On a stunning plan, or not so stunning – Peter Baker in NYT:

‘President Trump’s stunning plan to displace the entire Palestinian population of Gaza and have the United States take over the seaside enclave has not only convulsed the Middle East. It may have also all but written the obituary for the long-sought but maddeningly elusive goal of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel in peaceful coexistence.’

(…)

‘The prospects for a Palestinian state had already dwindled in recent years, especially after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed 1,200 people and led to the Israeli retaliatory war in Gaza that has killed 47,000 combatants and civilians, according to Gaza health authorities. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian populations see the two-state scenario as a viable plan anymore, according to polls.’

(…)

‘But it turned out to be just as difficult as people have thought over the years. He assigned his son-in-law Jared Kushner to develop a plan that was released in 2020 that envisioned a Palestinian state of sorts, but one so truncated that the proposal was widely seen as tilted toward Israel. Under the plan, Israel would have been allowed to keep its settlements in the West Bank and full control of a unified Jerusalem as its capital, while the Palestinians would have been offered $50 billion in international investment.
The plan went nowhere, but Mr. Trump was able to score a consolation prize by presiding over the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab states, including Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, in what was called the Abraham Accords.’

(…)

‘The reaction to Mr. Trump’s Gaza plan was broadly negative outside Israel. In the past couple of days, António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, as well as leaders from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Turkey, Canada, Japan, the European Union and others all restated support for the two-state solution. “There is only one solution and that is a two-state solution,” Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen of Denmark told Danish media.
But at some point, that came across more as a diplomatic ritual of talking points than a realistic agenda. In Israel and the Palestinian territories, the notion of two states living side by side in peace has lost the broad support it once had.
In Israel, just 27 percent of people still backed a two-state solution in Gallup polling last summer, while 64 percent opposed it. That was a reversal from 2012, when 61 percent supported it and just 30 percent opposed it.
And that was almost identical to the views of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where just 28 percent of those interviewed last summer supported such a plan, while 64 percent opposed it. That too represented a radical drop in enthusiasm from 2012, when 66 percent in those areas supported it compared with 32 percent who did not.’

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‘From the other side of the debate, Mr. Ben-Ami agreed that Mr. Trump had a point. “There is an element of truth underneath all this, which is that it’s really hard to conceive how you would rebuild with two million people still there,” he said.
He also agreed that “the concept of an old-fashioned two-state solution has actually been gone for a while.” But he held out hope that it would still be part of a broader, regionwide change driven by Arab rapprochement with Israel, led by Saudi Arabia. “It’s going to have to be part of that normalization deal,” Mr. Ben-Ami said. “We’ve been referring to it as a 23-state solution.”’

Read the article here.

Wow. From the one-state-solution, to the two-state-solution to the zero-state-solution – to the 23-state-solution.

W will close the borders for everybody, except for the Gazans?

Gaza in Wyoming? Or Israel in North Dakota?

Anyhow, this summer the promised land is coming to a place nearby you.