli plot to use insane levels of violence that will sink the entire region into chaos.

Thirty Years of Middle East Lies Just Keep Coming Back To Bite US

The West’s ‘war on terror’ was built on a series of deceptions to persuade us that our leaders were crushing Islamist extremism. In truth, they were nourishing it

The story: Did you believe it 30 years ago when they told you that the Oslo Accords would bring peace to the Middle East? That Israel would finally withdraw from the Palestinian territories it had illegally occupied for decades, end its brutal repression of the Palestinian people, and allow a Palestinian state to be created there? That the longest running sore for the Arab and Muslim worlds would finally be brought to an end?

The reality: In fact, during the Oslo period, Israel stole more Palestinian land and expanded the building of illegal Jewish settlements at the fastest rate ever. Israel became even more repressive, building prison walls around Gaza and the West Bank while continuing to aggressively occupy both. Ehud Barak, Israeli prime minister of the time, “blew up” – in the words of one of his own main advisers – the US-backed negotiations at Camp David in 2000.

Weeks later, with the occupied Palestinian territories seething, opposition leader Ariel Sharon, backed by 1,000 armed Israeli troops, invaded occupied Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque – one of the holiest places for Muslims in the world. It was the final straw, triggering an uprising by Palestinians that Israel would crush with devastating military force and thereby tip the scales of popular support from the secular Fatah leadership to the Islamic resistance group Hamas.

Further afield, Israel’s ever-more abusive treatment of the Palestinians and its gradual takeover of al-Aqsa – backed by the West – served only to further radicalize the jihadist group al-Qaeda, providing the public rationale for attacking New York’s Twin Towers in 2001.

The story: Did you believe it in 2001, after the 9/11 attack, when they told you that the only way to stop the Taliban harboring al-Qaeda in Afghanistan would be for the US and UK to invade and “smoke them out” of their caves? And that in the process the West would save Afghanistan’s girls and women from oppression?

The reality: As soon as the first US bombs fell, the Taliban expressed readiness to surrender power to the US puppet Hamid Karzai, stay out of Afghan politics and hand Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda’s leader, over to an agreed third country.

The US invaded anyway, occupying Afghanistan for 20 years, killing at least 240,000 Afghans, most of them civilians, and spending some $2 trillion on propping up its detested occupation there. The Taliban grew stronger than ever, and in 2021 forced the US army out.

The story: Did you believe it in 2003 when they told you that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that could destroy Europe in minutes? That Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, was the new Hitler, and that he had allied with al-Qaeda to destroy the Twin Towers? And that for those reasons the US and UK had no choice but to invade Iraq pre-emptively, even if the United Nations refused to authorize the attack.

The reality: For years, Iraq had been under severe sanctions following Saddam Hussein’s foolhardy decision to invade Kuwait, and upset the regional order in the Gulf designed to keep the oil flowing to the West. The US responded with its own show of military force, decimating the Iraqi army. The policy through the 1990s had been one of containment, including a sanctions regime estimated to have killed at least half a million Iraqi children – a price the then-US secretary of state Madeline Albright famously said was “worth it”.

Saddam Hussein had also to submit to a program of rolling weapons inspections by UN experts. The inspectors had concluded with a high degree of certainty that there were no usable WMD in Iraq. The report that Saddam Hussein could fire on Europe, hitting it in 30 minutes, was a hoax, it eventually emerged, cooked up by the UK intelligence services. And the claim that Saddam had ties to al-Qaeda not only lacked any evidence but was patently nonsensical. Saddam’s highly secular, if brutal, regime was deeply opposed to, and feared, the religious zealotry of al-Qaeda.

The US-UK invasion and occupation, and the vicious sectarian civil war it unleashed between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, would kill – on the best estimates – more than 1 million Iraqis and drive from their homes a further 4 million. Iraq became a recruiting ground for Islamic extremism and led to the formation of a new, far more nihilistic, Sunni competitor to al-Qaeda called Islamic State. It also bolstered the power of the Shi’a majority in Iraq, who took power from the Sunnis and forged a closer alliance with Iran.

The story: Did you believe it in 2011 when they told you that the West was backing the Arab Spring to bring democracy to the Middle East, and that Egypt – the largest Arab state – was at the vanguard of change in removing its authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak?

The reality: Mubarak had been propped up by the West as Egypt’s tyrant for three decades, and received billions in “foreign aid” each year from Washington – effectively a bribe to abandon the Palestinians and maintain peace with Israel under the terms of the 1979 Camp David agreement. But the US reluctantly turned its back on Mubarak after assessing that he could not withstand mounting protests sweeping the country from revolutionary forces released by the Arab Spring – a mix of secular liberals and Islamic groups led by the Muslim Brotherhood. With the army holding back, the protesters emerged victorious. The Brotherhood won elections to run the new democratic government.

