Following President Donald Trump’s recent suggestion that the United States take ownership of Gaza, some Duke faculty expressed firm disapproval of the plan for its ethical and legal implications.
During a Feb. 4 White House joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump described a plan for the U.S. to take control of Gaza and convert it into an “international, unbelievable place,” which he called the “Riviera of the Middle East.” In a subsequent Fox News interview on Feb. 10, Trump clarified that current Palestinian residents in Gaza would not have the right to return once the riviera is constructed.
Some faculty members rejected the proposal as morally reprehensible. Beyond its ethical concerns, they added that the proposal would face strategic and logistical obstacles.
“In the … many years that I've both worked on in foreign policy [and] American foreign policy, … it's one of the worst proposals I've ever heard in many respects,” said Bruce Jentleson, William Preston Few distinguished professor of public policy. “… No international leader of another country [or] the United States … has the right to tell people of another area — not yet a country — that they have to leave it.”
He added the plan is “wrong from an international law point of view and an ethical point of view” and is “not very doable.”
Netanyahu has shown continued support for Trump’s plan, claiming in a Monday statement that Israel is “committed to … Trump’s plan for the creation of a different Gaza.”
“The very idea of basically cleansing Gaza from its people, is morally repulsive,” said Abdeslam Maghraoui, associate professor of the practice of political science. It is … very problematic in terms of international law and norms.”
Though, some analysts have hypothesised that Trump may be deliberately making extreme statements as a political strategy to help him achieve more moderate concessions.
Shai Ginsburg, chair and associate professor of the department of Asian and Middle Eastern studies, noted that the Trump administration may be “motivat[ed] to shock in order to shake things up.”
However, Maghraoui cautioned against interpreting Trump’s statements as mere posturing.
“I think that the leaders in the region take Trump very seriously when he says things, even though he might be outrageous,” he said.
What would the political consequences be?
Even if Trump were to succeed in implementing the plan, faculty members were largely unconvinced that it would help advance U.S. interests.
Jentleson agreed that Trump’s statements are diplomatically counterproductive. He said that while taking a “hard line” is a negotiation tactic, Trump’s plan is “so far out there and so offensive that it's going to antagonize rather than provide leverage that's useful for negotiations.”
Maghraoui argued it would be “very unlikely” that Trump’s plan would further any of the major U.S. goals in the region, including establishing normal relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, ensuring that Iran doesn’t attain nuclear weapons and arriving at a clear resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He expressed concern that taking this unprecedented action could be counterproductive for U.S interests by alienating its allies, both in the Middle East and across the globe.
“It could lead to something really new in the region, which is to bring together Iran and Saudi Arabia,” Maghraoui said, adding that “we might see that suddenly the United States is not just a friend of Europe, but also an adversary.”
Is the plan possible?
The faculty experts shared that Palestinians are unlikely to leave Gaza willingly.
Many families in Gaza are descendants of Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes — which are now within Israeli borders — during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The Six-Day War in 1967 resulted in Israel taking control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan and Gaza from Egypt. Amnesty International identifies the ongoing dispute over these refugees’ “right to return” as one of the central issues in the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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Jentleson warned that attempting to forcibly remove those living in Gaza could result in a high death toll in the region, including for U.S. soldiers.
"[The] people of Gaza do not want to leave Gaza … and the notion of sending the American military in to evict them … would be a mission that would make Afghanistan pale in comparison,” he said.
Maghraoui echoed this sentiment, claiming that the plan could lead to an “unprecedented number of deaths.”
He also raised concerns about where the citizens would be resettled. Trump proposed withholding aid from Jordan and Egypt to convince them to house the potential refugees. However, Maghraoui contended that the leaders of these nations face far greater domestic risks in collaborating with Trump's plan than he seems to acknowledge.
“They might lose their power. It might trigger another Arab Spring in the region, and it will be catastrophic,” he said. “I don't think it's going to be as simple as, well, ‘I'm going to ask the King of Jordan to do this, and he's going to do it.’”
Preparing the region for construction would mark an additional logistical concern. A Dec. 1 United Nations report estimated that just removing rubble from Gaza would take approximately 20 years.
Ginsburg explained that it isn’t realizable “to take 2 million Palestinians and move them somewhere else, clear the rubble, decontaminate the earth and the water and build a resort within our lifetime.”
Finally, the plan — which some have described as violating international law — could potentially be thwarted at home by congressional levers. In this respect, Jentleson believes Trump may have an easier time.
“Congress has mechanisms [to resist Trump’s plan] … but frankly, with a Republican-controlled Congress, there's no will to use them,” he said.
Editor's note: Darragh Senchyna is a student in Bruce Jentleson's PS547: Politics of US Foreign Policy course this semester.
Darragh Senchyna is a first-year master's student in the Graduate School and a staff reporter for the news department.