Beaming alongside Donald Trump at a Press conference in the White House on Tuesday, Benjamin Netanyahu put it best.
‘You see things others refuse to see,’ the Israeli PM told the US President. ‘You say things others refuse to say. And after the jaws drop, people scratch their heads and they say: “You know, he’s right”.’
In a few short minutes, Trump had just upended decades of received wisdom about the Middle East.
The US, he declared, was going to ‘take over’ and ‘own’ Gaza – using military force if necessary – in order to rebuild it following the devastation wrought by Israeli bombardment since October 7, 2023.
Gazans would be offered the chance to move to Egypt, Jordan or another Arab state. Hamas’s weapons, bombs and tunnels would be destroyed for ever – and the strip would become ‘the Riviera of the Middle East’.
Liberal commentators could barely contain themselves as they spoke of ‘ethnic cleansing’.
The BBC was practically hysterical. Sky News’s International Affairs Editor Dominic Waghorn – supposedly regulated by Ofcom to be ‘duly impartial’ – harrumphed that Trump was ‘ignorant in the history and ways of the Middle East’ and claimed that his remarks would ‘embolden far-right Jewish extremists’ (a telling phrase, you might think).
They are all dead wrong. It’s difficult to overstate the bravery and sheer strategic genius of what Trump has said. If our world changed after 9/11, so too it changed on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump outlined an extraordinary new plan for the Middle East on Tuesday, with the United States taking over the war-torn Gaza strip while its Palestinian population is moved to neighboring countries
‘All they see is death and destruction and rubble and demolished buildings falling all over,’ Trump said while claiming Gaza could be turned into a ‘magnificent area’
President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel hold a news conference in the East Room of the White House
Trump was born in 1946. For almost his entire life, America’s approach to Gaza has been the same – and wrought the same dispiriting results.
A ‘two-state solution’ may have been a noble ambition, but history has exposed it as a fantasy. The Palestinians have rejected all opportunities to make peace – instead embracing terror at virtually every opportunity since the foundation of Israel in 1948.
In 1993, under President Clinton, the Oslo Accords were heralded as a breakthrough – but they proved another false dawn.
Seven years later, Yasser Arafat rejected Israel’s offer of a free Palestinian state and his people again began murdering Israelis in the Second Intifada.
All that – and worse – could now be over. Trump has refused to continue spouting the palpable fiction that a ‘peace deal’ – really a ceasefire by another name – is the only acceptable goal for the region.
He has addressed the fundamental point that the cycle of violence and radicalisation in Gaza has to end and has proposed a radical solution to bring this about.
Instead of breeding another generation of militants – funded by the mullahs of Iran – who hate America and the West, Trump wants to give capitalism the chance to work its magic.
‘Everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs,’ said Trump, the man who helped build New York’s skyline.
The idea of high-rise hotels, shopping centres and boulevards might seem surreal for the flattened Strip but you might have said the same of Dubai half a century ago.
In his vision, US reconstruction would create thousands of jobs and spare Palestinians the pain and expense of rebuilding once again
Trump stressed Gaza’s Mediterranean coastline would be turned into the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’
Capitalism, Trump knows, is the greatest force for good the world has ever seen.
When people are given the chance to make something of their lives in freedom, they grab it and don’t look back. Just glance at Israel – a hi-tech hub built from nothing in a few short generations, with world-leading businesses.
Then consider Gaza. The Strip has wonderful natural resources, but under Hamas, its people have been brutalised and its economic potential destroyed.
Trump hopes to reverse all this and his plan has been years in the making.
Its seeds were sown in 2020 during his first term, when he engineered the Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab countries: Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco and Sudan.
Until the accords, those who had built their careers as ‘experts’ in the Middle East insisted there could never be a deal between Israel and its Arab neighbours until a Palestinian state had been agreed.
Overnight, Trump showed up the idiocy of their approach. So much for being ‘ignorant about the Middle East’.
It’s now obvious to America’s Arab allies that if they want to remain friendly with Uncle Sam, they will need to step up to the plate and join in rebuilding Gaza – housing its population into the bargain if necessary.
Egypt and Jordan can no longer ignore the problem on their doorstep.
And the Saudis will be getting the message that they need to recognise Israel as a state come what may or risk a crisis in US-Saudi relations – the last thing their dictator Mohammed bin Salman wants.
Of course, huge questions remain. Which Gazans will be relocated and to where?
How will Hamas’s remaining arms stores be destroyed? Will Trump really risk the lives of US troops to defend Gaza, thousands of miles across the seas? How will the territory be run?
No one has easy answers. But the crucial point is that Trump has remade the rules overnight.
Not for nothing have some cheekily rechristened the Gaza Strip ‘the Maga Strip’.
A new world is unfolding and after so many years watching the mire of Arab-Israeli relations, I feel thrilled to be witnessing it.
Stephen Pollard is former editor of the Jewish Chronicle.
