‘Not a real proposal’: Trump’s bid for Gaza marks major shift of goal posts

President Trump’s stunning proposal for the U.S. to take over the Gaza Strip and relocate its Palestinian residents marked a major moving of goal posts during a critical moment of ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

Trump’s allies put cautious support behind what they called the president’s “bold” initiative, but foreign leaders condemned it as a nonstarter. Lawmakers and regional experts, meanwhile, view it as a maximalist, opening offer amid fragile ceasefire talks. 

“This is not a real proposal. … But what it is is a signal to the Arab world that the policies of the United States over the last several decades are shifting,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said.

“But I do think he wants the Arab countries to step up and take more ownership on the future of their region. And none of them have been wanting to do that for decades.” 

Trump this week doubled down on the idea that Palestinians should be relocated from Gaza, maybe permanently. He’s looking to Egypt and Jordan, despite these countries rejecting it outright. 

Cairo, Amman and others say there are immense security risks to accepting Palestinians and that it would strain their economies and risk revolt from populations who view Israel’s war in Gaza as a campaign of genocide. 

But Trump, in his remarks, rejected Saudi Arabia’s demands for a Palestinian state in exchange for opening ties with Israel, and he said Egypt and Jordan “will open their hearts” for a resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza. 

Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, told CBS that the president’s ideas are meant to force new thinking, part of the administration’s efforts this week to soften the president’s initial blockbuster announcement.

“It’s going to bring the entire region to come with their own solutions, if they don’t like Mr. Trump’s solutions,” he said.

But Trump risks overreach — hardening the opposing positions of Arab, Gulf partners and Hamas, said Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former negotiating adviser to the Palestinian Authority. 

“Sometimes when you try to shock your counterpart, you can overdo it. … you force your counterpart to harden their public position,” he said.

“Jordan and Egypt each see this as a serious national security threat to themselves. It’s one thing to push your counterpart to do something unpalatable, it’s another thing to push them to commit to political suicide. In this sense, it could be seen as existential in these countries.”

Backlash among Arab countries was swift. 

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry issued a statement at 4 a.m. local time from Riyadh that it “will not establish diplomatic relations” without a Palestinian state. The foreign ministry of the United Arab Emirates issued its “categorical rejection” of any attempts to displace Palestinians. 

Jordan’s King Abdullah II, who will meet Trump at the White House on Tuesday, issued a statement that he rejects any attempts to annex land from Palestinians and displace them, and he stressed the need to stop Israeli settlement expansion, in particular in the West Bank. 

Trump’s remarks come as U.S. and Israeli negotiators are entering indirect talks with Hamas to transition to a second phase of a ceasefire deal that went into effect on Jan. 19 and was negotiated by the former Biden administration. The life and freedom of dozens of hostages held by Hamas are on the line if negotiators fail to follow through on a second phase of the ceasefire deal. 

The ceasefire has also given more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza a major reprieve in more than 15 months of war — with 90 percent of the population displaced and nearly all requiring humanitarian assistance. 

“We demand that the mediators, especially the United States, oblige the occupation [Israel] to implement the ceasefire agreement in its three stages without procrastination or manipulation,” Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said in a statement Wednesday. 

“We are committed to implementing the agreement as long as the occupation commits to it, and any manipulation in implementing the agreement may cause it to collapse.”

Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, told reporters that he is involved in phase two talks of the ceasefire deal.

But both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday seemed noncommittal to the exact terms of the deal negotiated by former President Biden. The most difficult parameters are negotiating an end to the war between Israel and Hamas, establishing what entity will govern Gaza, and carrying out an Israeli military withdrawal. 

“We’ll see what happens, whatever happens we’ll be prepared to handle the situation,” Trump said when asked about Israeli commitments to the ceasefire. 

“We’re going to try,” Netanyahu said, when asked about optimism in reaching phase two of the deal. 

Netanyahu already has rejected the Palestinian Authority running Gaza. The authority is the governing body in the West Bank and is managing some operations on the ground in Gaza.  Netanyahu’s efforts to block the creation of a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is a key pillar of his political survival.

Netanyahu’s coalition is on shaky ground after former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir resigned in protest to the ceasefire deal. Ben-Gvir is a proponent of Israeli annexation of the West Bank and Gaza and “voluntary migration” of Palestinians. Democrats pushed for Biden to sanction Ben-Gvir for enabling violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. 

Ben-Gvir praised Trump’s remarks and floated coming back to Netanyahu’s government.

“Donald, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” the far-right lawmakers wrote on social platform X. 

Another major announcement Trump made amid the Gaza news was that he would make a decision, within a month, whether to support Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

“The four-week deadline is interesting because … that’s also when you have all sorts of fateful things going on in Israeli domestic politics,” said Michael Koplow, Israel Policy Forum’s chief policy officer. Koplow said Trump may be offering Netanyahu a policy shift on annexation as a “gift” for the prime minister to appease his far-right coalition partners. 

“But whatever the answer is, putting annexation back on the table in that way certainly worries me, and I think should be pretty worrisome, when we think about how that might impact all these other various things that are going on.”

In 2020, Trump backed down from greenlighting Israeli annexation in exchange for the United Arab Emirates brokering ties with Jerusalem, in what became of the Abraham Accords. 

But it’s not clear where the administration stands today on supporting or blocking Israeli annexation and how much sway Arab and Gulf countries can prevent such a measure. Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, supports full Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank as does Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Elise Stefanik. 

Greenlighting Israeli annexation of the West Bank has the potential to severely rupture ties with Arab and Gulf countries and raises serious questions of violations of international law and U.S. support. 

“This is a startling and ominous announcement,” Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, wrote in an op-ed for MSNBC.

“We may be on the cusp of radically new American policies: not just a fake one regarding Gaza, but a very real one regarding the West Bank … a very sinister, and very real, final U.S. assault on the last hopes of Palestinian national rights, independence and self-determination in their own country.”

Mike Lillis contributed.