Washington’s Middle East experts were gathered for dinner in the ballroom of the Ritz Carlton Georgetown, hosted by a prominent think tank. It was May 19, 2019, and they had come to hear Jared Kushner talk about the forthcoming Trump peace plan. Mr. Kushner described both an economic vision for the Middle East and a framework for Israeli-Palestinian peace. In the audience, experts were skeptical. A few whispers were heard (“what makes him think it’s a good time for this?”) and, after 45 minutes, hands were clapped, politely.
But little more than a year later, Kushner and team produced the Abraham Accords between Israel and three Arab countries: Morocco, the second most populous Arab country; the UAE, the second largest Arab economy; and Bahrain, the home of the US Fifth Fleet. It was the largest expansion of Middle East peace since the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty. Kushner had promised a shaking up of the status quo. And a major part of the region responded in a surprising, positive way.
Now, in the first month of his new term of office, President Trump has outlined a plan for postwar Gaza that dramatically changes the narrative of this conflict. His plan would turn this 25 miles of coastline, with its deep water port and thin strip of agricultural hinterland, into a real estate development, in effect seeking to return Gaza to what it had been for nearly two millennia of antiquity, a cosmopolitan port on a strategic land-sea crossroads of the Eastern Mediterranean. Most of the roughly 2.2 million Gazans would be relocated, at least while this development is being constructed, which will take about 20 years.
I recommend checking the skepticism this time. Let’s see how the region ultimately responds and what emerges from negotiations. In the meantime, here are three initial thoughts.
No More Do-Overs
If the Trump plan does no more than put a stop to the old narrative of this conflict, in which the international community acts to restore a status quo ante every time the Palestinians attack Israel, allowing them to reconstitute and attack Israel again – then it will have provided a valuable service.
The depravity of October 7 should have shocked the civilized world into realizing and supporting the fact that Israel will not permit another Palestinian do-over. For me, one video posted on October 7 led to that realization – Gazan civilians (not Hamas in this case, we later found out) holding down a Thai worker in a kibbutz and beheading him with a garden hoe. I knew then a Rubicon had been crossed.
If there was shock around the world after October 7, it soon dissipated. Not even the public celebration in Gaza of murdered Israeli babies could shift the debate. We needed a US president to disabuse those who would, wittingly or otherwise, normalize Hamas and its many supporters.
Normalization of Hamas? That may not be the intention, but that is certainly what would result from a “reformed” Palestinian Authority put in charge of Gaza. This “reformed” Palestinian Authority is featured in think tank reports and the Biden administration’s last-minute (January 14, 2025) postwar Gaza plan.
Problem: no one elaborates how this “reform” would occur and over what period, and then how the reformed Authority would replace Hamas and restore governance in Gaza. Most importantly, no one identifies the Palestinian political movement that would critically support this reformation.
The only intellectually honest take on this “reform” was that of former Palestinian Authority prime minister Salam Fayyad. He wrote that the only reforms that could allow the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza would involve bringing Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the Authority. In other words, the only Palestinian political movement that can control the Gaza street is Hamas and its jihadist allies.
There are also pro-Hamas elements in the West who gaslight the public. For example, the director of Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East Center, Maha Yahya, wrote recently in Foreign Affairs that the Hamas attack of October 7 was a response to settlement construction on the West Bank and other Israeli “side stepping” to avoid a two-state solution. Sadly for her, Hamas itself undercuts this message: its leaders have consistently explained the October 7 attack, in the Arabic media and elsewhere, as a first step in the liberation of all of Palestine, leading in turn to other conquests that will ultimately create a global caliphate.
The Trump vision changes the narrative and ignores the delusions and gaslighting that have sustained a decades-long series of wars ending with the current devastation.
What About the Gazans?
A second benefit of the Trump vision is that it focuses on the practical needs of the Gazan people. The Israeli counter-offensive after October 7 turned bult-up urban areas into rubble. Any postwar reconstruction will require years of rubble removal, tunnel demolitions, and new infrastructure and housing. Presidential envoy Steve Witkoff estimates this will take 20 years. In the meantime, the Gazan population should be relocated out of this construction zone, with their consent.
