President Donald Trump’s proposal to take ownership of Gaza, relocate its population, and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” is not only wildly impracticable on its face, but gravely immoral. 

First, the United States simply has no right to this land. Trump’s plan would amount to theft on a massive scale. And it only adds insult to this injury to pretend that, once their land is taken from them, the people of Gaza would leave it peacefully so that it can be turned into a real estate development. 

Second, for this reason, any attempt to seize Gaza would surely be met with fierce armed resistance, and other Arab and Muslim countries would likely enter the conflict. This would lead the U.S. into a military quagmire that would likely dwarf the Iraq and Afghan wars. Given the grave injustice of taking land that does not belong to us, there is no way such military action would meet the “just cause” condition of traditional just-war doctrine. Given the intractability of such a conflict, there is no way it could meet the “likelihood of success” criterion. 

Third, we would be doing grave injustice not only to Gaza’s people but to our own. It is outrageous to propose a policy that would require putting our own soldiers’ lives at risk to meddle in a conflict that is not our own and for the purpose of clearing ground to build hotels, casinos and the like. It is outrageous to suggest risking the lives of American personnel to clear away rubble and unexploded munitions left behind by another country’s army. 

Moreover, taking and holding Gaza would, even in the best-case scenario, cost the American people billions of dollars and, worse, saddle the U.S. with responsibility for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — an irresolvable mess with deep cultural and religious roots that goes back decades, indeed centuries. President Trump once promised to keep the U.S. out of any further ill-advised adventures in “nation-building.” Pursuing the Gaza plan would be the starkest possible betrayal of that promise.

Fourth, though some pretend that the plan is merely “outside the box” thinking that might at last resolve the conflict, in fact it is certain massively to exacerbate it. For the U.S. and Israel to cooperate in seizing Gaza outright and relocating its people would confirm the worst fears of the Palestinians and the Arab and Muslim worlds in general. It would inevitably be perceived as a giant step in the direction of total expropriation of Palestinian lands and “ethnic cleansing.” It would thus drive hatred of Israel and the United States to a fever pitch, leading to an increase in terrorism and heightened danger of war. 

Fifth, it is not only absurd to expect Gazans to agree to give up their land, but unreasonable to demand of other countries that they take them in — not to mention manifestly hypocritical at a time when the president is insisting that the U.S. has every right to limit immigration across its own borders. The president’s scheme would massively exacerbate the refugee crisis.

Sixth, while some suggest that the president’s bizarre proposal is best understood as a negotiating tactic, that is no defense. As Catholic moral theologians often point out, if it is immoral to carry out a certain action, then it is also immoral even to threaten to carry it out. Since, as I’ve argued, it would be immoral to implement the president’s Gaza proposal, it is immoral to threaten to do so, even as a negotiating tactic. “Agree to a deal or we’ll steal your land and drive you out of it” is the method of a gangster, not a statesman.

It is also not a good idea to insult someone with whom one hopes to negotiate. To look at the enormous suffering and destruction that has been visited upon Gaza and see in it a real estate opportunity (of all things) is, frankly, obscene. To many around the world, it will inevitably reinforce the unjust stereotype of Americans as crass and parochial materialists who reduce all value to a dollar amount and arrogantly assume that everyone else does the same. No honor-based culture will be awed into compliance by such an approach. Rather, it will regard it as a slap in the face worthy only of contemptuous defiance.

The attack suffered by Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was unimaginably evil. What was done reflects a dehumanization of the Jewish people by Hamas. But as we should have learned from the excesses of the U.S. response to 9/11, a righteous cause does not excuse everything done in its name. It dehumanizes the people of Gaza to treat them as if they were mere pieces on a chessboard, whom we have the right to pluck up and shuffle about as we see fit. 

Some of the president’s defenders pretend that, whatever one ultimately thinks of his proposal, its sheer boldness deserves praise. At least he is shaking things up, they say. They would benefit from reading Aristotle and Aquinas on the virtues, where they’d learn that boldness unmoored from wisdom is just foolhardiness and can do no good at all. “First, do no harm” is essential advice in statecraft, as in medicine. 

 

 

Edward Feser teaches philosophy at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California.