Following his inauguration on January 20, US President Donald Trump did not hit the ground running; he hit it barreling.
In a whirlwind of executive actions and statements, Trump seemed determined to set the tone of his presidency not in his first 100 days, but in the first few hundred hours.
Some moves, like pulling out of the World Health Organization and shutting down federal diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, went into effect with the stroke of his pen. Others, like reviewing all foreign aid and ordering deportations of illegal immigrants, set broader processes in motion. And still others, like blocking all federal grants, were challenged in court and quickly rescinded.
This torrent of activity is steering the US on a sharply different course, but it is not immediately clear what is real and what is aspirational, what policies will hold, and which ones will crash against reality’s jagged rocks.
TRUMP’S COMMENTS this week about wanting to see some countries take in Gazan refugees – he specifically mentioned Jordan and Egypt, while some news reports also said that he had Indonesia and Albania in mind as well – fall squarely into that uncertain category.
Is this a concrete plan? A serious policy proposal? Or is it just another instance of Trump speaking unfiltered?
Trump first broached the idea – hitherto largely the domain of Israel’s far Right – in a press gaggle on Saturday aboard Air Force One.
Asked about a phone conversation with Jordan’s King Abdullah, the president began by praising the king, saying he’s done a “wonderful job,” and noting that Jordan houses “millions of Palestinians in a very humane way.”
Then he added: “I said to him, ‘I’d love you to take on more.’ Because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess.”
He went on: “You have to take people,” and added that he would like Egypt to “take people” as well.
Referring to Gaza’s population, Trump estimated “probably a million and a half people,” and suggested: “We just clean out that whole thing. It’s – you know, it’s – over the centuries, that’s – that’s many, many conflicts, that site. And I don’t know. Something has to happen, but it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything is demolished, and people are dying there. So, I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”
Those comments – he said this arrangement could be temporary or long-term – triggered an immediate backlash, with Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas all saying, albeit politely, that this was a nonstarter.
Yet despite that resistance, Trump doubled down two days later, saying he had also discussed the matter with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and that “hopefully he will take some of them.”
Trump framed the idea as a way to relocate Gazans “to an area where they can live without disruption and revolution and violence,” and that this relocation would “get people living in areas that are a lot safer and maybe a lot better and maybe a lot more comfortable.”
WHETHER OR not this is a well-formed plan, whether any real thought or staff work has gone into the idea or how it would be implemented, by even mentioning the idea publicly – and then repeating it a second time – Trump has removed it from the purview of the Israeli radical Right and introduced it into mainstream discourse. That alone is no small shift.
Consider the following: On November 13, 2023, two MKs at the time – the Likud’s Danny Danon, since appointed Israel’s ambassador to the UN, and Yesh Atid’s Ram Ben Barak – penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal recommending that to ease the suffering in Gaza, Western countries – which in the past have shown a willingness to absorb millions of refugees from war-torn areas – demonstrate that same willingness and take in refugees from Gaza as a solution to the humanitarian crisis there. This was written just over a month after the Hamas massacre.
“One idea is for countries around the world to accept limited numbers of Gazan families who have expressed a desire to relocate,” they wrote.
The two emphasized they were speaking of Gaza residents who seek relocation – not that they were advocating any type of forced transfer. It didn’t matter; they were pilloried in predictable circles, especially the centrist Ben Barak.
Here’s an example from the intro to an op-ed in Haaretz: “A call in The Wall Street Journal by MK Ram Ben Barak, former deputy head of the Mossad, for European countries to take in Gazan refugees is just a prettified version of ethnic cleansing, irresponsibly collapsing the distinction between centrists and the racist zealots of the Israeli far Right.”
Trump’s alignment
By this logic, Trump, too, has now aligned himself with the “racist zealots of the Israeli far Right.”
Except he hasn’t.
What he has done is offer – serious or not – an outside-the-box idea to an existing problem, an alternative way of looking at a solution beyond the rigid orthodoxies on the table. And rethinking entrenched assumptions isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
At his core, Trump is a real estate mogul who looks at things from that worldview: when a neighborhood is in ruins, move residents out, rebuild, and then either bring them back or repurpose the space. That same logic seems to underlie his current thinking about Gaza.
Are the Egyptians and Jordanians going to take in hundreds of thousands of Gazan refugees? Are Albania and Indonesia going to set up “Little Khan Yunis” in Jakarta or Tirana? Do the Gazans want to leave?
Highly doubtful. But Trump has shown that he is willing to use his leverage to get countries to bend to his will: just look at how quickly the president of Colombia reversed course and accepted planes of its deported nationals this week, after Trump threatened tariffs and other penalties if Colombia did not go along.
But even if nothing comes of this idea, Trump’s willingness to float an alternative to the standard diplomatic framework is notable.
One of the biggest obstacles plaguing Mideast diplomacy is the global fixation on a single paradigm: a two-state solution, with a Palestinian state – with its capital in Jerusalem – comprising nearly all of the West Bank and Gaza, and a “safe passage” linking the two.
But after October 7, does anyone realistically believe the Israeli public is going to agree to a safe passage for Gazans through its territory to Judea and Samaria?
Does anyone seriously think there is any appetite, or will be an appetite for a generation, for such a corridor after Thursday’s chilling images of Arbel Yehud and 80-year-old Gadi Moses, two hostages pulled from their homes and held hostage for nearly 500 days, being tormented on their way to freedom by the same Gazans who would use that safe passage?
And yet, despite the obvious shift in realities, “two states” remains the mantra.
All other proposals – such as a federation with Jordan or creative land swaps involving Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan – have been dismissed as unworkable. The only acceptable framework, diplomats and politicians worldwide say over and over, is the two-state framework.
Trump’s suggestion challenges that rigidity. It forces people to consider or at least talk about alternative solutions to problems, even if this one may ultimately be unfeasible.
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Before Trump took office in 2017, bringing with him a Mideast team able to look at the issues with a fresh set of eyes – not locked into the mindset of the Oslo “peace processors” – no one imagined that Arab states would normalize relations with Israel before there was a comprehensive peace with the Palestinians based on two states.
Former secretary of state John Kerry famously declared in 2016 that such a “separate peace” would never happen. “Everybody needs to understand that. That is a hard reality.”
Yet, it did happen, because people were able to consider different suggestions, ideas, and solutions.
The Abraham Accords became a reality not because conventional diplomats willed them into existence, but because people were willing to challenge the assumptions that had long dominated policy circles.
Perhaps Trump’s comments presage another such moment.
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