Gaza, Israel and the Gulf: Trump flies in

If there ever was, there is now not a scintilla of doubt what the endgame in Gaza is for Binyamin Netanyahu and his ultra-religious coalition partners: raze it to the ground so it becomes uninhabitable, drive the remaining Palestinians out and colonise the strip.

It’s as straightforward and stark as that. Nobody should be surprised. The intention has been there in black and white for those who cared to look. And, besides, there’s a terrible, cold-blooded logic to it.

Years of intransigence, duplicity and missed opportunities by both Israel and the Palestinians has led to this: a fight to the death in which there can only be one outcome. Palestine or Israel. Jews or Arabs. No quarter, no compromise. A forever war.

It’s the vanishing point where talk of parallel ideas that might lead to co-existence converge into a single, uncompromising image. It has the merit of clarity. We should not be surprised that it has come to this. It’s in everybody’s interest to face this reality.

Those who seek a more humane, collaborative approach — Israel’s progressives, including hard-headed former heads of the security services, their counterparts in the occupied territories and the international community – at least now have a benchmark to work from. There is no room for ambiguity or doubt.

The footprints left by the peacemakers — Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Olmert, Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and America’s Bill Clinton — have vanished, covered over in succeeding storms. The dream of a two-state solution is gone at least for the foreseeable future.

The terror visited on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023 lit the fuse. But this apocalypse has been a long time coming. Perhaps the idea of two peoples sharing this consecrated land was simply too much to hope for.

There’s enough evidence to suggest that neither ever really intended to or that there was never common ground, which is a sobering thought. Was co-existence always a fool’s errand?

The immediate consequence of this strategy is that the remaining 20 or so hostages believed to be still alive in Gaza are no longer the Israeli government’s top priority — if they ever were. Their hardship is unimaginable, but set against Israel’s national priorities perhaps they were always expendable.

The big idea has always been to wipe out Hamas. But since that evidently cannot be done even by one of the world’s nimblest and best-equipped fighting machines, the coalition has persuaded itself that obliterating Gaza and starting again is its best option.

Netanyahu now says while the return of the hostages is important, the “supreme goal” is achieving “total victory” over Hamas. His Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is blunter: Gaza will be “entirely destroyed”, he said in early May. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s Security Minister, advocates for Jewish settlers to return to Gaza.

Nissim Venturi, the Deputy Speaker of Israel’s parliament, went further: spare the women and children. Round up the adult males and kill them. “Gaza must be burned” he said in January 2024.

The war – the longest by far in Israel’s history – and the aims of Israel’s extreme right wing and the settler movement have now finally converged.

It has also become the coalition’s crutch, its life support system, for staying in power. The paradox is that while the war still has considerable public support, Netanyahu and his coalition do not.

Many Israelis still see Hamas as an existential threat, but many don’t like the brutality of the coalition’s methods: cutting off food supplies, power and medical supplies. They worry about an all-or-nothing approach for Israel’s long-term security.

Where does this leave us after 19 months of war, over 50,000 Palestinian and 2000 Israeli dead and a region catapulted into turmoil from the Gulf to the Levant?

President Donald Trump is heading to the Arab world shortly. He’ll visit Saudia Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. But not it seems Israel. It’s a measure how much the Middle East has changed that these countries are now seen by the White House as the centres of Arab power.

This trip is not about peace in Palestine. It’s primarily about money. But the two are linked. The Saudis have been courting Trump since 2017. We can expect a “deal” with at least nine zeros attached to it. There’s also talk of a big political announcement. Trump, ever the showman, won’t say, just that it’s “as big as it gets”.

It’s a mistake to think that Trump is all-in for Israel to the exclusion of America’s wider interests in the Middle East, however much this line plays well with his evangelical base. Trump is, first and foremost, a deal-maker. Israel is a cost. Israel led by Netanyahu is becoming a liability. It sits on the wrong side of the balance sheet.

The Gulf states, on the other hand, are rich. They are stable, they form a bloc opposing Shia Iran’s regional ambitions and they have decent military capabilities. They have become natural partners for the United States, seeking to consolidate its influence in the region and keep it peaceful. They have jumped to the top of the White House’s VIP list.

The Netanyahu/Smotrich/Ben Gvir plan for new settlements in Gaza makes no sense from America’s standpoint. It’s a recipe for permanent instability. It’s also unworkable. The Arab world would never sanction the dispersal of two million Palestinians, if only out of self-preservation.

But, as in Ukraine, Trump has hitched his star to a deal over Gaza. And, as with Ukraine and despite all the isolationist rhetoric, Trump knows that an end to the war in Gaza and his cherished ambition of a diplomatic breakthrough between Israel and Saudi Arabia, hinges on American power and, probably, some kind of American presence. Watch this space.

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