Trump and Gaza

A new age now begins?

J.E. Dyer, a retired Naval Intelligence officer, blogs as The Optimistic Conservative | Jan 27, 2025

[I try to avoid using eye cues to call out significant points, but that’s the readiest way in this case to just get done the job of outlining a new way of thinking. – J.E.]

There’s no question President Trump disappointed a whole lot of people and lost a lot of momentum with some supporters when he appeared to knuckle under to a ceasefire-for-hostages plan as an operational interruption to the Gaza war.  It can’t help looking Biden-like.  It has the essential elements of what Biden had been incessantly pushing since the 10/7 attack:   ceasefire for its own sake, which everyone expects Hamas to duly break, as always; negotiating with terrorists for hostages, which invariably produces wildly disproportionate personnel exchanges; grand, vague, and misdirected posturing on “solutions” for “peace” and who should be in charge of directing the world at ramming speed to a “Palestinian state.”

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The last-minute ceasefire agreement may be called an agreement for the release of hostages, which was what Trump warned Hamas he wouldn’t stand for further shenanigans with.  But it’s glaringly obvious it’s about a ceasefire, IDF withdrawal from tactical holding positions in Gaza, and Hamas driving around Gaza waving flags and proclaiming that it’s back, large and in charge.

It’s a rough time mentally, for most Israelis.  A number of hostages have been released, but there are weeks to go before Hamas would be formally in arrears on its hostage releases, and as expected, Hamas is playing that to the hilt.  Beside the missed deadlines for hostage lists (we just passed the second one), Hamas is reentering Gaza unhindered, and is taunting Israelis with grotesque little ceremonies – “certificates,” memorabilia, forced praises and niceties from the hostages, even swag bags – as the children of Israel are dribbled out to their loved ones.  The pain of unresolved hope for the little Bibas boys and their family continues to be a torturous cliffhanger.

 

 

Meanwhile, for many, a disgusting feature of the melodrama is the credit Qatar is getting for having facilitated this travesty of what appears to be a denouement in the Gaza saga.  That the credit is being accorded in soupy-sounding rhetoric from Trump’s envoy, real estate mogul Steve Witkoff, who has had property interests with Qatar, just gives it all a tired, crass feeling.  Qatar has been aligned with Iran for a long time now, has been a principal haven for the Muslim Brotherhood, and a chief patron of Hamas.  Now its ruling house of Al-Thani is getting plaudits from an administration that came in warning Hamas for its life if it didn’t straighten up.

 

 

It’s naturally hard for observers to see this as winning.  We can expect Trump to point out, assuming Hamas does “behave” itself (i.e., fires no rockets or missiles at Israel), that unlike Biden’s, his warnings are keeping Hamas in checkBut it wasn’t Hamas, back in Gaza, releasing hostages at its leisure while Israelis chew their fingernails, that anyone wanted.  It was Hamas destroyed, all the hostages released, and some undertaking to make sure this never, ever happens again, because Hamas will never reoccupy Gaza and nothing like Hamas will ever reoccupy Gaza, that people wanted.

How could Netanyahu sign up for this?

I perceive that a lot of people, though they don’t or can’t articulate what they’re hoping for, still hope their confidence in Netanyahu and Trump wasn’t misplaced.  I’m not going to convince anyone on that score here, and won’t try.  It is what it is.

We did get a little nugget on 22 January that I found very informative about what I have imagined Trump’s priority is.  For those who think Trump isn’t smart enough to think in terms of a much bigger picture, there’s nothing I can do.  Trump is that smart.  It’s why he’s a walking – no, he’s a lurching steam calliope of suasion and deterrence.  He thinks outside the box most of us are doing our analysis and imagining in.  He looks beyond the gratification of smaller, nearer goals for his most important statements of intent, and leaves clues as to what his real goals are in what he says consistently, over and over again, and makes foundational commitments to.  Foreign actors, other than the Western Left in Europe, see that very clearly.*

So I’ve been expecting him to invoke the Abraham Accords in relation to the war in Gaza, because that’s his foundational commitment for U.S. policy in the Middle East.  Most observers think the Gaza situation, with its ancillary elements in Judea and Samaria and Lebanon, and the evanescing fortunes of Iran in Syria, is a whole separate dynamic from the Abraham Accords.  But there’s nothing compelling us to see it that way, and Trump doesn’t.  He didn’t push with Mohammed bin Zayed and Benjamin Netanyahu for the Accords because he likes photo ops.  He ushered in the Accords in order to create a geopolitical nexus for gravitational movement in the Middle East – a nexus that’s not Iran under it radical regime.

Abraham Accords signing 15 Sep 2020. Fox News video. L-R: Bahrain. FM Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa. Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. President Trump. UAE, FM Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan. Fox News video

And the news last week was that there’s considerable favor in Israel, the U.S., and Dubai for a follow-on plan in Gaza that excludes Hamas and is organized under the auspices of the Abraham Accords by MBZ and the UAE.  (Click through t the X posts to the Israel Hayom article.  It’s in Hebrew but translates reasonably well.)

