Trump, Gaza and the mutation of American philosophy

However, this would only include some Palestinians, who would have to be relocated for the rebuilding to occur. Other countries should “open their hearts”, to take in the people of Gaza and resettle them in new communities. He did not rule out the deploying of US troops to support his vision.

The society he imagines would consist of Trump luxury hotels and garish golf resorts for wealthy tourists and ex-pats (presumably living tax free), built on the flattened homes of Gazans whose families have been expelled in a new catastrophe of ethnic cleansing. The ruthless Manhattan property developer who views the world through the lens of profit and loss, sees dollar signs in rubble and desolation.

Despite Trump’s claim that “Everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land,” there were swift condemnations of Trump’s plan from those in Palestinians, Egypt, Jordan, the UK, China and multiple other countries. Five Arab foreign ministers warned that the plans to deport large numbers of Gazans would “push the region towards more tension, conflict and instability”. 

The deployment of US troops on the profoundly symbolic ground of Gaza would be a rallying call for extremists worldwide to attack US assets and be a magnet for fighters to pour into the region, exerting an even greater pull than US boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A slightly bemused Netanyahu appeared willing to play along, knowing that flattery gives you favour with the egotistically fragile Trump and conscious of his still precarious position back home in Israel. His government is under stress due to his acceptance of the first phase of the ceasefire, an agreement which cost him one coalition partner. 

He could lose more allies by accepting the next phase, collapsing his government and resulting in elections he could lose, exposing him to the corruption cases that he faces and possibly a greater reckoning for the intelligence failures on October 7^th 2023. Being seen to influence Trump in rolling back some of his plans, or by threatening to support them, could be equally effective negotiation positions for him.

Trump is seen as an isolationist, reluctant to interfere in other people’s wars. For an isolationist he has had a busy first few weeks in office on foreign policy, threatening to also invade Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal. We should have learnt by now, however, not to take Trump at face value. Trump says what he thinks is useful, not what is true or even what he believes. 

In this, Trump can be seen as a mutated continuation of an American philosophical tradition, that of pragmatism. Pragmatists thought that a belief has “cash-value” not because it is “true” or describes an objective reality, but because it is useful. Words as tools that we do things with, rather than symbols that mirror the way the world is.

I doubt Trump has read the work of the pragmatists. He came to think this way via the American self-help industry, a mutation of this way of thinking. Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was a fan of Norman Vincent Peale’s, The Power of Positive Thinking. Peale tells you that you can create your own reality by believing in yourself to such an extent that others converge on your “truth”. 

Throughout his business and political careers, Trump has convinced others to believe in his reality, not because it reflects how the world is but because it is useful for him that they believe. The pragmatists would not endorse Peale, they recognised that we cannot be more arbitrary than the world lets us be. However much Trump wills it, the people of Gaza will not voluntarily leave and a forced removal of them should not be tolerated by whatever is left of the international community.

Gaza is not a real estate problem. It is a profoundly complex historical, ethnic and cultural challenge, one it is unlikely Trump even begins to faintly grasp, but he is right in that the historic cycle of violence will not be broken unless a new approach is taken. 

If his comments can shift the focus of the international community to how to develop Gaza, if he can force a coalition of wealthy Arab and other nations to step in and commit to the redevelopment to avoid the disaster that would be Trump’s plan, no matter how unhinged his comments appear, they may be useful yet. If Trump really does believe his plan for Gaza is a realistic proposition, the need for action by such a coalition is even greater.