Donald Trump says a lot when he goes off script—maybe too much for his own good. His recent speech in the Knesset and the bizarre circus at Sham al-Shaykh laid bare not just his foreign policy vision, but the raw mechanics of power, patronage, and performance that define it. There, amid what was billed as a “victory lap” for Trump the emperor and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—his proconsul—unfolded a spectacle steeped in myth, money, and militarism. Israel wasn’t just celebrating its military campaigns against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, or Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. In Trump’s telling, it was vindicating “the last 3,000 years of history”—whether real or imagined in the Bible.
This was the mad, unhinged narrative Trump has been schooled to recite by his religious Zionist backers: a theology of conquest dressed as diplomacy.
Yet even in this orgy of self-congratulation, Trump couldn’t resist punctuating the moment with a few inconvenient truths—truths that would have sparked outrage if uttered by anyone else. Off-script, he revealed how dependent Israel had become on American arms, recalling how Netanyahu once pleaded for weapons Trump “didn’t even know existed.” He reminded Israel of its size and vulnerability: “You can’t fight world opinion.” Most strikingly, he boasted of forcing Netanyahu to end the war. “Bi,” he said, “you’re going to be remembered for this far more than if you kept this thing going, going, going—kill, kill, kill.”
And then came the bombshell: Trump openly credited the late Sheldon Adelson—and his billionaire widow, Miriam—for shaping his Middle East policy. “They had more trips to the White House than anyone else I can think of,” he said, adding that Sheldon personally persuaded him to recognize Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. Had a Democratic president said this, pro-Israel groups would have cried antisemitism. But Trump, insulated by his base and his donors, speaks with impunity—exposing the very transactional core of U.S. policy that others dare only whisper.
The Ideological Backbone: Zionism Meets Geopolitics
Trump’s Middle East posture cannot be understood without acknowledging the fusion of religious conviction, donor influence, and geopolitical ambition that has shaped it since 2017. His landmark decisions—moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights in 2019, and brokering the Abraham Accords in 2020—were never neutral acts of statecraft. They were ideological offerings to a coalition of evangelicals and pro-settlement donors who see Israel’s expansion as both divine mandate and strategic imperative.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and chief Middle East architect, embodied this convergence. An Orthodox Jew with family roots in Holocaust survival and documented financial ties to West Bank settlements, Kushner operated as both policymaker and emissary to the most hardline factions of the Israeli right. Ivanka Trump’s conversion to Judaism further blurred the line between personal faith and public policy.
For Trump, loyalty is transactional: those who fund his political resurrection—like Miriam Adelson, who pledged over $100 million in March 2025—expect returns. And Trump delivers: unwavering support for annexation, silence on settlement expansion, and now, a proposal to “take over” Gaza itself.
The Gaza Gambit
In February 2025, Trump unveiled his most audacious idea yet: the U.S. should “own” the Gaza Strip, relocate its 2.3 million Palestinian residents, and turn the ruins into a “Riviera of the Middle East.” The plan, announced alongside Netanyahu, was instantly condemned by the UN, human rights groups, and legal scholars as a potential war crime under the Rome Statute—specifically, the crime of forcible population transfer.
But Trump’s outlandishness is rarely random. His earlier musings about buying Greenland or Canada may have served as trial balloons—testing how far the Overton window could stretch before introducing something truly incendiary. This is the “Madman Theory” in action: cultivate unpredictability to dominate negotiations and intimidate adversaries.