 

 

To me, bringing the Accords to bear as an organizing framework for reconstituting Gaza is what the Abraham Accords were conceived for They are supposed to meet that kind of challenge and purpose.  They’re the antidote to the persistent dysfunction of radicalism seizing the Middle East by the short hairs and giving it perpetual whiplash.

There seems to be no time like the present for test-driving that proposition, with the remarkable flight of Bashar al-Assad from Syria, leaving Syria without a dominant presence from Iran and/or Russia for the first time in at least 10 years (though if I gave it more thought I’d probably put it longer than that).  Turkey got a big win with this development:  Erdogan’s favored client taking the reins, such as they are, in western Syria, and the Kurds rocked on their heels.

Without support from Russia, and knowing Israel has a green light to deal as necessary with Iran’s proxies in Lebanon and Gaza, the mullahs of Qom aren’t in a position to bust very many moves in the coming weeks.   (The Telegraph had more on that this past weekend.)

 

 

I think the window on follow-through has closed already for Iran “trying” things like limpet mines in the Strait of Hormuz or drones over the Emirates.  The Houthis donning the “good citizen” mantle and vowing to stop attacking global shipping in the Red Sea is informative in that regard.

 

 

I myself would have chosen to set forth on the Abraham Accords path from a position of Hamas being forcibly driven as completely as possible out of Gaza.  In fact, I believe Netanyahu when he says he will be supported by Trump in doing that, if he deems it necessary based on Hamas’s behavior.  (With Gazans returning en masse to the north, it’s a real question how available that option will really be.)

Indeed, there’s no way to know for sure if getting back the live hostages, yea unto a 42-day hiatus for it, is a prerequisite for then pounding Hamas into dust.

But I perceive Trump to be taking a different long view.  What I want to accomplish through military destruction of Hamas, Trump wants to prove the Abraham Accords can get done This kind of problem is what he formed the pact for.

Trump is looking beyond the current situation to the one that will eventually blow up if it isn’t dealt with; i.e., what is to be done with Gaza and the larger Palestinian Arab situation.  That’s the problem to be solved, not because it’s a legitimate grievance, but because, as unresolved, it’s a perpetual pretext for radicalism dressed up in Western tropes, as a cover for Jew-hatred, spite, and a war against Israel.

As regards particulars, it’s evident that the irresponsible push for peremptory declaration of a Palestinian state has to be taken off the table.  Rather than ostensibly resisting a subterfuge the U.S. can’t acknowledge being part of (Biden’s and Obama’s pretense), or actually resisting it from outside of it, Trump’s move here appears to be grabbing hold of the process and preparing to lurch a steam calliope, tooting and whistling in a different direction, down the street.

Since I wrote those words on Friday, Trump has made an additional move, launching the proposition that Gaza should be vacated by Palestinian Arabs, who would be taken in by Egypt and Jordan (at a minimum and for starters).  On Monday, the Wall Street Journal obligingly characterized Trump’s move as “stunning all sides” and “scrambling diplomacy,” and that gives us as good an excuse as any to announce that the calliope is now on the move.

There’s no way to predict how this could go, if it’s the plan Trump is eyeing.  No certainties apply.  I emphasize that again:  NO certainties apply.  The certainty that Hamas and Iran and the longstanding proxy dynamic must have their usual effect and outcome isn’t a certainty now, in large part because Trump isn’t Biden or Obama.

Neither of those presidents attempted anything Trump would, nor is any outcome achieved by Biden a guide to what must happen with Trump.  (The same is true of any outcome achieved by Obama from 2009 to 2017.)

It’s hard to get people to see that, but it’s the operative analytical point for practically everything.  The premises and goals of Obama and Biden were not Trump’s.  Nor is either of them Trump, or he them

There’s no such thing now as a static set of American priorities and policies, and presidents trying in different ways to serve that same set from one administration to another.  That was a Cold War pattern that no longer exists.  Presidents literally and meaningfully now want different outcomes, to go with their differing levels of credibility.

So I don’t know how successful Trump might be, but neither does anyone else.  For my money, the weird, kind of icky suck-up to Qatar is about prying Qatar away from Iran and incentivizing Doha to work with an Abraham Accords plan, rather than aligning reflexively with Tehran on the program for Gaza’s future (I actually imagine there’s a veiled threat from Trump in it, encouraging Doha to remember the benefits of having its connection to the U.S., and how losing it could go south on the Al-Thanis right quick.  That warning is not something Trump and his team would advertise.  The ones who need to know it are Netanyahu, MBZ, and Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, and you don’t communicate things to them via media “leaks” or posts on X.)

 

 

It would be a major shift in the correlation of geopolitical forces if an Abraham Accords enterprise got this big thing done – and especially if, against any thinkable assumption at the moment, it got done precisely through demonstrating that an Abraham Accords operation can walk Hamas out the front door.  Neither Iran nor Qatar has ever done anything like that, and neither Obama nor Biden ever wanted to or tried to do anything like that.

The U.S. doesn’t actually want to part ways with Qatar, if it can be avoided.  Qatar has prime frontage in practically every way in the Middle East, abstract and geographically literal.  If Trump envisions getting what the U.S. wants out of Qatar, and having a hand in with Doha – where we and Turkey both have military basing agreements – on all the major regional issues, that’s not a bad thing.  It just has to be done with our eyes open (and preferably with a wisely applied package of pressures on Qatar to move away from its practices that are corrupt and immoral and imperil human rights).