Behind the scenes, however, the Pentagon was tightening ties to the remnants of Mubarak’s old regime and a new aspirant to the crown, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Reassured that there was no danger of US reprisals, el-Sisi finally launched a coup to return Egypt to military dictatorship in 2013. Israel lobbied to make sure el-Sisi’s military dictatorship would continue to receive its billions in annual US aid. In power, Sisi instituted the same repressive powers as Mubarak, ruthlessly crushed the Brotherhood and joined Israel in choking Gaza with a blockade to isolate Hamas, Palestine’s own version of the Brotherhood. In doing so, he gave a further shot in the arm to Islamic extremism, with the Islamic State establishing a presence in Sinai. Meanwhile, the US further confirmed that its commitment to the Arab Spring and democratic movements in the Middle East was non-existent.

The story: Did you believe it when, also in 2011, they told you that Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi posed a terrible threat to his own population and had even given his soldiers Viagra to commit mass rape? That the only way to protect ordinary Libyans was for NATO, led by the US, UK and France, to bomb the country, and directly aid opposition groups to overthrow Gaddafi?

The reality: The claims against Gadaffi, as against Saddam Hussein, lacked any evidence, as a UK parliamentary investigation concluded five years later, in 2016. But the West needed a pretext to remove the Libyan leader, who was seen as a threat to western geopolitical interests. A release by Wikileaks of US diplomatic cables showed Washington’s alarm at Gadaffi’s efforts to create a United States of Africa to control the continent’s resources and develop an independent foreign policy. Libya, with Africa’s largest oil reserves, had been setting a dangerous precedent, offering Russia and China new oil exploration contracts and renegotiating existing contracts with western oil companies on less favorable terms. Gadaffi was also cultivating closer military and economic ties to Russia and China.

Nato’s bombing of Libya was never intended to protect its population. The country was immediately abandoned after Gadaffi’s overthrow and became a failed state of warlords and slave markets. Parts of Libya became a stronghold for Islamic State. Western weapons supplied to “rebels” ended up strengthening Islamic State and fueling the sectarian bloodbaths in Syria and Iraq.

The story: Did you believe it when, again from 2011 onwards, they told you that democratic forces were lined up to overthrow Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad, and that the country was on the verge of an Arab Spring-style revolution that would liberate its people?

The reality: There’s no doubt that Assad’s rule – combined with drought and crop failures brought on by climate change – led to growing unrest in parts of Syria by 2011. And it was also true that, like other secular Arab regimes based on the rule of a minority sect, Assad’s government depended on brutal authoritarianism to maintain its power over other, larger sects. But that is not why Syria ended up being plunged into a bloody civil war for 13 years that dragged in actors from Iran and Russia to Israel, Turkey, al-Qaeda and ISIS. That was largely down to Washington and Israel pursuing their geostrategic interests once again.

The real problem for Washington was not Assad’s authoritarianism – the US’s strongest allies in the region were all authoritarian – it was two other critical factors.

First, Assad belonged to the Alawite minority, a sect of Shi’a Islam that had a centuries-long, theological and sectarian feud with a dominant Sunni Islam in the region. Iran was also Shi’a. Iraq’s Shi’a majority had come to power after Washington eviscerated the Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003. And finally, the Lebanese militia Hizbullah was Shi’a. Together, these comprised what Washington increasingly described as an “Axis of Evil”.

Second, Syria shared a long border with Israel and, pivotally, was the main geographic corridor connecting Iran and Iraq to Hizbullah guerrilla forces north of Israel, in Lebanon. Over decades, Iran had smuggled tens of thousands of increasingly powerful rockets and missiles into southern Lebanon, close to Israel’s northern border. That arsenal served during most of that time as a defensive umbrella, the main deterrence preventing Israel from invading and occupying Lebanon,as it had done for many years until Hizbullah fighters forced it to withdraw in 2000. But it also served to deter Israel from invading Syria and attacking Iran.

Days after 9/11, a senior US general, Wesley Clarke, was shown a paper by an official in the Pentagon setting out the US response to the toppling of the Twin Towers. The US was going to “take down” seven countries in five years. Notably, the bulk of the targets were the Middle East’s Shi’a strongholds: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Iran. (The 9/11 culprits, let us note, were Sunni – mostly from Saudi Arabia.) Iran and its allies had resisted Washington’s moves – backed increasingly openly by the Sunni states, especially those in the oil-rich Gulf – to impose Israel as the regional hegemon and allow it to erase unopposed the Palestinians as a people.

