U.S. President Donald Trump, sitting alongside Israeli Prime Benjamin Netanyahu, issued a geopolitical earthquake on Tuesday, doubling down on calls to resettle “1.7 or 1.8 million” Palestinians outside of the Gaza Strip.

The calls go beyond any concept of “total victory” that Netanyahu has verbalized and possibly even considered at any point during the current war with Hamas in Gaza. A little more than a week ago, the questions on the table were whether Israel could ever return all of its hostages and who would rule Palestinians living in Gaza on the “day after” the war.

Trump—in the way only he could do—has stated what should have been patently obvious to a normal observer but unspeakable for any world leader: Gaza is completely uninhabitable, and its residents will need to be resettled elsewhere.

If Trump’s suggestions come to pass, it will not only represent a “total victory” beyond even Netanyahu’s wildest imagination but represent the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Migrating nearly 2 million people out of the Gaza Strip will permanently alter the demographic reality between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, removing any parity of numbers between Jews and Palestinian Arabs.

If successful, calls for Israel to permanently cede land for the creation of a Palestinian state within the Jewish biblical homeland will end, and Israel will finally win the conflict. Jews would then be the overwhelming majority and Palestinians a smaller ethnic minority, removing once and for all the phony claims that Israel is an apartheid state.

Trump even hinted that America may support full Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (commonly known in the international community as the “West Bank”). “We’re discussing that … and people do like the idea. We haven’t taken a position on it yet, but we’ll be making one probably on that very specific topic over the next four weeks.”

If America recognizes Israeli sovereignty in the provinces of Judea and Samaria, then it will permanently slam the door on the failed Oslo Accords and the two-state paradigm that the Palestinians never wanted in the first place.

The president, who worked extremely well with Israel’s prime minister during the 45th administration, has previously succeeded in breaking paradigms in the region with the brokering of the historic Abraham Accords agreements in the fall of 2020.

In his remarks in the Oval Office, Trump stated tersely that he will “never win a Nobel Prize” for his groundbreaking role in brokering the unthinkable agreements.

He is now bringing his unconventional thinking back to the region just days into a new term and looking for an end to the conflict that began when Hamas penetrated Israel’s border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering 1,200 men, women and children in the south, and kidnapping to Gaza more than 250 others in the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Trump acknowledged that many “want to deny that Oct. 7 took place, just as many want to deny the Holocaust took place.”

‘Israel fought back bravely’

In the press briefing after the meeting between the two leaders, Trump called the Oct. 7 assault “an all-out attack on the very existence of a Jewish state in the Jewish homeland.” Then he went on to praise Israel’s response to Oct. 7.

“Israel fought back bravely,” he said. The Israelis stood strong and united in the face of an enemy that kidnapped, tortured and slaughtered innocent women and children. I salute the Israeli people for meeting this trial with courage and determination and unflinching resolve.

That did not sound anything like the “balanced” statements of the outgoing Biden administration, who repeated the mantra that “how Israel conducts its war matters.”

Trump stated that the “prime minister and I focused on the future, discussing how we can work together to ensure Hamas is eliminated and ultimately restore peace to a very troubled region.”

His out-of-the-box and simultaneously rational thinking was only made possible by Israel’s stunning military victory against Hamas in Gaza.

While those left of the remaining terrorist operatives continue to steal humanitarian aid and put on phony displays of survival at hostage-release ceremonies, the truth is that Hamas has been decimated.

For that matter, all of Gaza has been decimated. Trump said that “right now, Gaza is a demolition site. Virtually every building is down. They’re living on their fallen concrete that’s very dangerous and very precarious.”

The reason Gaza is in this situation is because of Hamas’s strategy to use the entirety of civilian infrastructure in the coastal enclave as its base of operations. Nearly every residential building, mosque, school and hospital was turned into a weapons storage depot or a tunnel entrance.

To win the war, Israel had no choice but to destroy civilian infrastructure. The IDF methodically moved up and down Gaza, destroying every building being used by Hamas for military purposes.

The IDF accomplished this feat with hands tied behind their backs, being forced to move nearly the entirety of Gaza’s civilian population out of harm’s way and to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid. It has been an incredible military accomplishment that will be studied by militaries around the world for decades to come.

‘The boundless courage of our soldiers’

Netanyahu listed off many of the war’s accomplishments, including the assassinations of senior terror leaders Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar and Hassan Nasrallah. “We devastated Hamas, we decimated Hezbollah. We destroyed [Syrian President Bashar] Assad’s remaining armaments, and we crippled Iran’s air defenses,” he said.

Hamas and Iran chose war. They didn’t count on Israel winning it.

Netanyahu credited the Israelis who took to the battlefield, saying the war’s accomplishments were met “with the indomitable spirit of our people and the boundless courage of our soldiers.”

While at times throughout the war, Israel appeared to be vulnerable and unsure of its ability to win, that victory is now becoming clearer. “Israel has never been stronger and Iranian terrorists have never been weaker,” Netanyahu said.

With the adversarial Biden administration now in the rearview mirror and with the prime minister standing next to Trump, it’s clear that Israel under Netanyahu’s war leadership has won an irreversible victory in Gaza.

Trump is preparing to take that victory to the next level. He floated “the idea of the United States owning that piece of land” after Palestinians are resettled out of Gaza.

The statement of American ownership is confusing, particularly for Israel, which controlled Gaza before its failed withdrawal from the Strip in 2005. Yet such statements may make the concept of resettlement more palatable to Israel’s Arab neighbors.

Now, it will be up to Trump to back up his words and figure out exactly how to incentivize moving the civilian population of Gaza into Egypt, Jordan or elsewhere.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II is scheduled to visit Trump next week in the White House. If that takes place, it can provide some indication of how likely neighboring Arab states will be to cooperate with such a plan.

If they refuse to, things may get more complicated before they get simpler. But Netanyahu has proven that he can navigate the most difficult of circumstances. And he has faith in Trump’s ability to do what he says, knowing that faith can deliver remarkable results.

“I believe, Mr. President, that your willingness to puncture conventional thinking that his failed time and time again, and today, your willingness to think outside the box with fresh ideas. … You cut to the chase; you see things others refuse to see. You say things others refuse to say. And then after the jaws drop, people scratch their heads, and they say, ‘He said what?’ And this is the kind of thinking that enabled us to bring the Abraham Accords.”

Netanyahu believes that “this is the kind of thinking that will reshape the Middle East and bring peace.”

For Netanyahu and Trump, peace comes through strength.

“Israel will end the war by winning,” Netanyahu said. “And Israel’s victory will be America’s victory. We’ll not only win the war working together, we’ll win the peace with your leadership, Mr. President, and our partnership. I believe that we will forge a brilliant future for our region and bring our great alliance to even greater heights.”

Of course, the U.S.-Israel alliance can only shine if both Israel and America take the moral position to support one another and work together to defeat common enemies.

Trump is working to “Make America Great Again.” Netanyahu has a similar mission for the Jewish state.

“The Bible says that the people of Israel shall rise like lions,” Netanyahu said. “And boy, did we rise. Today, the roar of the lion of Judah is heard loudly throughout the Middle East.”

Source: JNS