No president ever proposed anything so unhinged as President Donald Trump’s brutal fantasy of evicting some 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza and turning it into a massive real estate deal.

Trump’s “Riviera of the Middle East” is so drastic, wrong and delusional as to make people wonder whether he was serious or had just gone mad. It was obvious he hadn’t thought it through.

His apologists scrambled unconvincingly to make sense of it. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, the former Florida congressman, suggested that it was a negotiating gambit.

Trump, he said, was simply challenging Arab nations “to come with their own solutions” if they don’t like his. We appreciate that Waltz — a generally rational man with deep experience in Middle East politics — has to shoulder the burden of trying to make Trump’s erratic proclamations seem rational. (He was also the person shoved out front after Trump made the outlandish claim that a deadly plane crash was somehow caused by DEI.)

But to fulfill his role as a trusted vizier to the Oval Office, Waltz should give Trump the unvarnished truth: This kind of bizarre behavior — sincere or not — is not helping.

It’s more likely to encourage Israel to make life in Gaza even more hellish and desperate, further destabilizing Israel’s own security at a time when the current administration is likely to see U.S. equivocation as a go-ahead for more aggression.

Vintage Trump

Trump surprised Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who ventured that the displacement would be only temporary. But that’s not what Trump said.

It was, of course, vintage Trump in one respect. His entire life has been transactional, so it would be in character for him to see the tragedy, fear and hopelessness in Gaza as just another opportunity for Trump-branded hotels and casinos.

Even if it ends up as just a pipe dream, however, it’s hardly harmless.

It has subverted the already distant prospect of a Mideast peace. It caters to the current Israeli government’s worst instincts. It repudiates decades of U.S. policy and world opinion favoring a two-state solution with a Palestinian state alongside Israel. There is no other road to peace.

It has put the lives of the remaining hostages in Gaza at greater risk by giving Hamas a potential pretext to renounce the ceasefire.

Stoking antisemitism

And it is certain to further inflame antisemitism in the United States and elsewhere.

Trump has mortified the nation and our government by exposing his gross ignorance of what a president should know about international law and the tangled history of the Middle East.

He should have known that it would be unthinkable for Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia ever to agree to it.

He should have known that it would be regarded everywhere as ethnic cleansing, a form of genocide comparable to what happened to the Armenians during World War I.

He should have known, but didn’t care, that Gaza’s civilians, as one said, “would rather live in tents next to their destroyed homes rather than relocate to another place.”

Worldwide condemnation

Criticism was swift and worldwide. Even Russia, right for once, called it “out of the question.”

In the U.S. Congress, most reactions ranged from speechlessness to consternation, especially over the inevitable involvement of U.S. troops.

Trump’s plan delighted the Israeli right wing at the cost of additionally compromising the Jewish state. He validated the suspicion that ethnic cleansing was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intent from the outset.

Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners, such as the racist Knesset member Itmar Ben-Gvir, have been open about purging Gaza of Palestinians.

“The only solution to Gaza is to encourage the migration of Gazans,” Ben-Gvir said.

White House optics

It was no coincidence that Trump sprung the scheme at the White House with Netanyahu by his side, or that the Israeli wore a red tie — Trump’s signature color — while Trump wore blue, which is symbolic of Israel.

Many believe that what Ben-Gvir said has been the strategy all along behind the excessive bombing that took thousands of civilian lives and damaged or destroyed some 60% of Gaza’s buildings, waterworks and other essential infrastructure, along with more than two-thirds of its farmland.

But Israel would never be able to deport more than 2 million people without U.S. support. That’s what makes Trump’s remarks so reckless.

The head of the Zionist Organization of America endorsed Trump’s repugnant scheme. Jewish groups that are more broad-minded and sensible reacted with concern over the fate of the hostages and revulsion at the entire idea.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the liberal lobby J Street, said “there aren’t adequate words to express our disgust at the forcible displacement of Palestinians with the assistance of the United States of America. … We call on leaders around the world, political leaders in this country, and, of course, Jewish communal leaders in this country to express in no uncertain terms that these proposals are absolutely unacceptable — legally and morally.”

It took less than three weeks back in the Oval Office for Trump to commit a monumental foreign policy blunder. He probably won’t admit it, but he desperately needs the advice that cooler heads like Rubio, and wiser, more grounded experts like Waltz, can impart. It’s their duty, by the very nature of their roles and their duty to the American people as well as the cause of global peace, to figure out a way to get him to listen.

And if that fails, it’s past time for Congress to do something about him, starting with a resolution of disapproval. It bears remembering: Silence is consent.

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