Israel and Washington, we might note, are actively seeking to achieve these very goals right at this moment. And Syria was always critically important to realizing their plan. Which is why, as part of Operation Timber Sycamore, the US secretly pumped huge sums of money into training its erstwhile enemies of al-Qaeda into creating an anti-Assad militia that drew in Sunni jihadist fighters from around the region, as well as arms from failed states like Libya. The plan was backed financially by the Gulf states, with military and assistance and intelligence from Turkey, Israel and the UK.

By late 2024 Assad’s main allies were in troubles of their own: Russia was pinned down by a NATO-led proxy war in Ukraine, while Tehran was increasingly on the back foot from Israeli strikes on Lebanon, Syria and Iran itself. It was at this moment that HTS – a rebranded al-Qaeda outfit – seized Damascus at lightning speed, forcing Assad to flee to Moscow.

If you believed all of these stories, and still believe that the West is doing its best to bring to heel Islamic extremism and a supposed Russian imperialism in Ukraine, then you presumably also believe that Israel leveled Gaza, destroyed all its hospitals and starved its entire population of 2.3 million simply to “eliminate Hamas”, even though Hamas has not been eliminated.

You presumably believe that the International Court of Justice was wrong nearly a year ago to put Israel on trial for committing a genocide in Gaza. You presumably believe that even the most cautious Israeli Holocaust experts were wrong back in May to conclude that Israel had indisputably moved into a genocidal stage when it destroyed the “safe zone” of Rafah, where it had herded most of Gaza’s population. And you presumably believe that all the major human rights groups were wrong to conclude late last year, after lengthy research to protect themselves from smears from Israel and its apologists, that Israel’s devastation of Gaza has all the hallmarks of a genocide.

You will doubtless also believe that Washington’s long-held plan for “global full-spectrum dominance” is benign, and that Israel and the US don’t have Iran and China in their sights next.

If so, you will keep believing whatever they tell you – even as we hurtle, lemming-like, over the cliff edge, sure that, this time, it will all turn out differently.

Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net. This originally appeared on Jonathan Cook’s Blog.

Israel begins ‘preparations’ for the removal of Palestinians from Gaza

ISRAEL publicly began “preparations” for the removal of Palestinians from Gaza today despite international rejection of US President Donald Trump’s proposal to empty the territory of its population.

Egypt has launched a diplomatic blitz behind the scenes warning any such action would put its peace deal with Israel at risk, officials said.

The Trump administration has already dialled back aspects of the suggestion given its frosty international reception, saying any relocation of the region’s 2.3 million people would be temporary.

US officials have provided few details about how or when the plan could be imposed on Palestinians.

In a social media post, President Trump said today that Israel would turn Gaza over to the US after the war and no US soldiers would be needed for his plan to redevelop it.

The Palestinians have strongly rejected Mr Trump’s proposal, which amounts to ethnic cleansing.

Egypt has warned that an expulsion would destabilise the region and undermine its peace treaty with Israel, a cornerstone of stability and US influence for decades.

Saudi Arabia, another key US ally, has also rejected any mass transfer of Palestinians and says it will not normalise relations with Israel — a key goal of the Trump administration — without the creation of a Palestinian state that includes Gaza.

President Trump and Israeli officials have depicted the proposed relocation from war-ravaged Gaza as voluntary, but Palestinians have universally expressed their determination to remain in their homeland.

Mr Trump and Israeli officials have not said how they would respond if Palestinians refuse to leave.

But Human Rights Watch and other groups say the plan meets the definition of ethnic cleansing, the forcible relocation of the civilian population of an ethnic group from a geographic area.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said Thursday that he has ordered the military to make preparations to facilitate the emigration of large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza through land crossings as well as “special arrangements for exit by sea and air.”

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has not publicly responded to Mr Trump’s proposal but sources said on Wednesday that Cairo has made clear to the US and Israel that it will resist any such proposal and that its peace deal with Israel is at risk.

Hamas, which still rules most of Gaza, has repeatedly condemned President Trump’s proposal.

On Thursday Hamas said that any US takeover of Gaza would be considered an occupation and resisted.

Trump would turn Gaza into beachfront property

Return to the north

This past weekend, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians began their return to the north of Gaza.

These scenes of joy and endurance against unspeakable brutality are what we’ve been fighting for since the beginning of the genocide — and they symbolize the beginning of a new stage of our fight, one where the question of rebuilding is central.

“This is literally the moment I have been waiting for since the day I got displaced from Gaza City.” Journalist Hind Khoudary spoke directly into a camera, walking north on a highway by the sea. Of the thousands around her, no one seems to have more than a backpack to bring with them. At the Netzarim Corridor, people stop to pick through the rubble in search of any belongings.

