Analysis: Trump’s pledge to take over Gaza is ‘just nonsense’

A belligerent Donald Trump is doubling down on his proposal to “take over” Gaza after forcing Palestinians out of the devastated enclave, triggering angry retorts and condemnations from around the world.

The US President has insisted that two million Palestinians should leave their ancestral Mediterranean enclave because it “is just a demolition site” where “no one can live”. But he did not mention how Gaza has been turned into a dystopian rubble-strewn landscape by Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians.

“It's a phenomenal location, on the sea, the best weather. Everything's good. Some beautiful things could be done with it,” said Trump, a real estate developer-turned-politician who wants to “own” Gaza.

On Monday, he said Palestinians will have no right of return to Gaza under his controversial plan to occupy Gaza.

However, experts have expressed doubts about Trump’s plan.

“It can't be done. Israel can't just give away Gaza. No neighbour will take two million displaced Palestinians…It's just nonsense,” says Edward Erickson, a former American military officer and a retired professor of military history at the Department of War Studies at the Marine Corps University.

Trump’s proposal, Erickson tells TRT World, is apparently driven by his desire to be seen as “a saviour and have people idolise him”.

“He has always coveted a Nobel Peace prize. (But) frankly, it's idiocy,” Erickson says, adding that no one “can truthfully say what Gaza's future will be” at the moment, with uncertainty hovering over the Mediterranean enclave.

Ramzy Baroud, a Palestinian author and political analyst, on the other hand, views Trump’s Gaza takeover plan as a distraction from the real goal — that is “to offer Netanyahu a political win to stabilise his fragile government” by shifting focus to Gaza and allow the beleaguered premier the cover “to continue ethnic cleansing in the West Bank under less scrutiny”.

A plan directed against Hamas?

While the Israeli army launched intensive bombardments and indiscriminate attacks on Gaza for over 15 months, the Palestinian resistance group Hamas has emerged from the rubble as a force which can still rule the Palestinian enclave.

Trump came up with the latest takeover plan because Tel Aviv faced “military setbacks in Gaza and its credibility in the region diminishing,” Baroud tells TRT World.

The ongoing truce period shows that “Hamas is returning to the administration of Gaza,” Sami Barhoum, a Gaza-based Palestinian journalist, tells TRT World.

Hamas’ return to power in Gaza is a significant obstacle to the implementation of Trump's plan, which might put American troops, if deployed to Gaza, in direct confrontation with Hamas and its allies.

Trump had earlier claimed that his plan would not necessitate the deployment of US troops in Gaza.

While Netanyahu had vowed to eliminate Hamas after the October 7 attacks, it is “clear” that the Palestinian group is still present after the deadliest war in the history of Middle Eastern conflict since 1948, according to Barhoum. Many analysts had also previously assessed that Hamas can not be wiped out by Israel.

There are emerging signs that Hamas’ military structure has been run by Mohammed Sinwar, the brother of Yahya Sinwar, the group’s slain firebrand leader, who was the mastermind of the October 7 attacks, according to Israelis.

Junior Sinwar was also one of the alleged masterminds of the October 7 attack, according to Israeli sources. "He was 100 per cent one of the core team who planned October 7," said a former Mossad counter-terror chief, adding that “he's very important” in Hamas military leadership circles.

Sinwar assumed the leadership of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, after Mohammed Deif, the longtime head of the military structure, was killed by an Israeli attack in July.

Will Palestinians leave Gaza?

Baroud does not think that Trump’s plan can work because “forced displacement of Palestinians remains unlikely”.

Gaza’s people have shown “extraordinary resilience, resisting Israeli aggression despite unprecedented destruction,” he says.

“Efforts to push them into Sinai have failed, and global opposition to mass expulsions remains strong, even from Arab countries.” Saudi Arabia and Jordan, the two Arab states, have rejected Trump’s expulsion plans.

But Netanyahu, who loved Trump’s new “vision” on Gaza, said that, “the Saudis can create a Palestinian state in Saudi Arabia; they have a lot of land over there.”

The remarks from Trump and Netanyahu have angered some Saudi leaders.

"If he (Trump) truly wants to be a hero of peace and achieve stability and prosperity for the Middle East, he should relocate his beloved Israelis to the state of Alaska and then to Greenland—after annexing it," wrote the country’s top Shura Council member Yousef bin Trad Al-Saadoun in a tongue-in-cheek article for the Saudi newspaper Okaz last week.

Can Trump face trial in the Hague?

Trump’s outrageous remarks on Gaza might lead to another lawsuit against him, who has faced many accusations ranging from sexual harassment to hush money payments during the 2024 presidential campaign, according to human rights groups.

If Trump moves further to implement his Gaza takeover plan, “the ICC would be a possibility,” says Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), referring to the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC).

“The arrest warrants issued for Netanyahu and (the former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav) Gallant are testaments to the ICC’s commitment that no one is above the law,” Shakir tells TRT World.

But Shakir believes that Trump’s plan “won’t happen as laid out”.

A recent HRW statement said that a possible direct US involvement might make Washington part of the possible atrocity crimes, some of which fall within the ICC’s mandate that has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Palestine. "It would move the US from being complicit in war crimes to direct perpetration of atrocities,” the HRW statement said.