Trump’s support for expelling Palestinians fans Middle Eastern fires
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US President Donald J. Trump risks putting relations with Saudi Arabia and other US partners in the Middle East on a knife’s edge, sending the region into a tailspin, and complicating, if not undermining, negotiations to make the three-phase Gaza ceasefire permanent rather than temporary by advocating the removal to Egypt and Jordan of 1.5 million Gazan Palestinians.
Mr. Trump’s advocacy also risks sparking widespread protests across the Middle East and the Muslim world that potentially could destabilise autocratic regimes, complicate the political transition in post-Assad Syria, strengthen Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militia and political movement, Hamas, and Iran at a time of diminished fortunes.
Mr. Trump compounded the potential impact of his advocacy by simultaneously lifting the Biden administration’s suspension of the sale of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, exempting Israel from a 90-day deferral of all US foreign aid, and supporting Israel’s delay of its withdrawal from Lebanon in accordance with a two-month-old ceasefire that ended fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
Most immediately, Mr. Trump’s bombshell support for the worst instincts of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his ultra-nationalist backers, who have long called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, could bring to a screeching halt Saudi efforts to entice the president to support the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel as the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.