The Israeli military has done everything in its power over the last 15 months to render Gaza uninhabitable, and there is no question that Palestinians are returning to a landscape of utter devastation. Nearly every home has been destroyed or badly damaged. New reports from the WHO show that only half of hospitals in Gaza are even partly operational, following more than a year of the Israeli military carrying out direct attacks on hospitals, doctors, patients, and people taking shelter nearby.

At the same time, the death toll has been quickly rising as bodies of family members and loved ones are recovered from the rubble, a trend that will only continue as more and more people return to their homes. Drop Site News reported last week that more than 40% of families in Gaza are taking care of children that are not their own — and nearly 40,000 Palestinian children have been newly orphaned since the beginning of the genocide.

Ethnic cleansing by another name

Over the weekend, Trump cited this devastation to call for Egypt and Jordan to accept huge numbers of Palestinian refugees, saying of Gaza that it’s a “demolition site right now” and that Israel should “clean out the whole thing.”

This proposal is squarely in line with what U.S. and Israeli politicians have pushed since the beginning of the genocide: for neighboring states to accept Palestinian refugees. Egypt and Jordan once again firmly rejected this plan. The Israeli government’s refusal to allow generations of Palestinian refugees stuck in neighboring countries to return, many displaced since 1948 or 1967, makes it clear that Israel remains unlikely to allow displaced Palestinians to return to Gaza once they leave.

While referencing the destruction of Gaza, what Trump also neglects to mention is that the U.S. has armed and funded this demolition every step of the way. For the last 15 months, Israeli forces, with U.S. support, have sought to depopulate Gaza by any means necessary, carpet-bombing the region and establishing indiscriminate “kill zones” in order to displace and massacre Palestinians, part of an overall strategy to ethnically cleanse Gaza and re-establish Israeli settlements in the territory.

Trump’s comments may be aimed at supporters whose votes came from a belief that he would end the genocide in Gaza. But among Trump’s very first acts as President have been to lift sanctions on violent settler organizations in the West Bank, and to re-allow U.S.-made 2,000-pound bombs to be sent to Israel. This will, of course, increase the likelihood of greater death and destruction. To top that off, Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as Israeli politicians, have been eyeing an ethnically cleansed future Gaza as potential “beachfront property.”

As Palestinians return to the north of Gaza, the conditions of life are absolutely dire. People are walking back with their tents on their backs, knowing that they will find the flattened remains of their homes.

The Nakba, the ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Palestinians in 1948 during the creation of Israel, never ended — it only took on new forms. As the rebuilding of Gaza begins, the U.S. and Israeli governments will continue to push policies that seek to remove Palestinians from Gaza, using as an excuse the humanitarian crisis of their own making.

In this moment of return, under a ceasefire that remains fragile, we must remember that our movements still have power. It’s up to us to look for every opportunity to stand in solidarity with the long tradition of Palestinians remaining on their land and demanding to return home.

Published at the website of the Jewish Voice for Peace

Egypt, Jordan Reject Trump’s Controversial Gazan Relocation Proposal

Observers of the ongoing situation in Gaza suspect that the “temporary” suggestion will end up being a permanent solution if implemented.

Jan 27, 2025

Egypt and Jordan made it clear on Sunday that they do not accept Donald Trump’s controversial plan to relocate Gazans to their territory.

Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a statement on its X, expressing the country’s commitment to “the principles and determinants of political solution of the Palestinian cause.”

The statement said that Egypt refuses any resettlement plans that will deprive Palestinian people of their fundamental human rights.

The ministry further maintained that any solution to the Israel-Palestine long-standing conflict should be in line with international and humanitarian laws.

While rejecting any action that would include any relocation of the Palestinian people from Gaza, “be it temporary or permanent,” the statement also expressed Egypt’s constant support for the Palestinian people, who are rebounding from a 14-month genocidal orchestrated by Israel.

As for Jordan, the country’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said in a joint press conference with Sigrid Kaag in Amman, “Our principles are clear, and Jordan’s steadfast position to uphold the Palestinians’ presence on their land remains unchanged and will never change.”

He further explained that “The solution to the Palestinian issue lies in Palestine; Jordan is for Jordanians and Palestine is for Palestinians,” adding that Jordan’s rejection is “steadfast and essential for achieving the stability and peace we all seek.”

Egypt’s move comes following a series of controversial proposals that US President Donald Trump recently made in an interview while onboard AirForce One.

Trump said he wants Egypt and Jordan to expand their intake of Palestinian refugees, in an effort to “clean out” the war-torn enclave.

The US president said he had already spoken with King Abdullah II of Jordan about his proposal saying the relocation “could be temporary or long term.”

He also said he intends to speak with the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi about the matter on Sunday.

Trump’s controversial resettlement proposition involves removing more Gazans from their land and “build[ing] housing in a different location” across regional countries as new homes for them. He suggested that this is “where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”

Egypt and Jordan’s rejection echoes the voices of Palestinians who received the news about the proposal with great anger, strongly asserting that it will worsen the already dire situation.

