Strategic Myopia: Assessing the Geopolitical Fallout of Trump’s Gaza Policy

In February, during his joint press briefing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump announced his plan for Gaza that entailed the resettlement of Gaza’s Palestinian population in neighboring Jordan and Egypt, the regimes of which, Trump hoped, would “open their hearts” to ensure that plan’s success. The transformation of Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” would involve its transfer by Israel to the United States and the contribution of wealthy Gulf monarchies in its reconstruction. The Plan drew significant backlash from the United States’ Arab allies, dashing the hope for cooperation from Jordan and Egypt, which Trump had confidently presupposed. Trump’s comments, instead, precipitated a counter-mobilization of the Arab League, which convened in Riyadh and Cairo to discuss the reconstruction of Gaza, denouncing Trump’s projects for the Gaza Strip. Steve Witkoff and Mike Waltz’s defence of the proposal did not pacify Arab sensibilities. In what was a considerable climbdown from his ambitious plan, which is unlike what populist strongmen like Trump envision, he announced that the Gaza Plan would not be binding on the USA’s Arab allies. 

The Gaza Plan is one element of Trump’s transgressive policies on Palestine and the Middle East. Populist leaders like Trump, as well as his Western and Central European peers, consistently frame sweeping shifts in their nations’ foreign policies in the grammar of national interest. However, this survey of US stakes, focusing on its role in the Middle East as a great power and norm-shaper, will reveal how Trump’s Gaza policy is bound to accelerate US decline in the region and among its alliance systems.   

Indifference to International Law  

Trump’s Gaza Plan paid little cognizance to international law or the history of the region; his simplistic understanding, coupled with his Israel-centric agenda, threatens to alienate his Arab allies and imperil the Abraham Accords that he had championed in his first term. Trump’s bombastic claims on transforming the Gaza Strip into a Riviera contravenes Rule 129 of the International Humanitarian Law that prohibits the forcible transfer of population. Although the US is not a signatory to the Rome Statute—and Donald Trump promptly sanctioned the International Criminal Court (ICC) after the latter issued warrants against Netanyahu and his then-Defence Minister—Palestine is a party to the ICC, and the Court is empowered to take actions against international law in Gaza, irrespective of US sanctions. The Fourth Geneva Convention’s Articles 45 and 49 treat forcible displacement as a war crime. 

Annexation is antithetical to the standards of international law underwritten by the United States. While Trump may have mellowed his rhetoric on the Gaza eviction plan, it was lapped up by far-right Israeli politicians, including Israel’s Finance Minister. By vindicating Zionist notions of Israeli sovereignty over the Palestinian territory, it has catalyzed settlers and the elements of the coalition government backing them to double down on the expansion of Jewish communities into Palestinian lands. Since the announcement, seven incidents of settler violence have taken place.  Mike Pompeo, in 2019, had overturned the Hansell Memorandum, 1978, declaring Israeli settlements beyond the Green Line not “inconsistent with international law per se.” Demonstrating continuity, Trump revoked sanctions on Israeli settlers imposed by Biden. Knowing he has an ally in the White House has emboldened Netanyahu, whose government launched Operation Iron Wall in the West Bank to evict Palestinians, barely two days after the first phase of the Gaza-Israel ceasefire entered into force.  

Scant Popular Legitimacy  

Trump’s policy on Gaza has been justified on the grounds of popular legitimacy for emigration among the Gazans. However, his policies have not won him supporters either at home or in Gaza: in a poll conducted among Gazans, 92% chose to stay in Gaza or, if displaced, return to their homeland, rather than migrating to Jordan or Egypt. Nearly 80% of Americans oppose a U.S. takeover of Gaza, while 45% criticize Israel’s actions in the war. Meanwhile, Netanyahu is at the nadir of his popularity, compounded by graft allegations and controversial judicial reforms aimed at expanding legislative and executive control over the judiciary. Netanyahu’s coalition of far-Right parties has been in the eye of mass protests due to their continuous failure to bring hostages home and to prolong the war. There are negligible grounds to deny that the strikes on Hamas are propelled by the heuristic of political survival and his ideological pedigree—that this is Netanyahu’s diversionary war to deflect attention from his scandals, evade conviction, and rally the citizens around the flag. 

