We’ve seen this movie before: President Trump speaks and red-hot takes abound. 

The latest freak-out has been reaction to the president’s comments about Gaza during a press conference with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Feb. 4. Trump said that “the U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we’ll do a good job with it, too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings — level it out.” The president had earlier commented on the need to “clean out” Gaza and move its inhabitants elsewhere, perhaps to nearby Jordan and Egypt (Gaza borders Egypt’s lightly populated Sinai Peninsula).

Negative reaction was swift and overwhelming, not only from all Arab regimes and Palestinian groups, both rivals Hamas and Fatah, but also from Western states, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain and Australia, all of whom issued dour statements highlighting the importance of the two-state solution. Positive but vague reaction came only from Israel, with Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar telling Israeli lawmakers that it was worthwhile considering “out-of-the-box ideas.” 

What the critics were doing was, as the saying goes, “taking Trump literally rather than seriously.” The problem of Gaza is all too serious. 

It is much easier to rebuild a bomb-strewn lunarscape without 2 million people present at the construction site.

There is probably plenty of money — from Arab Gulf states — to rebuild Gaza, but who will rule it once the reconstruction is done? The limited choices to date seem to be the corrupt and occasionally terroristic Fatah or the corrupt and always terroristic Hamas.

Hamas has not only promised to repeat the Oct. 7, 2023, attack from Gaza on Israel again and again, they have also boasted how they deceived the Israelis into thinking that Hamas was only concerned with governing Gaza, giving a better life to its inhabitants, rather than building a launchpad for terrorist invasion.

The U.S. president’s bold remarks are best interpreted, at this early stage, as a dramatic rhetorical gambit showing that the current status quo of terrorist Gaza erupting into war against Israel, then being militarily defeated and devastated, then being rebuilt, only to do it again — “rinse and repeat” — is unsustainable and illogical. Trump wants to cut the Gordian knot of misery and war. If no Arab state can bring good governance and tranquility to Gaza, if Fatah is incompetent and Hamas is a main source of this disaster, then maybe good governance can come from America, as outlandish as that may sound. 

One thing is sure: If the Palestinians of Gaza were given the opportunity to emigrate, many of them (one poll says 31%) would do so immediately. But so would a considerable part of the population of many Arab regimes. Recent polling has shown that large percentages of the populations of Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Sudan and other countries would leave, mostly for economic reasons. And even before the latest war, Palestinian Christians (and Arab Christians, in general) are more eager to emigrate than Muslims. 

While many people in Gaza may want to leave, both Arab regimes and Palestinian groups want them to stay as a type of constant Palestinian nationalist pressure exercised against both Israel and the West. This so-called steadfastness (in Arabic, sumud) is a key concept in the Palestinian struggle, a tool of the Palestinian revolution that they will not easily give up. In such a scenario, Palestinian misery is not a byproduct of this steadfastness, but a requirement. Arab regimes like the concept too because it keeps restless and probably “disloyal” Palestinian populations away from them. The specter of Palestinian involvement in Arab wars — Jordan in 1970, Lebanon in 1975, Kuwait in 1990 — looms large in the mind of Arab security elites seeking to hold onto power. These regimes may fear President Trump, but they fear their own populations, and Palestinian fifth columnists, even more.

If past gambits by President Trump are any guide, the president has staked out an extreme but not impossible outcome for Gaza as part of an ongoing high-stakes negotiation process involving Arab states, Palestinians, Israel and the international community. 

Whether it succeeds at all, the effort seeks to bring much needed change. As such, this narrative is not so dissimilar from the president’s rhetoric on Iran and on the Russia-Ukraine War — aggressive, creative, alarming but also authentically seeking peace in what seem like intractable conflicts. Those alarmed by Trump’s remarks should perhaps reflect that the current dangerous situation was created by others who spoke the tired diplomatic jargon well while leaving disaster in their wake. The old status quo, the old Palestinian peace process so tortuously nurtured for decades, seems to clearly be on its last legs; and something better, or at least something different, should emerge. According to Trump, something different must emerge.