Analysts, critics, and Palestinian groups alike suspect that the “temporary” suggestion will end up being a permanent solution if implemented. Despite the fact that the newly-elected president says that his intention is to find Palestinians a “peaceful” place to temporarily relocate, observers warn that this rhetoric could be steeped in Zionist ideology and warn of ethnic cleansing.

Hamas strongly rejected Trump’s proposed plan on Sunday, vowing to foil any displacement project the same as they did with other resettlement attempts over the years.

Trump wants to expel Palestinians from Palestine

Ethnic cleansing feared as Trump asks Jordan, Egypt to take Gaza residents

Trump says relocation may be temporary or long-term as he also announces lifting of hold on 2,000-pound bombs for Israel.

Jan 26, 2025

United States President Donald Trump says he would like to “just clean out” Gaza, urging Egypt and Jordan to take in more Palestinians from the coastal enclave.

Speaking with reporters on board Air Force One on Saturday, Trump said he had a call earlier in the day with King Abdullah II of Jordan and would speak with Egypt President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi later on Sunday.

“I would like Egypt to take people,” Trump said. “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say: ‘You know, it’s over.’”

Trump said he complimented Jordan for having successfully accepted Palestinian refugees and that he told the king, “I would love for you to take on more, ‘cause I am looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess.”

Israel’s 15-month war on Gaza has displaced almost all of its 2.3 million residents, some of them multiple times. Trump said Gaza’s inhabitants could be moved “temporarily or could be long term”.

“It is literally a demolition site right now, almost everything is demolished and people are dying there,” he said.

“So, I would rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”

Later on Sunday, Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said that Amman’s “position is that the two-state solution is the way to achieve peace”.

He stressed that Jordan’s “rejection of displacement is fixed and unchangeable” in an apparent veiled response to Trump.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) armed group condemned the US president’s suggestion, calling it an encouragement of “war crimes”.

Describing Trump’s idea as “deplorable”, the group, which has fought a war with Israel alongside Hamas until last week’s ceasefire, said his “proposal falls within the framework of encouraging war crimes and crimes against humanity by forcing our people to leave their land”.

It also said Trump’s statement was “in line with the worst of the agenda of the extreme Zionist right and a continuation of the policy of denying the existence of the Palestinian people, their will and their rights” and called on Egypt and Jordan to reject his plan.

INTERACTIVE - Israel Palestine land Nakba 1948-1720674812 — (Al Jazeera)

Abdullah Al-Arian, associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera that the US president’s remarks “should be taken seriously in part because we have seen this specific demand being made for over the last year and a half”.

He said some Israeli officials had indicated “very early on in the course of the war” to “ethnically cleanse” as much of the Palestinian territory as possible.

“That plan failed for multiple reasons, one of which is that Arab leaders who were approached at that point in time simply declined to take on an additional Palestinian refugee population, in part because it was politically unviable in Egypt in particular, which was mooted as a possible destination for a mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza,” he said.

Al-Arian said Palestinians themselves would not be interested in such a proposal by Trump. “They know all too well what it means to leave their home and what the status of Palestinian refugees has looked like for the past 70 years,” he said.

Meanwhile, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich welcomed Trump’s idea to relocate Gaza’s residents to Egypt and Jordan.

“The idea of helping them find other places to start a better life is a great idea. After years of glorifying terrorism, they will be able to establish new and good lives in other places,” Smotrich said in a statement.

“Only out-of-the-box thinking with new solutions will bring a solution of peace and security,” he said.

“I will, with God’s help, work with the prime minister and the cabinet to ensure there is an operational plan to implement this as soon as possible,” Smotrich said.

For Palestinians, any attempt to move them from Gaza would evoke dark memories of what they call the “Nakba” or catastrophe – the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948.

Egypt has previously warned against any “forced displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza into the Sinai desert, which el-Sisi said could jeopardise the peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel in 1979.

Jordan is already home to around 2.3 million registered Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations.

Sending 2,000-pound bombs

Israel’s 15-month war on the Palestinian enclave has killed more than 47,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, though residents and activists say the actual toll could be much higher. Israel’s ferocious bombardment has also destroyed much of the territory’s civilian infrastructure, with the United Nations estimating the reconstruction will take many years.

However, Trump also said he has ended his predecessor’s hold on sending 2,000-pound (907kg) bombs to Israel. “We released them today,” Trump said of the bombs. “They’ve been waiting for them for a long time.”

Asked why he lifted the ban on those bombs, Trump responded, “Because they bought them.”

Then-President Joe Biden had put a hold on the delivery of those bombs due to concerns over the effect they could have on the civilian population.

