THE SET-UP: It was quite a week for the Second Trump Administration. They unleased “shock and awe” on the American people with mixed results. Yeah, it’s an odd choice to adopt one of the more cynical and consistently ridiculed catch-phrases from a war Trump likes to call “stupid.” Then again, garish, often counter-intuitive displays are Trump’s modus operandi. He also consciously mimics Richard Nixon’s “madman theory.” Unlike Nixon, Trump is not toying with nuclear war, but he is setting out crazy, maximalist demands from which he can negotiate backwards. And that may be true when it comes to Canadian lumber and Mexican avocados. I’m not so sure when it comes to “cleaning out” Gaza.
I suspect he cut a deal with Netanyahu during the campaign … trading his eventual acquiescence re: the de facto or perhaps even de jure annexation of the West Bank for Bibi’s repeated recalcitrance in ceasefire negotiations. He also has a cadre of Evangelical Christian Zionists in his base, in Congress and in his Administration … including two diplomatic emissaries—Elise Stefanik and Mike Huckabee—who believe Israel has “a Biblical right” to the land Palestinians live on.
For his part, Trump believes in the omnipotence of tariffs. That’s why he’s doubled-down on ethnically cleansing Gaza and why he says he can force Jordan and/or Egypt to take Gazan refugees … if that’s even the right word for people being forcibly relocated. If nothing else, he will be walking in the footsteps of one of the Presidents he’s often compared himself to—Andrew Jackson. And should it come to pass, the historically symmetry will be complete as Gazans find themselves following their own Trail of Tears.
TITLE: Exclusive: Palestinian Authority tells US it is ready to 'clash' with Hamas for control of Gaza
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-palestinian-authority-tells-us-it-ready-clash-hamas-control-gaza
EXCERPTS: The Palestinian Authority told the US it is ready to "clash" with Hamas if that is the price needed to take power in the Gaza Strip, during a pitch to President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Middle East Eye can reveal.
The plan was presented on Tuesday to Steve Witkoff during a meeting in Riyadh by Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior Palestinian official who has been floated as a successor to octogenarian Palestinian President Mohammad Abbas, a Palestinian source told MEE.
The PA’s plan envisions the Gaza Strip ruled by a committee whose majority is from outside of the enclave.
The rendezvous between Trump’s Middle East troubleshooter and Sheikh was facilitated by Saudi Arabia at the request of the PA, after Witkoff refused its overtures to meet in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, the source said.
Witkoff later travelled to Israel to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Notably, he had no reservations about making a trip to Gaza, becoming on Wednesday the first US official to visit Gaza in 15 years.
Saudi Arabia brokered the meeting between the US and the PA but did not review the plan before the PA pitched it to Witkoff, the source said.
Ziad Abu Amr, one of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s longtime advisors, would become the de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip, heading the committee. He would be appointed deputy to Palestinian Prime Minister Muhammad Mustafa but endowed with massive new powers.
Abu Amr was born in the Gaza Strip in 1950. He could be palatable to the Trump administration because he is also a US citizen. He obtained his PhD from Georgetown University and served as deputy Palestinian prime minister from 2013 to 2024.
Abu Amr has been active in trying to reassert the PA's authority in Gaza. He previously lobbied against funding the reconstruction of the besieged enclave following a 2014 war.
"When people talk about reconstruction, people talk about the return of the [Palestinian Authority] to Gaza and Gaza run by the reconciliation government...I don't think reconstruction would happen otherwise," he told the Wall Street Journal at the time.
The PA’s boost to the Trump administration that it is ready to clash with Hamas was squashed by one senior US defence official, who told MEE it sounded “delusional”, adding they would need military support and potentially troops from other Arab states or private contractors.
A former senior US official previously told MEE the PA would likely face an uphill challenge in obtaining support from the Trump administration. Gaza has provided an opening for the PA’s top Arab Gulf critic, the UAE, to push for a Palestinian leadership change. The UAE has said it is willing to send peacekeepers to Gaza if the PA is reformed without Abbas.
An Egyptian official previously told MEE that Abbas was “infuriated” by the proposal.
Within the Palestinian secular elite, there is a rift between Abbas, who has governed in the West Bank without elections since 2006, and Fatah’s former strongman in Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan.
The latter resides in the UAE and is an emissary for the UAE's ruling al-Nahyan family. Dahlan was expelled from Fatah but retained some support in Gaza and the occupied West Bank through the Fatah-Democratic Reform Bloc.
Saudi Arabia could be a linchpin for the Gaza Strip’s future. In addition to having funds to reconstruct the enclave, it has leaned more neutral to engaging various Palestinian factions, as opposed to the UAE.
Along with the UAE and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia was hostile to Hamas during the Arab Spring but has since become more accommodating.
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has publicly declared Israel committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, whereas the UAE’s foreign minister has publicly hosted his Israeli counterpart. Before 7 October 2023, Riyadh hosted a visit by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated by Israel in July 2024.
TITLE: Exclusive: Trump Middle East envoy says rebuilding Gaza could take 10 to 15 years
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/30/gaza-rebuilding-plans-trump-administration
EXCERPTS: White House envoy Steve Witkoff told Axios in an interview at the end of his trip to the Middle East that rebuilding Gaza could take between 10 and 15 years.
The Trump administration wants to see the ceasefire continue and Gaza stabilized so it can move forward with its ambitious plans for the Middle East, which include getting a peace agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel and trying to get a deal with Iran on its nuclear program.
