Middle East Crisis – Why Trump’s annexation of Gaza won’t happen

Back in the halcyon days of late January 2025, for geopolitical experts such as Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the complexities in the Middle East could be distilled into a single question. 

“Will the United States sever its diplomatic relations with the rest of the world on behalf of the assertions of two religious extremists in Israel?” he asked.

Given that it was still a rhetorical question, Sachs shrugged. 

“I don’t know,” he told his interviewer, “I doubt it.”

The religious extremists that Sachs was talking about, of course, were Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir – a pair of right-wing messianic Zionists who, since 7 October 2023, had provided the parliamentary fuel for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demolition campaign in Gaza.

As fervent believers in a “Greater Israel” – shorthand for the biblical map of the Jewish homeland; with borders stretching south into Sinai, north into Lebanon, and east as far as the Euphrates River in Iraq – these men were viewed by Sachs as the lunatic fringe of Israeli society. 

Still, inside Israel itself, there had been indications that their lunacy was no longer representative of an insignificant minority. As the redoubtable Israeli journalist Gideon Levy had written in Ha’aretz on 19 January 2025, just as the Gaza ceasefire was coming into effect: 

“Voices that were never before considered legitimate infiltrated politics and the media. Soon they were not only legitimate, they were the voice of the Israeli masses and also of the government and military. On radio and television, people said, ‘There are no innocents in Gaza’ and spoke about the (happy) right and duty to kill everyone, with the same ease with which they discussed the weather.”

And so on 4 February 2025, at least while the moment lasted, the Israeli masses appeared to have their miracle. Following President Donald Trump’s announcement that the US would “take over” Gaza and permanently resettle its population, the most influential pro-Israel X accounts were outdoing one another for callousness. 

“Is Gaza about to become the 54th state?” asked Eyal Yakoby. “Shoutout to Yahya Sinwar for starting a war which will now end with Gaza becoming American land,” crowed Nioh Berg. “This all feels very messianic,” noted Hillel Fuld.

Back in the real world, the other part of Sachs’s prediction was becoming true. Without a path to Palestinian statehood, as he had made clear in the interview, the Trump administration would face the opposition of the Arab League nations, the G20, the BRICS countries, the UN General Assembly and the International Court of Justice.

“In other words,” Sachs had said, “there is global near-unanimity.”

On 5 February 2025, that unanimity was on full and open display. Throughout the day, The Guardian’s live feed was consistently updated with condemnations – not only from the likes of China, Iran and Turkey, but also from the US’s traditional allies on the issue, Germany and the UK. Palestinian statehood, as these official statements concurred, was now a non-negotiable.

Read more: Ceasefire hardball — the Gaza deal, the ‘Palestinian Nelson Mandela’ and the one-state solution

The big one, though, was the statement out of Saudi Arabia. In the early hours of 5 February, Israeli media were leading with the headline that Riyadh was not demanding statehood in return for the normalisation of relations between the two countries. At a press conference in the Oval Office, flanked by a beaming Netanyahu, Trump had just fielded the question from an on-the-ball journalist. 

“No, they’re not,” the US president had responded.

But, remarkably, this turned out to be a bald-faced lie. 

“Saudi Arabia rejects any attempts to displace the Palestinians from their land,” Reuters reported a few hours later, quoting the Saudi foreign ministry. “Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has affirmed the kingdom’s position in ‘a clear and explicit manner’ that does not allow for any interpretation under any circumstances.” 

The subtext, as confirmed by the full statement itself, was that the Saudis were fuming. What nobody seemed able to work out, however, was the strategy behind Trump’s game? Was there even a strategy? Or was this simply the biggest gaslight in the history of the region?     

For their part, even senior leaders in the Republican Party were at a loss for words. The most notable exceptions were Rand Paul and Lindsay Graham, who called out Trump for his hypocrisy. 

Read more: Israel-Palestine War

“The pursuit for peace should be that of the Israelis and the Palestinians,” Paul wrote on X. “I thought we voted for America First. We have no business contemplating yet another occupation to doom our [treasury] and spill our soldiers’ blood.”

Graham, in the same vein, had done an about-turn on his own hawkishness. “I think most South Carolinians would probably not be excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza,” the senator told reporters, with reference to his constituents.   

There appeared to be wide agreement from all quarters, then – Trump’s proposal to resettle the Gazans in Egypt and Jordan, while contractors under the guard of the US military upgraded the Strip into the Marbella of the Middle East, was not going to fly. 

All options, therefore, were still very much on the table. The worst-case scenario included a resumption of the war; which, particularly if Israel proceeded without US backing, would almost certainly bring about the state’s collapse. The best-case scenario included the release of Marwan Barghouti from an Israeli prison; which, since he was the leader most favoured by the vast majority of Palestinians (and was not Hamas), still held out the promise of a truly Mandela-like outcome. DM