The Trump Proposal: Israel Must Win and the Palestinians Must Lose
By Bob Goldberg, February 7, 2025 The New Zionist Times
From the day it was constructed, Joe Biden’s $300 million pier for receiving humanitarian aid in Gaza was a sinking useless hulk, a monument to the failure of policy pretending that the war, in Ruth Wisse’s terms, “ is simply a dispute over land while enabling an asymmetrical attack by the Arab-Islamic world on the idea of a Jewish homeland."
Much, if not all, of the furor over the Trump plan to relocate Gaza’s population flows from the liberal multiculturalist perspective shaping foreign policy, which insists that all groups can assert their identity—except Jews, whose very self-assertion equals Zionist racism.
More precisely, Trump’s plan strips those who regard the idea of a Jewish nation as problematic of their hypocrisy. How is it possible, they ask, to relocate over a million people to ensure their health and safety? As if Israel hasn't moved millions of Gazans twice in a year to achieve that goal.
Most embarrassingly, not only have Arab countries taken in nearly 7 million genuine refugees from Sudan and Syria, but these real refugees are flourishing.
As the Carnegie Endowment observes in Egypt, “these refugees pay for services such as health, education, and housing in US Dollars, contributing to the national economy rather than depleting it...Their presence in Egypt has revitalized economic sectors in which they have invested, such as real estate and hotels, some of which were on the verge of decline.
“The Syrian immigrants now residing in Egypt many were living in Aleppo, a city that is predominantly Sunni Muslim. These Syrian refugees fled their hometowns due to conflict and settled in Egypt and Türkiye. Given Aleppo's history as a center of industry and commerce, they came with industrial, commercial, and educational affluence. Of the one and a half million Syrians residing in Egypt, approximately 200,000 are venture capitalists, while 600,000 to 700,000 work in family businesses. The same applies to the Sudanese community, which... has revitalized the real estate economy. “
By design, every other Arab refugee can thrive elsewhere except the Palestinians. Indeed, the proposed relocation is part of a larger Trump effort to tear down the facade (and funding for) of a UNRWA-led reconstruction because he knows that it is the road to more carnage, not a path to peace.
For the longest time, American foreign policy consisted of limited Israel’s capacity to vanquish its enemies while insisting Israel make “painful concessions” for peace.
Those days are over. The administration has paused several billion dollars in economic and military aid, much of which goes to Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, and Qatar. Saudi Arabia alone has $126.6 billion in active government-to-government military sales deals with the United States.
Arab states will no longer free-ride off Israeli military action and US aid. They should expect Trump to ask them to do their part, especially if the US and Israel weaken Iran into irrelevance. If you think Trump will only apply maximum pressure to the mullahs, think again.
Most importantly, the Trump proposal has accelerated a shift in Israel's mindset. Victory trumps (pun intended) compromise. As Daniel Pipes writes in his new book, Israel Victory: How Zionists Win Acceptance and Palestinians Are Liberated (Wicked Son Books, 2024), “the Palestinian mentality is genocidal rejectionism, while on the Israeli side, the mentality is conciliation. Both are unique, and both have failed.”
The IDF and the Netanyahu government have pivoted away from failure. Israel Hayom reports that: “Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has directed the Israel Defense Forces to develop a comprehensive plan enabling the voluntary evacuation of Gaza residents, following President Donald Trump's announcement regarding US control of the Gaza Strip. The initiative, unveiled Thursday morning, represents a significant shift in approach to the region's humanitarian challenges.”
This change in policy direction should be celebrated. But as my friend and Zionist Ronen Shoval scholar dryly notes: Even when you present Jews with the opportunity to end the war against the idea of a Jewish state by the greatest power in the world, they will find a way not to be satisfied.
Case in point: Critics such as Times of Israel editor David Horovitz raged: “By what international right does the US intend to occupy, empty, and repopulate a territory that, indeed, has no legitimate sovereign government, but is also not open and available to the United States simply by virtue of its desire to take it over? “
Horovitz and other Jewish leftists are no better than the "human rights" organizations and activists who insist on imprisoning millions of citizens against their will in a disaster-stricken area, preventing them from having any chance to rebuild their lives or secure any future for their children. To paraphrase David Mamet, the suffering in Gaza and Israel is emotional pornography that permits him and others to achieve self-arousal through virtue signaling. It enables Horovitz to exercise a portion of his ego and call that exercise 'compassion.'
It assuages his shame for feeling panic when the Jewish state is capable of conquest. Like many (but not most) soft Zionists, Horovitz panics if the Jew is not a victim. He and thousands of others are uncomfortable with Jewish power even after October 7.
Trump is not. Israel has gone along with the idea that the desires and dictates of the multicultural international community should limit Jewish power. As the Western response to Israel’s siege of Gaza demonstrates, that was simply signing Jews up for a suicide pact with a new set of enemies. The president’s proposal is designed, as Pipes puts it: “to force the Palestinians to lose hope, to give up their war goal of eliminating Israel. For the conflict to end, Israel must win, the Palestinians must lose.”
For Israel, that means acting as a conqueror but not an oppressor. For Palestinians, it means either moving on or moving elsewhere. Trump understands that better than the soft Zionists who lack the spirit and spine to seize the moment.