SAUNDERS: Trump’s tough talk on Gaza is not what we expected. Hamas, be afraid

WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump has a basic idea about everybody on the planet. He believes people just want to live well in nice housing and safe communities.

The world saw that in Singapore in 2018, when Trump met with North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un. Team Trump made a video that offered the Hermit Kingdom a place at the world’s prosperity table.

The world saw that side of Trump again Tuesday when the president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took press questions in the White House East Room.

Trump’s appeal: He wants to turn Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East” — and he wants the United States to own the land.

While some heads in the room exploded, Trump pitched his message to those outside the room.

What do Gazans have to lose?

Trump bluntly stated that Gaza is now a “hellhole.” For more than a year, Israel bombed the seaside strip of land with the goal of destroying Hamas so its thugs could never repeat the atrocity of Oct. 7, 2023, when invading Palestinian terrorists murdered about 1,200 people and took some 250 hostages.

Gaza was a “hellhole” before the 2023 atrocity. After being bombed back to the Stone Age, it’s not habitable, Trump offered.

Let Egypt, Jordan and other nations take in Palestinians while the United States engages in nation-building.

The obstacles are many. As Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies put it, Palestinians have been “willing to live in rubble, live in tents, live without water or electricity, and suffer as living symbols of the Palestinian national cause. And this is what they have been encouraged to do. They’ve been incentivized to do by the rest of the Arab world since, since 1948.”

As if to prove Schanzer’s point, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas responded, “We will not allow the rights of our people, for which we have struggled for decades and made great sacrifices to achieve, to be infringed upon.”

I have to agree.

But if the Arab world sees welcoming Gazans as a betrayal, perhaps other Muslim nations — say Malaysia or Indonesia — could pitch in, Schanzer offered. Bottom line: Trump’s rhetoric “forced the Arab world to begin to engage more seriously if they don’t want the transfer of Gazans, if they don’t want the U.S. to take over the Gaza Strip, they need to provide an alternative.”

Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, told CNN, “I think we all agree that it should require the consent — consent of people to move out from where they live, and the consent for other countries to receive them.” True.

But Trump’s proposal for U.S. ownership is essential. In 2005, Israel withdrew from a functioning Gaza in 2005 only to see Hamas take charge in 2007.

Is Trump’s “Riviera of the Middle East” scheme likely to happen? Probably not. The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake offered four possible explanations for Trump’s Gaza gambit: It provides a distraction; it’s a negotiating ploy; Trump sees value in adversaries believing he is volatile; and/or “His sudden imperialist streak is very real.”

I see a president who seized the opportunity to send a message to Palestinians — that they deserve better — and who chose to point a harsh spotlight on the the misery that pervades all corners in Gaza.

The worst part? That misery is a choice.

A bad choice, but not a choice that needs repeating.

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.