Extracts: Trump’s “clean out” the Gaza Strip plan won’t happen
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Aaron David Miller, Middle East analyst says; “Zero chance of it happening”
Gazans, who survived 15 months of punishing attacks by Israel,
largely don’t want to live in exile
and Trump isn’t going to send US troops to push almost 2 million people out of the Strip
Nor will Egypt and Jordan go along with it, despite Trump’s confidence that their reliance on US aid and military support gives him enough leverage to push them to take in massive numbers of Gazan refugees
For both countries, Trump’s proposal crosses red lines
Jordan’s regime lives in perpetual fear that the Israeli right will implement the idea that Jordan is Palestine and will treat the Hashemite Kingdom as the Palestinian state
Jordan is already mostly Palestinian and the influx of hundreds of thousands more Palestinians would destabilize a country that already suffers from legitimacy problems and accusations that it serves as a Western stooge against the interests of Palestinians
Egypt also sees the potential influx of Gazans as an existential threat It remembers Hamas breaching the border wall in 2008 and up to 700,000 Palestinians pouring into the Sinai
The incident led to new ties between jihadists in the Sinai and Hamas, which helped the Islamic State affiliate in the peninsula carry out a bloody insurgency against Egyptian forces
The Sissi government in Egypt views the Muslim Brotherhood as its mortal enemy and is not about to allow thousands of fighters from the Brotherhood-affiliated Hamas into the country
Israel’s peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan are foundations of its national security and it would be unwise to back a policy that could destabilize two regimes that cooperate closely on military and security issues
