Has Trump changed his perception of the day after in Gaza?

US President Donald Trump appears to be keeping the door ajar regarding the Arab-proposed alternative plan to his project of displacing Gaza’s population.

Initially, National Security Council spokesperson Bryan Hughes stated that the Arab proposal “does not address the fact that Gaza is currently uninhabitable and that its people cannot live humanely in an area covered in rubble and unexploded ordnance.”

At the same time, Trump exhibits a contradiction, perhaps intentional, in his statements: at one point, he insists that his displacement plan is excellent, that it has been accepted, and that there are countries willing to receive Palestinians (despite Jordan and Egypt’s rejection).

At another point, he declares that “no one will expel the Palestinians from Gaza.”

Later, during his meeting with Netanyahu at the White House (last week), Trump did not appear to back down from the plan, while Netanyahu was fervently working to frame Israel’s current acts of extermination as realistic preparation for implementing the displacement strategy.

Is Trump confused in dealing with this complex situation? Is he unwilling to explicitly retract his plan? Or is he firmly committed to it, giving Netanyahu the green light to execute it by force on the ground, without insisting that Jordan and Egypt be the ones to host the refugees? Or perhaps Trump is pragmatically leaving his options open to later decide which of the two proposals, the displacement plan or the Arab plan, is more beneficial?

Most likely, given Trump’s personality and logic, the third scenario is the most accurate: he is treating Gaza’s fate and the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe from a business-minded perspective, one of profit and loss. Thus, he does not completely close the door on any possibility. That does not necessarily negate his and his right-wing team's strategic alignment with Israeli interests and the influence of the American evangelical right, especially in their perception of Israel and the Palestinian issue. Trump is ideologically committed to Zionism, but when it comes to Gaza, he seems to be watching and waiting to claim he achieved the “best deal,” which in his view would be the one that benefits both Israel and the United States.

The minimum outcome that Trump would accept includes: the complete removal of Hamas from Gaza, ending its military and political presence, deporting its leadership (which could mean the forced removal of thousands), eliminating any threat to Israel from Gaza, and linking this to Saudi-Israeli normalization and massive Gulf investments in partnership with the U.S.

The main weakness of the Arab plan is that it did not include an alternative or a so-called Plan B in case Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected or ignored it, which he indeed did. Moreover, the US administration has not treated the Arab plan with the seriousness it deserves. A planned Arab ministerial delegation was supposed to travel to Washington shortly after announcing the plan to present it to the American administration, but clearly, this has not happened. As a result, the Arab plan is effectively frozen and shelved until the situation on the ground becomes clearer.

On the other side, Netanyahu, aware of the strategic vacuum in the region and leveraging the pro-Israel team around Trump (or perhaps more accurately, manipulating Trump himself,) is playing semantic games, oscillating between Trump’s plan, which he knows is rejected by Arabs and Palestinians, and his own previously publicised plan. Netanyahu’s three-phase plan ends with a form of autonomy in Gaza, but without the return of the Palestinian Authority, the complete removal of Hamas, and full Israeli military and security oversight. This is the same scenario Netanyahu envisions for the West Bank.

Even though Netanyahu’s plan does not explicitly call for the displacement of Palestinians, it achieves his primary goals: rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state, eliminating the concept of resistance, removing Hamas entirely from Gaza, and enforcing Israeli military and security control. These outcomes, even without fulfilling the full-scale displacement dream of the far-right religious Israeli movement, align completely with Israel’s current strategic outlook.

Mohammad Abu Rumman is the Academic Advisor of Politics and Society Institute in Amman