The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey

A stickler for language, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu twice this month remained conspicuously silent when senior Trump administration officials chose words that signalled potential changes in US policy towards Gaza, the Palestinians, and Hamas.

Like much else in the Middle East, Gaza’s fault lines are less linear than meets the eye.

It’s ok to be anti-Jewish as long as you support Israel. That is Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s bottom line. Mr. Netanyahu is willing to risk losing European officialdom and prominent mainstream intellectuals and activists in the fight against anti-Semitism to garner the support of the global far-right, despite its anti-Jewish roots and sustained links to racism and neo-Nazism. Mr. Netanyahu and his de facto envoy to the global far-right, Diaspora Affairs and Combating Anti-Semitism Minister Amichai Chikli, intend to broadcast that message at an international conference on combatting anti-Semitism scheduled to open in Jerusalem later this month.

At first glance, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu could not have a better friend in the White House. In his first two months in office, President Donald J. Trump authorised US$11 billion in arms sales, signed a swath of executive orders to crack down on criticism of Israel, put universities and student protesters in his crosshairs, and legitimised ethnic cleansing. Even so, Mr. Trump’s four years in office may not be honeymoon years for US-Israeli relations.

When Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu first cultivated Evangelical and far-right support for Israel, he didn’t worry about their theologically rooted associations with anti-Semitism and/or willingness to turn a blind eye to racially-motivated anti-Jewish sentiment. It was a bet that paid off for decades. It solidified Republican support for Israel and helped ensure that successive US administrations, whether Republican or Democratic, had Israel’s back. A recent Gallup poll showed 83 per cent of Republicans as viewing Israel favourably as opposed to Democrats, among whom positive perceptions of Israel dropped from 74 per cent in 2014 to 33 per cent this year. President Donald J. Trump catered to his pro-Israel base in his first two months in office by authorising US$11 billion in arms sales, signing a swath of executive orders to crack down on criticism of Israel, and putting universities and student protesters in his crosshairs. Even so, the times may be ‘a-’changin’ to borrow singer Bob Dylan’s phrase.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s effort to reshape the Middle East aligns neatly with US President Donald J. Trump’s notion of big power geopolitics. In 2023, Mr. Netanyahu outlined elements of his vision in an address to the United Nations General Assembly. The prime minister held up a map that erased Palestine and showed the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war, as part of Israel. Mr. Trump’s plan to resettle Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians elsewhere and turn the war-ravaged Strip into a high-end beachfront real estate development has allowed Mr. Netanyahu to officially embrace the notion of ethnic cleansing for the first time, even though ultranationalist members of his Cabinet have long propagated expelling Palestinians from the territory. US and Israeli officials said concern that Hamas may repurpose some 30,000 unexploded ordnances was one reason why Mr. Trump proposed resettlement. Even so, Mr. Trump’s plan fits a pattern, following his recognition in his first term as president of Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Since then, Mr. Netanyahu’s big power vision of the Middle East has evolved substantially as a result of the toppling in December of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a Turkish-backed group with jihadist antecedents.

US President Donald J. Trump may be a classic case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Mr. Trump’s dealings this week with the Palestinians tell the story.

There is logic to Donald J. Trump’s madness. Irrespective of the merits of the US president’s ethics, policies, and style, Mr. Trump’s grenade-throwing shock-and-awe approach has galvanised Arab states into action over Gaza, much like it did with the Europeans regarding their defense and Ukraine policies. “Love him or hate him, Trump has shaken things up… Before him, Gaza had no real roadmap. Now, the Arab world is singing a new tune: No Hamas, No Arms,” said journalist Amjad Taha.

Russia is not the only country laughing all the way to the bank after US President Donald J. Trump’s war of words with his visiting Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky. So is Israel. Mr. Trump’s willingness to accommodate Russian President Vladimir Putin serves Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s purpose as he seeks to redraw the Middle East map in his mould.

Israeli security demands threaten to upset Syria’s apple cart by James M. Dorsey

US President Donald J. Trump’s shock-and-awe Gaza therapy appears to be working. Infuriated by Mr. Trump’s assertion that the United States will take ownership of the Strip, resettle its 2.3 million inhabitants in Egypt, Jordan, and elsewhere, and turn it into a high-end beachfront real estate development has forced Arab leaders to come up with an alternative plan. Mr. Trump has acknowledged as much.

Second-guessing US President Donald J. Trump is a tricky business.

An Israeli refusal to allow mobile homes and heavy construction equipment into Gaza bodes ill for this week’s second-phase indirect Gaza ceasefire talks with Israel and Hamas hardening their negotiating positions.

With Arab leaders gathering in Cairo later this month for an emergency summit on Gaza, the United Arab Emirates has emerged as the United States and Israel’s best Arab friend.

Might is right. That sums up US President Donald J. Trump’s vision of a 21st-century world order. Barely a month in office, Mr. Trump has not wasted time creating building blocks for his worldview. Mr. Trump’s efforts to end fighting in Ukraine, coupled with his territorial ambitions in Gaza, Greenland, Panama, and Canada, have put the ‘might is right’ principle on steroids. So has the president’s unilateral renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu may have opened a Pandorra’s Box when he suggested creating a Palestinian state on Saudi territory. Mr. Netanyahu wasn’t just throwing a hand grenade into US efforts to engineer Saudi recognition of Israel when he told Israeli television, “The Saudis can create a Palestinian state in Saudi Arabia; they have a lot of land over there.” A quick Saudi retort hinted at the Pandorra’s Box, a decades-old assertion, as fantastical as it may sound, that Judaism’s Zion was in Saudi Arabia, not in Palestine.

Marco Rubio is likely in for a reality check when he visits the Middle East for the first time this week as US Secretary of State.

US President Donald J. Trump’s Gaza plan could change the nature of the Gaza war and prolong rather than end the hostilities. Amid calls for a unified Arab response to Mr. Trump’s plan to resettle or ethnically cleanse Gazan Palestinians, according to many Middle Easterners, officials, journalists, analysts, and social media activists are mulling options. The options under discussion range from approaches that would give US companies a significant stake in Gaza’s reconstruction to the fuelling of a Hamas-led armed guerilla-style resistance.

Hamas has released the fifth batch of hostages to the Red Cross. In exchange, Israel will release 183 Palestinian prisoners, some convicted of involvement in attacks that killed dozens of people, including 18 serving life sentences, and 111 detained in Gaza during the war, according to Hamas. James M. Dorsey, an adjunct Senior Fellow, at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies give us more analysis on the story.

US President Donald J. Trump’s call for the permanent resettlement of Gazan Palestinians has focused regional minds, even if the White House and senior officials have walked back key elements of the president’s proposal