A 2,000-pound bomb has a destruction radius of 35 metres (115 feet), according to the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA).

The US has historically supplied substantial foreign aid to Israel; a total of $297bn (adjusted for inflation) between 1946 and 2023, $216bn of which was in military aid and $81bn in economic aid, according to data from the US Agency for International Aid (USAID).

Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US aid since its founding.

A ceasefire in Gaza went into effect a week ago and has led to the release of some Israeli captives in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

In the West Bank, Trump is giving Netanyahu a free hand to blow up the region

Trump’s UN ambassador pick says Israel has ‘biblical right’ to West Bank

Where does Donald Trump stand on Israel, Palestine and the Middle East?

Former president’s tenure in office upended decades of bipartisan foreign policy and prioritised war profiteering under guise of being anti-war

By Umar A Farooq in Washington
25 October 2024

On 18 September 2024, former US President Donald Trump made an appearance in the Michigan city of Hamtramck and met with the town’s Yemeni Muslim mayor, Amer Ghalib, and other leaders in the city.

The visit, not to mention Ghalib’s official endorsement of Trump for the upcoming November presidential election, would have been unheard of in the 2020 or 2016 race for the White House, when the majority of Muslims in the US voted for the Democrat Party.

However, amid the Israeli war on Gaza and the Biden administration’s full support of Israel’s war efforts, which have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and destroyed most of Gaza’s infrastructure, Trump has painted himself as the better alternative to Muslim and Arab voters outraged at the war, which is now over a year long.

And even more recently, Trump has further dug into this argument after Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, received the endorsement of former Congresswoman Liz Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney was an architect of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

“Why would Muslims support Lyin’ Kamala Harris when she embraces Muslim hating Liz Cheney, a total loser, whose father brought years of war, and death, to the Middle East???” Trump said on Truth Social.

But at the same time, Trump has attacked Biden and his opponent Harris by claiming that they are holding Israel back from being able to achieve its war aims in Gaza.

Legal experts, rights groups, and several countries have labelled Israel’s actions in its war on Gaza as a genocide.

Trump also made it clear that despite his party’s emphasis on free speech protections, he viewed the ongoing mass pro-Palestinian mobilisation on American streets with absolute vitriol, and painted a grim picture of how he would treat any criticism of Israel, if he were to be elected again.

“We have the Palestinians and we have everybody else rioting all over the place. You talk about Charlottesville. This is one hundred times Charlottesville,” Trump said during a presidential debate in July, equating pro-Palestinian activism with a 2017 attack by White supremacists in Virginia.

Current polling has both Trump and Harris neck and neck, with Harris up by just under two points, according to the polling aggregator, FiveThirtyEight.

Trump’s previous tenure in the Oval Office was full of contentious and sporadic moments, with his foreign policy decisions upending decades of bipartisan approaches to the military and diplomacy.

He has already promised to bring back a version of the Muslim ban, and this time would extend the immigration ban to include an “ideological screening” to weed out immigrants who sympathise with the Palestinian group Hamas.

The campaign promises he has made for a second term already emulate his previous remarks in 2016, when he said: “Islam hates us”.

His tenure in office was also centred around an approach that favoured financial interests above all, revealing major concerns about the Trump family’s business stakes in the Middle East, which have skyrocketed since his mandate ended.

With the Middle East being entrenched in the largest conflict since the Iraq War, a look at Trump’s policies in the region can help create an understanding of its dynamics and perceived contradictions, much of which was unchanged by the Biden camp. It can also help understand what could happen in a potential second term for Trump.

The ‘most pro-Israel’ US president ever

The 7 October Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel were seen widely by the western world, particularly in the US, as a shock and a case of random terror unleashed by Palestinians.

But as Palestinian analysts have laid out, the war was a manifestation of a number of factors, including the dire economic situation in Gaza, repeated attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian land and also by the pushing of a potential deal to normalise ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

A look at Trump’s first year in office shows that the former president disrupted longstanding political positions in the Middle East, and at the centre of those policy shifts, was Israel.

Trump received, and still continues to receive, major backing from the US evangelical Zionist movement. The Christian Zionist movement is a major force in conservative politics, experts told Middle East Eye during Trump’s presidency.

And it was clear early on that Trump planned to make moves to energise that base. With the help of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and his lawyer Jason Greenblatt, the administration went to work to see how they could further aid Israel.

Trump ended his first year in office with a landmark foreign policy move to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The decision broke from a decades-long bipartisan policy for US presidents to abstain from making the assertion, and the move was met with outrage from segments of the international community, including the Arab and Muslim world.

The businessman-turned-president then capitalised on this move months later by moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

In March 2019, he signed an executive order recognising Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

His policy shifts on Israel didn’t just focus on Israel’s claims on occupied land either, as the Trump administration also withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council, citing that the international body showed negative bias when it came to Israel.

