Gaza embodies Trump’s diplomacy of disruption and confusion

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will barnstorm through the Middle East this week, carrying President Donald Trump’s ideas for fixing war-torn Gaza on the way to pacifying the Middle East.

But in advance of the trip, Rubio is running into a problem that vexed Trump’s foreign policy team members during his first 2017-2021 term in office: how to make sense of the president’s seemingly off-the-cuff policy statements diplomatic officials regarded as off-the-wall.

It has created confusion outside and inside the new administration. To recapitulate: On February 4, Trump announced a future US takeover of the Gaza Strip that would involve moving all its residents to “a beautiful area to resettle people, permanently,” after which Gaza would be reborn as a Mediterranean “Riviera.”

He said he had already fingered Jordan and Egypt as the “beautiful area” for Gaza’s Palestinian transplants. “We’re going to take over,” Trump wrote online. “And it will be something that the entire Middle East can be very proud of.”

Rubio, who at the time was traveling in the Caribbean, tried to clarify. Judging that the war’s rain of destruction had left Gaza uninhabitable, he suggested residents would have to leave, but only for a while, to allow for rebuilding. “To fix a place like that, people are going to have to live somewhere else in the interim,” he said.

Rubio insisted Trump was only referring to a US “willingness” to be responsible for fixing the place.

On February 6, Trump clarified Rubio’s clarification: By the time the US took over, the Palestinians would already have “been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region. They would actually have a chance to be happy, safe and free.”

The policy ping-pong suggests a return to the confusion and disputes that characterized Trump’s foreign policy management in his first term. Then, even hand-picked aides left in despair or were fired, including:

• Rex Tillerson, an oil executive fired as Secretary of State because of repeated policy disputes over Russia policy;
• Veteran diplomat John Bolton, who was National Security Advisor for less than a year, over disagreements about Trump’s desire to hold talks with the Taliban in advance of a US military withdrawal from Afghanistan;
• Joint Chiefs of Staff head James Mattis over Trump’s desire to abruptly pull US troops out of Syria that were supporting indigenous anti-regime forces.

Will Rubio stumble down the same path? His effort to make sense of Trump’s remarks was at odds with Trump’s notion of “disruptive diplomacy,” which he practices with the supposed goal of untangling policy paralysis among what he considers stale bureaucrats, worn-out allies and bloated international organizations.

When asked in a briefing what exactly the Gaza policy would entail, Trump’s spokesperson Karoline Leavitt described it as an “out-of-the-box idea” to avoid “The same people pushing the same solutions to this problem for decades.”

It’s not clear that she was referring to Rubio, a Florida senator for 14 years. In any event, rather than explain how the new “Riviera” approach would work, she did detail what it would not entail: US troops in Gaza or American taxpayer money to fund reconstruction.

Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz described the evacuation-reconstruction proposal not as something allies in the region absolutely must support, but rather as a vehicle to stimulate their own new ideas. Trump’s announcement “is going to bring the entire region to come up with their own solutions,” Waltz predicted.

Arab countries, including Egypt and Jordan, have roundly rejected the notion of moving Palestinians out of Gaza.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said he had contacted 11 Arab countries, all of which rejected “any measures aimed at displacing the Palestinian people from their land, or encouraging their transfer to other countries outside the Palestinian territories.”

Any such moves would be a “flagrant violation of international law, an infringement on Palestinian rights, a threat to security and stability in the region and an undermining of opportunities for peace.” A Jordanian official called it “a declaration of war.”

Israel, on the other hand, predictably welcomed the idea. “This is the first good idea that I’ve heard. It’s a remarkable idea and I think it should be really pursued and done because I think it will create a different future for everyone,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who met last week with Trump in Washington.

His comments ought not to surprise. Moving Palestinians not only from both Gaza but also the West Bank has been a desire of Netanyahu’s Likud Party and other nationalist right-wing groups for at least four decades.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Trump’s remarks represented a well-devised strategy. Reporters in Washington asked White House officials to produce a policy paper or indicate a committee that had laid out the plans. The answer was there was neither, just Trump “laying it out to the American people.”

In reality, a similar idea had been broached in Trump’s orbit last year. His Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a businessman and real estate investor who was a senior advisor during Trump’s first term but holds no formal position now, described a similar transfer idea as a real estate opportunity.  

During an appearance at Harvard University, Kushner said Gazans could be resettled into Israel’s far southern Negev Desert, thus opening “Gaza’s waterfront property” for development that “could be very valuable.”

“It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up,” Kushner said. “But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.”

Netanyahu isn’t waiting for Rubio’s arrival to put Trump’s ideas into practice. His Defense Minister, Israel Katz, ordered soldiers inside Gaza to expedite the exit by land, sea or air for any Palestinians who have an invitation to go to any foreign country that would take them.

Gazans should have “freedom of movement and migration,” Katz said. Countries that have criticized Israel for the war were “obligated” to take in refugees, he added without elaborating.

Netanyahu had first introduced the removal idea last year. Soon after Israel invaded Gaza in response to the deadly October 7, 2023, raid by Hamas into southern Israel, his diplomats queried the United States and governments in the European Union whether they would accept tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians.

None agreed at the time.