What do Gazans want? One credible poll taken one month before the October 7 attack, by Khalil Shikaki’s Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, shows about one third of Gazans wanted then to emigrate. Perhaps that number has increased as a result of the war. Thousands of those with the means to travel and pay the $7,000 Egyptian transit visas have moved elsewhere; thousands more have simply moved to Egypt.
The US media regularly features interviews with individuals who say Gaza is their home and they want to stay. But follow-up questions are needed: the majority of Gazans are descendants of refugees from the 1948 war, not originally from Gaza. The last time they had a chance to vote, in 2006, a strong plurality voted for Hamas, the party that promised a return to their pre-1948 homes now inside Israel. If they mean Gaza is their home as a launching pad for another do-over, then they should know that that option is no longer available.
Whether or not Gazans decide to relocate, either permanently or temporarily, is up to the Gazans themselves. But the story shouldn’t end there – if they want to stay, there should be conditions on any international help in rebuilding Gaza. They will have to develop peaceful political alternatives to Hamas. As one Palestinian leader, Samer Sinijlawi, has stated, it is up to the Palestinians after October 7 to convince Israelis that they have decided to live in peace alongside the state of Israel.
And where would the Gazans relocate to? In 1991, after siding with Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the 450,000 Palestinian residents of Kuwait were summarily expelled; most resettled in Jordan. But Jordan is firmly opposed to massively adding to its existing demographic tensions between Palestinians and East Bankers. A more likely place of resettlement would be Egypt, the former occupying power of Gaza from 1948-1967, provided there are sufficient financial incentives.
Glimmers of a Deal
National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, when asked about the negative Arab reactions to Trump’s plan, said “I think it is going to cause the entire region to come [up] with their own solutions.”
The Egyptian government has responded, drafting a plan calling for a five-year, $53 billion reconstruction of Gaza, which the Arab League adopted on March 4. It is an opening bid, flawed in many ways including one-sided condemnations of Israel, and it may be overcome by events – if as many expect Israel resumes its counter-offensive and re-occupies Gaza in order to further diminish Hamas.
But the Egyptian plan does offer a glimmer of a future possible deal. It departs ever so slightly from the Washington consensus belief in a “reformed” Palestinian Authority overseeing Gaza; instead it calls for a transitional “technocratic” government of Gaza “under the umbrella” of the Palestinian Authority. It also foresees roles for an International Contact Group to support reconstruction and for international peacekeepers (albeit under the UN, which has a bad history in both Lebanon and Gaza and is unacceptable to Israel).
A possible way forward hinted at in the Egyptian plan would be a non-UN multi-national mission to deploy to Gaza, following a full Israeli dismantling of Hamas’s military, to provide security, restore public services and replace the Hamas civilian government. Over time, such a mission would oversee economic reconstruction contingent on and linked to Palestinian governance progress. A group of American former officials (disclosure: including me) produced just such a plan for Gaza, based on successful international missions in Bosnia and Kosovo. That plan is consistent with a UAE proposal; it addresses Israel’s focus on reforming Gaza’s educational system and de-radicalizing the population; and it meets American concerns with not putting US troops on the ground (rather they provide organizational leadership, logistical and intelligence support).
A multi-national mission could also be consistent with elements of President Trump’s vision – it would be temporary but of sufficiently long duration to allow for a full reconstruction contingent on governance progress; it could allow for American financial smarts and entrepreneurial ingenuity. Special Envoy Witkoff spoke of 20 years; the international mission in Bosnia is still there 30 years later, though reduced in size.
Gaza was once a jewel of the Mediterranean. Byzantine jurists in Gaza drafted the Justinian Code, the basis for much of Western law. The word “Gaza” means treasure house in medieval Arabic (and in ancient Egyptian). If we discard the old narrative, and encourage Israelis and Arabs to respond to the alternative Trump vision, we could be on the path to another peace breakthrough in the Middle East.