Trump and his friend Mr. Witkoff come from high-stakes real estate, and tend to sound, regardless of what the topic is, like they’re elite Los Angeles agents or developers lauding Candy Spelling for creative genius in her one-time penthouse in Century City.  A sentence that doesn’t contain at least three “beautifuls” and a “fantastic” might as well be asking where the men’s room is.

Netanyahu doesn’t talk that way, and it looks to me like he’ll remain ready to execute if Hamas gets obstreperous.  I certainly understand why skeptics would replace “if” with “when” in that point.  The 2,000-pound bombs Israel needs to beef up its inventory for strategic interdiction are now moving again, after being stalled since last April, and one thing that will do is give Israel options other than sending troops back into the streets of Gaza, for at least some foreseeable contingencies.  It definitely bolsters Israel’s capabilities against Hezbollah and Iran.

 

 

 

There is a great deal more to say, but no point in making this five times as long just to address all the thoughts we’ll all have anyway.  My purpose here is to highlight that Trump doesn’t seem to view the Gaza situation through the common lens.  He’s got something bigger in mind than letting the excruciatingly outworn patterns of Oslo drive what comes next.  And he sees that bigger thing as the constructive, geopolitically kinetic move it would be – made through diplomacy, opportunity-based incentive, and using his foundational arrangement, the Abraham Accords, to reset the narrative.

It’s a heroic proposition, to be sure.  Something along these lines would explain the look on Netanyahu’s face after his meeting with Steve Witkoff just before the agreement was announced 12 days ago.  He didn’t look deflated; he looked more like he’d just had audacity proposed to him – and on the basis of his being a man who could handle it.

We’ll see.  It could all fall apart tomorrow, with a rugby scrum by the IDF to get back in contact on the ground in Gaza.  But if it does, and there’s a plan other than “Say NO to the torpedo-hit consolidation of a Palestinian state,” that will make every move by Netanyahu and Trump smarter.  They’ll be working toward a goal of their own, not away from someone else’s.

MBZ, in my view, is the Abraham Accords leader who could bring this together.  He is the counterpart to Qatar, as well as having the necessary qualities as a unique visionary He’s the counterpart in a natural position to get the most out of Qatar, which would have to cooperate to some degree in an arrangement that got Hamas out of Gaza and built stability around a proposition with far better odds in its favor than the chimerical “Palestinian state.”  Assisting Egypt and Jordan in stability is a much better proposal than trying to establish stability for a Palestinian state whose advocates don’t want it to be stable.

There’s more than one way to neutralize Iran’s radical regime vis-à-vis the Israel-Palestinian Arabs problem, and the one floated this past week is timely in a way nothing else would be.  I foresee it probably having to go through initial resistance, incentivized negotiations, interim goals, arrangements meant to sunset, and some things still to be worked out.

But hijacking Gaza out from under Iran and the evil zeitgeist of Hamas’s Western-linked terrorist presence is not just a beneficial, earthquake-level reset.  It’s something Iran’s regime is not in a position to effectively prevent or even counter.  The roller coaster has started, and we need to let this one run.

 

* In my view, for example, the alarming push to topple the legitimate government of South Korea reached its crescendo just as Trump was taking office last week, because China was blown sideways by Trump’s overtures to the Kim regime in North Korea in his first term.  Unlike every U.S president since the end of the Cold War, Trump had negotiated a small but significant interim agreement directly with Kim Jong Un without China being in the middle seat – and Kim kept to the agreement as long as Trump was in office.

The U.S. dealing with Pyongyang and not needing Beijing to sit in on the proceedings is unbearable for Xi Jinping.  He foresees the small overtures of the last Trump term getting out of hand in the new one, taking China out of its center role in the Korean Armistice and opening the door to new, geopolitically game-changing opportunities in the far East.  Xi isn’t going to stand by and let Trump reunify the Koreas out from under the CCP.

Trump knows the importance China attaches to the status quo on the Koran Peninsula.  He and Xi both know it, unlike the Western foreign policy establishment.  Western geopolitical thinkers haven’t kept up with this situation as a dynamic one, but with only an armistice in place, that’s exactly what it is.  Trump sees dynamic potential in the most inert of situations; how much more so in those that are in fact inherently dynamic, however dormant their unresolved condition may seem to be.

Feature image: Trump, Desroyer of Worlds? Social media.

January 30, 2025 | 2 Comments »

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2 Comments / 2 Comments

  1. I’m a nothingburger !

    I’M STILL SHOCKED WHEN SOMEONE,SMART AS YOU SEZ

    THERE’S MORE GOING ON……AND……..

    NOTHING NEW…………..

    I was baffled going in, and you baffled me even more……

    Eddie

  2. This article was interesting since it vaguely tells us that there us more going on behind the scenes than we are hearing from the media. On the other hand, there was nothing really new. We are aware of things being reported that don’t add up reasonably, so we’re left in limbo yet again.