Yet the Gaza proposal isn’t just rhetoric. It reflects a long-standing far-right Israeli fantasy of “voluntary migration” for Palestinians—a euphemism for expulsion. By endorsing it, Trump signals that ethnic cleansing is now on the table in mainstream American politics. He has even shared AI-generated videos imagining a “Trump Gaza”—a surreal vision of luxury resorts rising from the rubble, with Trump and Netanyahu sunbathing on the Gaza shore, as seen in a YouTube post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PslOp883rfI
The Sham al-Shaykh Circus: Normalization’s Breaking Point
The summit in Sham al-Shaykh was meant to showcase a new era of U.S.-brokered peace. Instead, it collapsed into farce. Trump arrived hours late. Two Muslim World leaders—reportedly already en route—nearly boycotted mid-flight upon learning Netanyahu would attend. (Netanyahu had not been on the original guest list; rumors swirled that Trump had strong-armed Egypt’s President Sisi into inviting him.) When backlash erupted—especially in Iraq, where Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani faced domestic fury—Netanyahu was swiftly disinvited, his office citing a Jewish holiday as pretext.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed didn’t show at all. Why? Not out of solidarity with Palestinians—Arab autocrats have long sacrificed Palestinian rights for security and arms deals. No, their absence reflected cold political calculus: they feared being photographed next to Netanyahu while Gaza burned. As the Jordanian commentator asked: “Has Hamas grown to the size of America, or has America shrunk to the size of Hamas?”
The truth is starker: the Abraham Accords were always elite pacts, lacking popular legitimacy. Joint military exercises with Israel may happen in secret—as The Washington Post revealed during the height of Gaza’s destruction—but public normalisation remains a bridge too far.
Ceasefire Without Peace: A Fragile Illusion
The ceasefire itself is unraveling. Within days of the Sham al-Shaykh spectacle, Israel resumed airstrikes, shut the Rafah crossing, and blocked aid—citing Hamas’s failure to return all hostages’ bodies. But the reality is more complex: Israeli bombardment was so intense it killed not only living hostages but also the guards holding their remains, severing contact with entire Hamas units. One Israeli family confirmed their son, Tamil Nimrodi, was “murdered by Israeli air strikes”—not by Hamas.
Israel’s war failed on its own terms. It did not destroy Hamas, which has reasserted control across Gaza. It did not trigger civil war among Palestinian factions. And it did not achieve the demographic goal whispered in right-wing circles: the permanent expulsion of half of Gaza’s population.
Netanyahu, who relied on the war for political survival and to block any path to Palestinian statehood, was forced to stop—not by moral pressure, but by Trump’s intervention. Yet even in “peace,” Israel maintains its siege, restricts reconstruction, and bombs at will—creating a Gaza that resembles South Lebanon: perpetually occupied, perpetually targeted.
No Savior, No Negotiations—Only Resistance
Unlike the Oslo Accords, which buried the First Intifada under the illusion of process, Sham al-Shaykh buried nothing. There are no negotiations. No roadmap. No Palestinian state on the horizon. Only Israel’s relentless drive to expand control—and Trump’s eagerness to bless it.
Palestinians have learned a brutal lesson: no messiah is coming to save them. Their Arab “brothers” kneel and wag their tails before Trump for F-35s and photo ops. The Palestinian Authority, led by the aging Mahmoud Abbas and his heir apparent, Hussein al-Sheikh, is a hollow shell—useful only for suppressing dissent and managing decline.
The urgent task now is Palestinian self-renewal: retire the old guard, rebuild the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as a truly representative body, and unite factions across Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the diaspora. If the Assad regime could fall with scarcely a shot fired, how many will die for Abbas?
Gaza has proven one truth above all: the only people who can shape Palestine’s future are Palestinians themselves.
Conclusion: A Gamble That Risks Everything
Trump’s end game is neither purely impulsive nor wholly strategic—it is a high-stakes hybrid. Rooted in Zionist eschatology, donor demands, and a cult of personal dominance, it seeks to cement Israel as the unchallenged hegemon of the Middle East. But in doing so, it ignores the region’s realities, inflames global outrage, and accelerates the very instability it claims to resolve.
Trump may win an election by rallying his base with promises of American omnipotence. But in the ruins of Gaza and the silence of absent Arab leaders, we see the cost: a world where U.S. moral authority has collapsed, diplomacy has been replaced by spectacle, and peace is not a goal—but an obstacle to be bulldozed.
In the end, Trump’s theater doesn’t end wars. It merely resets the stage for the next act of violence.
faznotes.com 
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