One of his last moves in favour of Israel was to declare that products from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank had to be labelled “Made in Israel”.

Trump also moved to further weaken the position of Palestinian leadership.

Ahead of recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Trump shuttered the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s office in Washington DC. His administration also cut $200m of funds to the Palestinian Authority, the governing body for the occupied West Bank.

After leaving office in 2021, reporters released snippets of Trump’s conversations within the White House, which painted a picture that made it seem Trump had more scorn for Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu than Palestininian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Yet the policies pursued by Trump broke away from decades of American precedent, in order to aid Israel, as it continued to breach international law with the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Over the past few months, he has made some limited criticism of Israel’s war efforts in Gaza, saying that Israel is “losing the PR war”. But he has continued to posit himself as a better friend to Israel than Biden or Harris.

As was evident during the first major debate between the two political rivals, Trump lambasted Harris over her Israel policy and said that Israel would be destroyed by a Harris presidency.

While media reports have said Harris is more sympathetic towards Palestinians, she has continued to support Israel’s war efforts and said she would make no break from Biden’s approach to Israel.

The overwhelming majority of decisions Trump made on Israel while in office were not reversed by the Biden-Harris administration.

Art of the deal

Part of what set Trump apart from the last several US presidents was how he pursued diplomacy in a manner similar to how he approached his business empire. In the words of his best-selling book, it was done through the “art of the deal”.

He took office and immediately exited international treaties he viewed as terrible business deals, such as the Paris Climate Accord and the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).

“I have long contended that Nafta was perhaps the worst trade deal ever made,” Trump said in October 2018.

This approach was no different in the Middle East, where his administration approached the region with a market-oriented lens, while also hiring Iran hawks like John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor, and Mike Pompeo, his CIA director-turned-chief diplomat.

However, like several of his business ventures that went bankrupt, many of his foreign policy moves achieved little and turned sour.

Trump followed through on a campaign promise and exited the Iran nuclear deal, a watershed agreement brokered by the previous administration of Barack Obama which sought to limit Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions on Tehran.

The reimposition of those sanctions sent Iran’s economy into a spiral, and despite a perfunctory attempt by the Biden administration to restart nuclear negotiations, the deal remains broken to this day.

While the Trump administration claimed that the nuclear deal was enabling Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, under the parameters of the agreement Tehran was only allowed to enrich uranium up until 3.67 percent purity. Since breaking from the deal, Iran has enriched up to 60 percent purity.

And Trump’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organisation further complicated US attempts to facilitate diplomacy in the region, where authorities in countries like Iraq or Lebanon interact with the IRGC.

And despite those US sanctions crippling Tehran’s economy, the Iranian military has emerged as a desirable merchant for armed drones, with a major customer being Russia.

The bedrock deal of Trump’s Middle East portfolio came in the result of a series of agreements normalising ties between Israel and four Arab countries: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.

But those deals, which were largely seen as throwing Palestinians under the bus for marginal economic gain, have since been received positively by only a minority of the signatory countries’ populations, as protests against Israel erupted across the Arab world.

Nonetheless, in Washington, the normalisation agreements were met with major bipartisan approval, including from Trump’s own critics. And since Biden came into office, his administration has been working to build upon those deals by trying to broker an agreement that would normalise relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Then, there was the self-touted “Deal of the Century”, an 181-page plan surmised by Kushner and several others in the administration that Trump said would finally “solve” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It offered Palestinians economic incentives if they were to accept a state with limited sovereignty, which would be subject to Israeli control. Meanwhile, Israel would be allowed to annex 87 percent of the land that it currently controls in the occupied West Bank.

The plan was never signed into agreement, despite being pushed and marketed by the administration for years.

The business-minded approach to foreign policy came as Trump’s own family had financial interests in the Middle East. And those interests have grown considerably since he left office.

In November 2022, the Trump Organization inked a deal roughly worth $1.6bn to license its name for a housing and golf complex in Oman, and the complex would be built by a Saudi real estate developer.

Just this year, the Trump Organization signed another major deal, this time to build a luxury residential tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Outside of the real estate business, Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former senior White House advisor, has created a private equity firm that has secured hundreds of millions of dollars from Gulf states. That is on top of the $2bn he received from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

The glaring business interests of Trump’s family will be on full display if Trump returns to office in 2025.

Anti-war but pro-war profiteering

Trump often has referred to himself as the anti-war president and has boasted about how the US did not get involved in any additional wars abroad during his tenure.

He did work to withdraw some troops from the Middle East, while calling for an end to the war in Afghanistan.

In March 2019, Trump declared the Islamic State (IS) militant group defeated after capturing an enclave of the group in Syria, and several months later in October, the US killed IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a raid by American forces.

