Trump's plan is only a minor obstacle to Netanyahu's vision of emptying Gaza

It is impossible to understand Monday’s joint news conference held by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the American 20-point plan to end the genocide in Gaza outside of the general context in which the event took place. 

It came a week after the UN summit in New York, which discussed a French-Saudi proposal to recognise a Palestinian state, and amid intensified international criticism and boycotts targeting Israel. 

This, in turn, has fuelled Israeli criticisms of the war amid fears of the economic consequences - a shift from cultural isolation to economic isolation, which has coalesced with EU discussions on suspending trade deals with Israel amid the Gaza genocide.

Against this backdrop, Netanyahu faces a set of profound challenges. 

On one hand, as a committed neoliberal who understands Israel’s dependence on western power and open markets, he knows the dangers of international isolation. 

On the other hand, he sees a historic opportunity: unprecedented public support within Israel’s right wing for realising an old-new Zionist fantasy - the expulsion of Palestinians, especially in Gaza, decades after the 1967 occupation, when Israel promoted programmes and migration offices in Gaza in an attempt to convince the population to leave. 

Time, however, is his greatest constraint. After two years of brutal warfare, Hamas has not collapsed, and Trump is overstretched by crises of his own making - from a trade war with China, to the quagmire in Ukraine, to rising tensions with Venezuela and mounting criticisms at home over his blind support for Israel. 

Netanyahu must therefore strike a delicate balance: satisfying a coalition that dreams of ethnic cleansing, while providing Trump with a political deliverable to deflect international and domestic pressure.

Expelling Palestinians

Netanyahu understands the complex balance between delivering for a right-wing government that indulges fantasies of expelling the entire Palestinian population of Gaza (and thus creating a precedent for the occupied West Bank), and appeasing an American president facing significant domestic and international criticism over Gaza.

In substance, the proposal presented this week is hardly new; as former Biden administration negotiator Brett McGurk has noted, it mirrors phase two of the previous ceasefire deal implemented this past January and terminated by Israel in March - only this time wrapped in Arab and Muslim endorsements. 

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Yet that support was explicitly conditional on the eventual creation of a Palestinian state. Trump and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s proposed administration of Gaza was meant to be temporary, paving the way for Gaza’s integration with the West Bank. 

Thus, we are not surprised that the Pakistani foreign minister declared that the Trump plan presented was not the draft that had been shown and agreed upon by the Arab and Muslim states.

Netanyahu’s address to the Israeli public, in which he said that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority (PA) would be allowed to rule Gaza, deliberately obscured that fact.

Nothing says that in the future, Israel will not succeed - especially given its efforts to destroy anything that makes life possible in Gaza

As Netanyahu enters an election year, he is willing to do anything to reduce the pressure and get more time from the Americans - even apologising to the prime minister of Qatar after the Israeli attack on Doha earlier this month, despite this being perceived as a sign of weakness among his voter base. He is ready to keep maneuvering.

Anyone who followed Netanyahu’s performance at the UN can easily dismiss the speech as rich in cheap gimmicks and simplistic slogans that divide the world into good and evil. But the speech, similar to the recent interviews he’s given on American podcasts, aimed to justify not only the genocide, but also the expulsion of Palestinians.

Netanyahu recognises the trend in the Israeli and global right to receive news through alternative platforms, rather than through mainstream media channels, with no real journalist to push back against his absurd claims and ideas. 

The proposal itself is one that he could have accepted many months ago, thus averting the unnecessary killing of thousands more Palestinians, and perhaps securing the release of more living hostages. Yet he remains consistent with his endgame: the expulsion of Palestinians.

Grim options

Unlike in the previous joint news conference between Trump and Netanyahu in February, the idea of a Gaza population transfer did not reappear explicitly this time around - but that does not mean it’s dead. 

Recent documents that have emerged from the White House about Gaza’s future, and publications by Israeli research institutes, show that there are very serious people with resources being allocated to realise this idea. Apparently, the only reason it has not been implemented is the lack of willingness of Arab states - mainly Egypt - and other countries to accept Palestinian refugees into their territories. 

But nothing says that in the future, Israel will not succeed - especially given its efforts to destroy anything that makes life possible in Gaza.

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Moreover, it is easy to drop the last clause of the 20-point plan, wherein the US would act to promote dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis. The Israeli side sees this as a significant tool in its attempt to create the impression of coexistence - a tool with which it will fight the boycott movement sweeping Europe, while the dialogue yields nothing but propaganda for Israeli public diplomacy.

And once the immediate pressures lift, under the leadership of Trump and Blair, we will surely see the advancement of more programmes for expelling Palestinians - whether stemming from Zionist ideology, or purely the monetisation of Palestinian suffering.

Perhaps most troubling is Trump’s determination to sideline not only Hamas, but the entire Palestinian national movement, excluding the PA from negotiations and effectively privatising the Palestinian question in the hands of international corporations and foreign administrators. Palestinians are left with two grim options: the continued dismantling of their national movement, or the unbearable price of millions of lives.

So while everyone waits for Hamas’s response to the 20-point plan, the position and response of the PA will also be crucial.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.