Erosion of Status 

The absence of popular legitimacy plagues US policies in the Israel-Gaza War, and though the issue does not feature highly in the issues pre-occupying American voters, US carte blanche to Israel will become unsustainable, especially as voters on the other side of the fence muster support, notably in academic institutions, in an unprecedentedly polarised society. Trump’s unpredictable Gaza policy is dealing irreparable damage to America’s status as a great power. According to role theorists, great powers are not merely defined by their defence and technological capabilities, land size and/or population; rather, it is more often their willingness to project power that distinguishes great powers from resource-rich powers. 

Whereas the norms of liberal internationalism have been challenged on several occasions by the US, the Trump Administration is dismantling international norms and order, underwritten by the US and defined by its interests. Consequently, while the retreat of the guarantor of the international order will shove the world deeper toward anarchy, countries may tread either or both paths: first, rally behind alternative power centers; second, foster greater in-group solidarity and find common solutions to shared problems independent of the US. 

Competition between the US and China, poised to replace the US, will intensify across regions but notably in the Middle East, from where the US has been trying to retrench, at least since Obama’s pivot to Asia. When seen from the prism of China’s rise, the Middle East will gravitate toward China. After becoming the world’s manufacturing hub, China, in 1993, became a net oil importer, since when it has dialed up its stakes in the region, evident in its expansive trade ties with the Gulf Cooperation Council, with whom its trade surpassed $300 billion in 2022. China is the largest foreign investor in the region, with the highest investments in the Belt and Road Initiative directed toward the Middle East in 2024. While, on one hand, Trump unilaterally announced his plan for Gaza, oblivious to the ideological and demographic predicament it poses for Jordan and Egypt, China inked a $1.65-billion-worth deal with Cairo to build steel factories in the Suez and has earmarked Jordan as the gateway to African and European markets. China is already at the center of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, providing the technological and physical infrastructure to Prince Salman’s ambitious NEOM. China’s consistent advocacy of a two-state solution and the principle of non-interference in domestic affairs pulls Middle Eastern regimes away from the USA’s orbit.  

Trump’s Gaza Plan immediately galvanized Arab states to gather in Riyadh and Cairo and jot down an alternative solution for rebuilding Palestine within the ambit of a two-state solution. The $53-billion reconstruction plan won supporters in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, European Union, and Britain, which will be crucial given Trump’s hostility to foreign aid. Iran and Saudi Arabia chose China over the US to mediate between them in 2023. Trump’s unilateral decision-making is alienating US allies that have formed the backbone of US foreign policy since 1945: US allies will eventually begin to undermine American interests in their respective regions, and the currency of emerging, alternate alliances—including and especially those led by China—will increase. 

In a nutshell, Trump’s Gaza Plan exacerbated the erosion of American clout in the region. His Palestine policy and extension of a carte blanche to an unpopular regime in Israel portend a breakdown in trust among the USA’s Arab allies. Western powers have tried to steer the fragile region from their capitals or, at most, the palaces of monarchs and autocrats, underestimating the power of the streets. With daily, rhetoric-laden unilateral pronouncements and hostility toward development aid and international institutions, U.S. soft power is already in shambles. A revival of radical anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism is plausible and will likely be fueled by America’s geopolitical actions both within and beyond the region. China, though reluctant to step into the Middle East’s security imbroglio, is unlikely to miss an opportunity to undermine the U.S. in this strategic region. The Trump Administration’s transgressive, transactional, and parochial approach to international relations accommodates little appetite for course correction.

[Photo by the White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]

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