Yet despite Trump spending the last several months boasting about being a president that brought peace and not war, several sporadic Trump decisions could have seen the US get further entangled into conflict in the region.

Trump ordered the launch of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat air base in Syria, which is controlled by the Bashar al-Assad government. And in a surprise move, Trump, on 3 January 2020, ordered a drone strike that killed senior Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

The assassination caused widespread fear that a war could break out between Iran and the US, but Tehran retaliated with a calculated barrage of rocket fire that injured several US servicemembers but killed no one.

Trump can credit himself with not starting any additional protracted conflicts in the Middle East, but he was eager to sell arms to countries at war while also being okay with greenlighting the launching of military operations in other countries – so long as Washington was not involved.

As Saudi Arabia was leading a military coalition of Arab allies in a war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Trump used his first visit as president to visit the Saudi kingdom, where he announced a staggering $110bn arms deal with Riyadh.

The deal was an exaggeration, and largely referred to contracts and defence agreements that were already on the books and some new ones that were proposed.

Still, the president continued to push through arms deals to Gulf countries, including bypassing Congress to advance an $8bn arms sale to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the UAE. He also lifted a ban on selling the Saudi kingdom precision-guided bombs, and over the years sold Riyadh hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the munitions.

While Republicans currently scorn Biden for sending billions of dollars to Ukraine, Trump had actually sold Kyiv lethal arms, including anti-tank weapons, prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Befriending Middle East leaders

As a world leader and public figure, Trump brought a markedly different presence to the Middle East.

While US news outlets were filled with reports of how European and other western leaders didn’t mesh with his style of leadership, he was received warmly by many in the Middle East and elsewhere, from monarchs and autocrats to democratically elected leaders.

His first trip abroad as president began with a stop in Saudi Arabia, which resulted in the viral photo of Trump, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Saudi King Salman holding onto a glowing orb.

And those friendly ties appeared to remain despite Trump’s occasional attacks on those leaders.

He once referred to Sisi as “my favourite dictator” during a meeting at a G7 summit. He previously praised Sisi as a great leader, but in the same light referred to the Egyptian president as a “killer”.

The relationship between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a prime example of this dynamic.

In August 2018, the US administration sanctioned Turkey over the detention of American pastor Andrew Brunson. At the time, it was a rare rebuke from the US towards its Nato ally.

The following year in July 2019, the US kicked Turkey out of the joint F-35 fighter jet programme, over Ankara’s purchase of Russia’s S-400 air defence systems. The move furthered a growing rift between the two allies.

Several months later in October, Trump wrote a letter to Erdogan, threatening to destroy the Turkish economy if Turkey does not agree to “a good deal”. That same month, Trump gave the green light for Turkey to launch a major incursion into northern Syria that would push out fighters with the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

But the next month in November 2019, Trump and Erdogan met in person at the White House and the former US president said he was a “big fan” of the Turkish leader.

“You’re doing a fantastic job for the people of Turkey,” Trump said at the time.

In contrast, the relationship between Erdogan and Biden has been cold. And while a visit by Turkey’s president to Washington was scheduled for earlier this year, it has since been postponed.

The shadow of Jamal Khashoggi

Human rights activists and organisations will always remember the Trump administration for how it navigated the fallout of the Saudi kingdom’s murder of Washington Post and Middle East Eye columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

On 2 October 2018, a group of Saudi operatives killed and dismembered Khashoggi within minutes of him entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. He had gone there to retrieve documents in order to marry his fiancee.

The killing sent shockwaves throughout the world, and quickly became one of the top news stories as it created a diplomatic crisis between Saudi Arabia, Turkey where he was killed, and the United States where Khashoggi held US residency.

Fingers immediately pointed to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder, with rights groups calling for the Saudi de facto leader to be isolated on the international stage.

US lawmakers were quick to pen a letter to Trump that would trigger the Global Magnitsky Act, a law used to sanction countries for major human rights violations.

Trump, however, was quick to come to Mohammed bin Salman and Riyadh’s defence, saying that whether or not the crown prince had knowledge of the killing, the “United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia”.

Ties between Washington and Riyadh were not affected by the killing during the Trump administration, with Trump repeatedly iterating that Saudi Arabia and Mohammed bin Salman have “been a very good ally”.

Years later in a book released by journalist Bob Woodward, Trump boasted about helping Mohammed bin Salman in the fallout of the killing, saying “I saved his ass”.

“I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop,” Trump told Woodward.

Trump and Mohammed bin Salman spoke several months ago in a phone call. And while the topic of the conversation was unclear, the public interaction showed the relationship between the two leaders extends beyond Trump’s time in the White House.

Tag: Egypt