Trump, Netanyahu and the reordering of the Middle East

First published in Arabic at Al-Quds al-Arabi. Translation from Gilbert Achcar's blog.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, too many commentators in the international media continue to portray Donald Trump as eager for a peaceful settlement to the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. They even expect him to arm-twist Benjamin Netanyahu into accepting terms that the latter dislikes. The truth is that unofficial reports of differences in viewpoints between the two men, and of the US president imposing “peace” on the Israeli Prime Minister are, at best, false rumours suiting both of them: the former to maintain the image of a “peacemaker” that he markets to the “isolationist” segment of his electoral base, which opposes the United States engaging in wars that they believe it has no interest in (not to mention his dream of winning the Nobel Peace Prize, a product of his childlike jealousy of Barack Obama); the latter, Netanyahu, in order to invoke pressure from his US patron to silence his extremist coalition partners and the more extreme segment of his electoral base, whenever he deviates from their desire to unequivocally complete the 1948 Nakba’s “ethnic cleansing” on the whole land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

One of the ironies of the irrational belief in Trump’s peaceful intentions is that delusional commentators still portray him as having imposed “peace” with Iran on Netanyahu, despite his decision to participate in the aggression against that country, thus complementing the war waged by the Zionist state. The complementarity of roles between Trump and Netanyahu should be clear to everyone. Israel was in dire need of the ceasefire that followed the “Twelve-Day War” due to depleted weapons stockpile, rising costs, and exhaustion. Furthermore, there is no doubt that the aftermath of the war is nothing more than a truce during which the Trump administration seeks to continue pressuring the “Islamic Republic” to surrender to the terms dictated by Washington. Since the truce went into effect, Trump has repeatedly declared that Iran has suffered a major defeat and has no choice but to surrender. This is the primary concern behind Netanyahu’s third visit to Washington since Trump’s re-election, as he wants to ensure that the new administration maintains its insistence on strictly limiting Tehran’s military and nuclear activities.

As for the Palestinian issue, the other major concern surrounding Netanyahu’s visit, one of the oddities of the aforementioned belief is that a large number of media commentators continue to portray Trump as someone who will clip the wings of the Israeli government and force it to make “peace” with the Palestinians, when in fact, it is Trump who has allowed this government to freely and openly plan to deport Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Reuters monitored Trump’s statements on this matter and counted at least twelve occasions since his return to the White House in which he called for the deportation of Gazans, sometimes accompanied by veiled threats to Egypt and Jordan to receive the displaced.

There is no more striking example of how some people cling to the wind and insist on projecting their desires onto reality than Hamas leaders’ continued betting on Trump, relying on Bishara Bahbah, the Palestinian-American academic who founded the Arab Americans for Trump group and who previously served as a political advisor to Yasser Arafat and participated in the negotiations that followed the 1993 Oslo Accords. As if Hamas is determined to fall in the same trap twice, if not more, it is repeating the scenario of the previous truce that followed Trump’s second inauguration at the beginning of this year. Israel quickly ended the truce after its first phase, which included a prisoner exchange with the Palestinian movement, and resumed its advance in the Gaza Strip to further its destruction and the displacement of its population.

Hamas is once again clinging to its demands, including most importantly a definitive ceasefire guaranteed by the United States and the Israeli army’s evacuation of the Gaza Strip. These demands are portrayed by the Trump administration and Netanyahu as impossible conditions intended to prevent an agreement. In reality, they are but the product of Hamas leaders’ delusions that the US administration is prepared to impose such conditions on Israel. According to US press reports, the negotiations between Netanyahu and Trump and his administration include their joint project to gather Gazans in a “humanitarian city” in the southern Gaza Strip, on the ruins of Rafah. This would pave the way for the deportation of those who could be transported outside the Strip and for the remainder to be caught in what would constitute an open-air concentration camp, much worse than the one that has existed throughout the Strip since the Israeli army occupied it in 1967, and particularly since Hamas seized power there in 2007.

In this regard, a larger variety of options is being negotiated not only between the US and Israeli governments, but also with Washington’s allies among the Arab Gulf states, along with Egypt and Jordan. Trump’s goal, shared by his buddy Netanyahu, is to reach a purported settlement to the Palestinian issue based on the creation of a “Palestinian entity” (to use the term of former US President Ronald Reagan in 1982), comprising Palestinian population enclaves in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, surrounded by Israeli military bases and settlements, similar to what is currently in place in the West Bank. Among the topics under negotiation is which Palestinian “authority” will be entrusted with overseeing the residents of these enclaves: the current Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority or a modified version of it (as most Arab countries hope), or some other formula (which Israel would like to achieve in cooperation with the United Arab Emirates and their Palestinian client Mohammed Dahlan)? Another topic is who will directly control the Gazans: the Israeli army (a prospect rejected by a large segment of its command, who have learned since the 1988 Intifada how difficult it is to control a rebellious population), or Arab forces on a temporary mission until local forces of Palestinian agents of the new regional order are empowered? This is the Middle East that Trump and Netanyahu envision, with the Saudi kingdom — and even the new Syrian government — joining the “normalization” process, thus realizing the comprehensive regional alliance under US hegemony that Washington has sought to achieve since its first war on Iraq in 1991.