Shownotes Transcript
Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. Today with me, Alex Dibble and Stuart Willey. Donald Trump has suggested the US could take over Gaza and remake it as the Riviera of the Middle East. He claims it would bring stability to the region, but to make it work, Palestinians would need to be relocated to Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere.
His proposal has prompted an immediate and from some angry response. Donald Trump did say that whilst the world's people could live in Gaza after redevelopment, it should be chiefly Palestinians, which is a quote that's been missing, I think, from some reporting of his remarkable press conference.
Today we're going to unpack the reaction with two of our specialists here at The Times. Our US Assistant Editor David Charter was watching that press conference, but first let's speak to our Middle East correspondent Sameer Al-Atrish. Sameer, Saudi Arabia reacted, I think, uncharacteristically quickly. How significant do you think that was? Should we read anything into the speed of their response?
So Saudi Arabia put out a statement in the middle of the night, really I think it was about 4 or 5 a.m.,
usually the Saudis are quite careful about their statements, foreign ministry statements. We've seen them take 12 hours to a day to react to things. In this case, I think they didn't have much to weigh and they wanted to clarify two things very, very quickly. One of them was that Trump said that Saudi Arabia wouldn't be conditioning diplomatic ties with Israel on a Palestinian state. Now, if there's one thing that is clear
guaranteed to annoy the Saudis. It's that claim. The Israelis have been making it for two years. All that is bound to
set off a reaction from the Saudis. And I think that there's some disappointment from them, or quite a lot of disappointment, because they had expected Trump to come in and to have a tough relationship with Netanyahu and then to listen to MBS, the Saudi crown prince, to listen to the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, to listen to the Jordanian King Abdullah, and to take their views on board as well. They were, I think, expecting something a bit more balanced than what they're seeing right now.
So they wanted to put that out. You know, they've had these conversations privately with Trump's administration and they're making their stance public right now. Certainly, they want to clarify that, you know, they are demanding concessions from the Israelis towards the Palestinians in return for any normalization deal. So where does all of this leave Trump's plan to get Saudi and Israel relations normalized?
The first reaction I actually heard was that this really complicates the deal. You know, the deal is already very complicated on several levels. First of all, the Saudis, there's not a bilateral agreement that the Saudis are involved in. They want, in return for normalizing ties with the Israelis, which is contingent on a concession, a major concession towards the Palestinians from the Israelis themselves,
They want some serious concessions from the Americans, primarily a security pact and also assistance on their nuclear program, civilian nuclear program, and also assistance on artificial intelligence in Saudi Arabia. And the first two, and really the security pact in particular, needs a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Right.
There's a lot of hostility in the Democratic Party towards Israel, and they wouldn't want to reward Trump, I think. So that's one major obstacle for the deal right now. And another obstacle would be the Saudis can't go into a deal with Israel while they're seen as abetting the, you know, really not many words for it, the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. That's the way it's going to be viewed in the Arab world. So,
Under these conditions, the Saudis simply can't go ahead with that. I mean, that's what I've been hearing from them. Now, there is a catch here where if Trump, as the Saudis hope, is going for a maximalist position and he will be negotiating it down, and the Saudis can turn around and say that we prevented the expulsion of Gaza's population,
in part of a grand deal. Now, that might be something they could leverage, but they would still need a commitment to a Palestinian state or some sort of final status solution.
On the World in 10 last week, we were talking about how Donald Trump's plan to clean out Gaza, as he put it then, had put Egypt and Jordan in a very difficult diplomatic position, given they both want Palestine to be recognised as a state, but they also both rely on US funding. They have now rejected the latest iteration of Trump's plan for Gaza. So should those two countries be expecting some sort of punishment from the US now for doing that?
I think Egypt and Jordan, they understand that if they don't go along with Trump, there could be a retaliation. I think the way they view it now is that allowing hundreds of thousands or a million Palestinians into Egypt and Jordan could really destabilize their countries.
You know, we will probably see quite a bit of resistance from them. And there's not much really that can be offered to either of them, I think, particularly the Egyptians, to go ahead with the plan. I mean, one idea that's been floated about was complete debt relief for Egypt, right?
So all these regional factors, I think for them to embrace another perceived source of instability by accepting hundreds of thousands of disenfranchised and very upset Palestinians into the country, they will certainly, I think, be putting up a lot of resistance. And they'll reason that, well, whatever the Americans do, it's not going to be as bad as the situation that we would bring on ourselves if we
kind of aid and the transfer of the Palestinian population, which again will be seen as a betrayal by their populations. Samer, all of this is taking place as negotiations are supposed to be starting on the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal. How do you think this press conference by Trump and Netanyahu will affect those negotiations and the prospect of extending the ceasefire?
The message that Trump sent, and he's been sending it consistently, is that he's not certain that the ceasefire will advance or is sustainable. Now, that takes a lot of pressure off Netanyahu. Trump came into the office, you know, insisting that the war has to end by the time he's in office, and he's taking credit for the ceasefire. At the same time, by publicly saying that
We need to get all the people in Gaza out. Obviously, Hamas has to be destroyed. And he's not 100% sure that the ceasefire will continue. That does give Netanyahu a maneuvering room and certainly gives him the impression that if hostilities resume, he won't be on the hook. Okay, Samir, thank you. That is Samir Al-Atrish, The Times' Middle East correspondent in Damascus. David Charter, our US assistant editor, is also with us. David,
As we've just heard from Samir, multiple countries in the Middle East have rejected this idea from Donald Trump. But because of the type of person he is, if his idea is publicly rubbished on an international stage, could that make him even more determined to press ahead with it? Well, I think the thing to say is that Donald Trump does not hear criticism like other conventional politicians do.
In fact, rather than engaging with the initial outcry from some of the extraordinary things he says or does, he often takes it as confirmation that he was right in the first place. And that's what makes him uniquely difficult for opponents and allies alike to deal with. And he kept saying yesterday during his discussion about resettling everyone in Gaza that people should not take
the public words, the public opposition of Egypt and Jordan, who were the two countries that he named as potential candidates for new areas to build beautiful new homes for all the Gazans, that he shouldn't take their opposition at face value and kept suggesting that people were saying different things to him behind the scenes. Now, whether they are or not, or whether he's hearing them like that and interpreting them in his own way,
simply remains to be seen, I think. If this idea is a non-starter, is it now down to those in the White House, Trump's advisers, to somehow talk him out of it? And how would they go about trying to do that? Well, you may have seen the photos of his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, with their eyes bulging when Trump first talked about Palestinians being resettled. But there are not the staff immediately around Trump
to get into a fight with him about everything that he does or says, or even 10% of it anymore. That may have happened in the first term when he appointed people who were, frankly, outside experts that he didn't know. Now most of the people around him have been with him for years, and they know that they've
And they've survived, frankly, by letting Trump be Trump. So there's not going to be an effort in the inner circle to chalk Trump round on this one. But it is interesting that
In the wider Republican Party, including pretty strong Trump supporters, there are deep reservations. David, thank you very much indeed. That is David Charter, The Times' assistant US editor. And that's it from us. Thank you for taking 10 minutes to stay on top of the world with the help of The Times. See you tomorrow.