But the White House is already thinking about the next phases of the agreement and a plan for reconstructing Gaza, which has been decimated by Israeli airstrikes and ground operations during 15 months of war.
"What was inescapable is that there is almost nothing left of Gaza," Witkoff told Axios.
"People are moving north to get back to their homes and see what happened and turn around and leave ... there is no water and no electricity. It is stunning just how much damage occurred there," he said.
The White House envoy spent much of his day on Wednesday in the Gaza Strip inspecting the situation from the ground and from the air. He was the first U.S. official to visit Gaza in 15 years.
Witkoff said from what he saw on the ground, from lookout points on the Israeli side and during a helicopter flight over Gaza, the destruction is immense.
Witkoff, a real estate developer, assesses that the demolition and moving of the debris alone will take five years.
The process of assessing the potential impact of the many tunnels under Gaza on building new foundations could take another few years. The reconstruction itself would take another few years, he said.
"There has been this perception we can get to a solid plan for Gaza in five years. But its impossible. This is a 10 to 15 year rebuilding plan," he said.
TITLE: ‘We came back for nothing’: Returning home to northern Gaza, Palestinians find death and destruction
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/31/middleeast/northern-gaza-return-destruction-intl/index.html
EXCERPTS: Khamis and Ahmad Imarah knew they wouldn’t find much more than rubble when returning to their home in northern Gaza. But they had to go. Their father and brother are still buried under the debris, more than a year after their home was struck by Israeli forces.
Israeli military strikes have turned most of Gaza to rubble. According to the UN, some 69% of all structures in the strip have been destroyed or damaged in the past 15 months, with Gaza City the worst hit.
Israel forced most residents of northern Gaza to leave the area early in the war, issuing evacuation orders and telling people to move south. Once people left, return was impossible, meaning that most of those coming back this week are doing so for the first time in more than a year. And while nine in 10 Gaza residents have been displaced during the war, those forced to flee the north have been homeless for the longest.
The Gaza Government Office said Wednesday that some 500,000 displaced Palestinians — almost a quarter of the enclave’s population — had made the journey to the decimated north in the first 72 hours after Israeli forces opened the Netzarim corridor, which separates it from the south.
Mohammad Salha, director of Al-Awda Hospital in Tal Al-Zaatar, said there is currently no space in northern Gaza to establish camps for displaced people returning home. The area was densely built-up before the war and the enormous scale of damage means there are now huge mountains of rubble and debris everywhere.
“There are no camps for displaced residents to stay in. Some people are trying to repair their damaged homes, but northern Gaza urgently needs intervention — humanitarian institutions must provide shelter, water and camps,” he told CNN.
The situation in the north is so dire that some of those who have made the journey have had little choice but to turn back and return to the refugee camps down south.
Arwa Al-Masri, who was displaced from Beit Hanoun in the northeastern corner of the strip, said the men from her family went home in the past few days to see what is left of their houses.
“They were shocked to find the amount of destruction and the lifelessness. There is nothing. No water — my brother had to go from Beit Hanoun to Jabalya to get water and then he had to go to Gaza (City) to call us to tell us not to come back yet. Most of the people who went back north have said there is no life and massive destruction only,” she told CNN at a shelter inside a school run by the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) south of the Netzarim corridor.
But while she and her children cannot yet go back to her home in the north — or what remains of it — Al-Masri’s stay at the shelter is also uncertain, because of impending bans on UNRWA operations within Israel and on the prohibition of Israeli authorities from cooperating with UNRWA.
“When UNRWA stops operating, people are not going to find food and many people who are in UNRWA shelter schools will not be able to stay. There will be no tents and shelter available,” she told CNN.
According to the UN, some 69% of all structures in the strip have been destroyed or damaged in the past 15 months, with Gaza City the worst hit.
“Why did they tell us to go south? Imagine a four-year-old boy telling you here is my mother and here is my aunt, (their bodies) all ripped in pieces in front of him. I covered his face and he was screaming. His aunts, and uncles, his grandfather and an uncle, no one is left,” he said.
Khamis told CNN his wife died in the Israeli strike, just a week after giving birth to a baby girl who was also killed.
“We were very happy. I wish I had a picture of my newborn but I don’t have any. I waited a long time to have my daughter and then her and her mom vanished together,” he said, adding that their graves were destroyed by the Israeli military just days after the family buried them.
“You take them and bury them in the cemetery and then when you go a few days later to see the cemetery, you don’t find them because they have been erased by the bulldozers. The (Israeli forces) didn’t leave anything. Even the martyrs and the bodies they have dug up. They didn’t leave a thing,” he said, looking around the destroyed neighborhood.
“We came back to the north for nothing,” he said. But he quickly added that he was determined to stay and rebuild. “I am from Gaza and I won’t leave. Even if it was harder and more difficult than this, I want to live in Gaza and I won’t leave it. I will only leave Gaza to go to Heaven,” he said.
US President Donald Trump last week suggested Gaza should be “cleaned out” by removing Palestinians living there to Jordan and Egypt — either on a temporary or permanent basis.
The comment sparked outrage and rebuke across the Middle East, with both Egypt and Jordan rejecting the idea.
Khamis told CNN the importance of staying goes well beyond his own personal desires.
“This is ingrained in our minds, we will stay. We will not leave this place, because this land is not ours but our grandparents’ and our ancestors’ before us. How am I supposed to leave it? To leave the house of my father, and grandfather and brothers?” he said.