Where Trump heads next with his Gaza plan and what it could mean for the Maghreb

Did President Trump mention his plan to move up to 2 million Palestinians from Gaza to other countries to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during the latter’s visit to the White House?  The footage of Netanyahu standing uncomfortably at a podium as Trump made his pronouncement that ‘Gaza would be turned over to the US’, would suggest that he hadn’t. But Netanyahu, for all his initial surprise, immediately realised the political potential in Trump’s grandiloquence, just as the rest of the World gasped in astonishment and horror. For this manifestation of late 19th century imperialism, thrown in with planned ethnic cleansing on a grand scale’ affronts every known international norm and law, while also affirming what Netanyahu could only have hoped for in his wildest dreams. For President Trump, who had ‘seen a picture’ he said, of the wasteland that Gaza has been transformed into, for the most part courtesy of weaponry supplied to the Israelis by the US, there was that new vista of luxury condominiums gracing the sweeping Gaza coastlineto consider.

Netanyahu had not only been thrown another political lifeline by President Trump, but he also immediately promised to come up with a plan to put it all into practice. King Abdullah of Jordan may have said that any attempt to force Palestinians en masse into his country would be a ‘declaration of war’; Egypt and Saudi Arabia, may have sternly once again confirmed that this plan was unacceptable. Initially there was the thought that this most transactional of Presidents was waiting for the Saudis to offer to take over the wasteland that is Gaza and re-build it. And yet as the international furore intensified, Trump doubled down. He suggested that Morocco, Somaliland and Puntland could be the ultimate destination for Palestinians to have “a chance to be happy, safe, and free.”

It is entirely possible that Morocco would be a preferred destination for many Palestinians who have returned to nothing but ruined homes in Gaza, but that would largely depend on whether Morocco would be willing to accept very large volumes of people who had volunteered to leave their homeland. Most Palestinians currently in Gaza had previously been driven from their homes in the Nakba of 1948 and give no impression of wanting to leave again. President Trump may be hoping that his continued support for Morocco; this is certainly his thinking when it comes to Somaliland, which may to all intents and purposes function as a state, but is not actually recognised by any other nation, but of course, Trump could recognise it. And when it comes to Puntland, this is the largely non-functional, war torn, part of Somalia. 

And yet, possibly inadvertently President Trump has managed to throw a very real opportunity to countries such as Morocco, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, if they are able to speak as one. The big prize for Trump is for the Saudis to sign up to the Abraham Accords, the other prize for Trump would be to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, something that he has long hankered after. The plan to expel or remove over 2 million Palestinians from Gaza must be a non-starter, as has the idea that it becomes a kind of American colony. However, a Gaza administered and re-built under the aegis of the Arab World, and as part of the Palestinian state now recognised by much of the World as part of the ‘Two State Solution’, might be achievable. So much depends on the leadership now of countries that President Trump will actually listen to; Morocco and Saudi Arabia leading the way. 

*Mark Seddon is a former Speechwriter to UN Secretary-General Ban ki moon & former Adviser to the Office of the President of the UN General Assembly