Trump's astonishment

In an interview with Fox News, US President Donald Trump said he was "surprised" that Jordan and Egypt opposed the plan to deport the people of Gaza. Is Trump's surprise because they failed to appreciate sufficiently a plan that seems to him very reasonable, rational and even quite profitable, or because they were unwilling to pay a price in return for "the billions of dollars in aid given to these two countries every year," as he also put it in the same speech?

The main emphasis in his remarks appears to be on this second point. Although Israel takes the lion's share of the foreign aid the United States gives, Jordan and Egypt are right behind it. Of course, since the aid given to these two countries also aims at making them neutral toward Israel, in truth this aid can also be considered indirectly given to Israel again. In fact the aid the United States gives is not given to these two countries just for the sake of aid, so that they develop, so that a little money comes to their pockets. The United States and Israel already receive more than enough in return.

Now, what Trump, under Israel's pressure as well, wants from Jordan and Egypt goes far beyond the limits of the quid pro quo exchange conducted with these two countries until now. For these two countries to accept the Gazans is something that makes it difficult for them to play the role assigned to them even within the scope of Israel's security. The greatest hesitation of both countries about accepting the people of Gaza in their own countries is that the Gazans would be seen as a danger to their own regimes. Neither Jordan nor Egypt can risk this. Despite this, to press them on this matter means playing with all the balances. What these two countries shy away from is not only the potential threat the Gazans harbor, but also that, if they accepted their deportation, they would have difficulty explaining it to their own peoples.

Otherwise, in fact both are at a distance from saying to Trump "if only, the shop is yours." But the whole world witnessed the difficulty the King of Jordan had at the press conference with Trump. Trump was asking of him, as someone he could not say no to, an impossible thing to which he could never say yes. Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was even forced to postpone a planned trip to the US so as not to fall into the same situation.

Trump's statement to Fox TV must have made him feel that he had pressed both leaders too far. Therefore, although he expresses his surprise, he is in fact at the same time surprised at how such a beautiful, perfect, reasonable, highly profitable plan, one that everyone would be pleased with, was not accepted. He had already shown the same surprise earlier toward the Gazans as at Egypt's and Jordan's failure to appreciate this plan. What possible reasons could the Gazans have to live in this region where even the most basic conditions for living are destroyed? On the contrary, when offered alternatives in which they would live in much better conditions, they surely ought to prefer them.

Trump evidently thinks that concepts such as homeland, Jerusalem, history and identity should have no importance for the Gazans. Why, by the way, should things that ought not to matter to them matter to Israelis? It is quite clear that neither Trump nor any other Westerner has ever confronted this Orientalist and Zionist question. These lands are very important for Israel because they are human, and moreover chosen human beings, and because these lands have been sanctified and given to them by their God. Yet there should be no reason tying the Palestinians to these lands. For them, no piece of land should be any different from any other.

But the resistance the Palestinian people have shown since 1948 has shown that the land is even more sacred for Palestinians than it is for Israelis. Above all, everyone saw with what longing the people of Gaza, after 471 days of genocide and forced deportation, returned to the ruins of their own homes on the day the ceasefire was declared. This scene is of course astonishing, but it must surely be teaching Trump very different things from what he has memorized until now.

Trump's surprise also heralds a turn away from the deportation plan he proposed for Gaza. In fact, contrary to what is supposed, the bet Trump opened from a quite high, even radical, level has begun to recede as its impossibility has been seen with the passage of time. While even Trump says his plan is wonderful but that he will not impose it, only recommend it, a decline is also observed in the intensity and seriousness of the rhetoric about the plan on the Israeli side.

Even so, American officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, stating that Trump's proposal remains on the table unless the Arabs offer an alternative to it, only shows that the US administration has turned the proposal from a goal into a tool for pressuring regional actors. By extracting some concessions that were not at all in mind, through proposals demanded of them and putting them in difficulty because they were not carried out, the politics of the impossible can be made quite profitable.

On the other hand, as we have said before, this maximalist demandingness of Trump's may in fact lead to a rapprochement in the Islamic world, even among the countries subjected to his crazy outbursts, and to the formation of new balances.

Indeed, last Friday, unexpectedly, Arab leaders met in Riyadh in informal, casual clothes and came together for the post-war reconstruction of Gaza, against Trump's proposal that the US take over the region without the Palestinians. This extraordinary meeting of the leaders of Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE will not fail, whatever the result and whatever the history of each country's relations with the US or Israel, to perceive the threat contained in the vision Trump put forward.