During his meeting at the White House with Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu did not arrive empty-handed. He offered a golden bipet to the American president with reference to the blow of Israeli intelligence services and the biper of Hezbollah trapped. “It was a great operation”reacted Trump. This gift from Netanyahu is a way of reminding him that Israel has rebuilt the cards in the Middle East. Faced with the new (re) coming to the White House with whom he had tumultuous relations in the past, the Israeli Prime Minister imagines that he is in a position of force. It is badly knowing Trump.
“The United States will take control of the Gaza Strip”he said. Netanyahou has a tense smile. He is stuck on the spot, put before the fait accompli, as was Volodymyr Zelensky on another occasion when Trump had declared before the cameras they were going to negotiate with Putin. The Ukrainian president then looked like a little boy to whom his teacher explained the course program. Before Netanyahu, Trump talks about transforming Gaza, described as “Demolition site”, in the French Riviera.
It is not the first time that he has planned to transform a place in the world into a French -friendly Côte, “Riviera” into English. Already, during his meeting with Kim Jong-un in 2018, he had floated the idea of transforming the North Korean coast into a French Riviera, seeing Casinos pushing … In his head, Trump was still at the time when he built the “Taj Mahal” in New Jersey. The casino is the reference of happiness on earth.
That, to realize his ambitions to change Gaza in paradise, he must first get rid of Hamas, which Netanyahu failed to do after a year of military intervention, does not seem to have any importance in Trump’s eyes. That the previous administration has already tried to expel the 2 million Palestinians who live there by rehousing them, in Jordan and Egypt, is only a detail. Trump thinks that these two countries will say “yes” to him. At times, it looks like a site meeting where the chief entrepreneur explains how you have to do it to build the building. History and geography are little matter. Culture, let’s not talk about it.
Force report
As always with Trump, the goal is to create a balance of power and then negotiate. We saw it with the breakdown of threats to increase customs duties with Canada and Mexico by 25 %. The least we can say is that the American president has placed the bar very high this time. Even if it means denying its promises of American non-intervention in foreign soil. It is difficult to see how the United States could master Gaza. But with Trump, anything is possible.
Nothing indicates at this stage that Trump’s idea seduced Netanyahu. The latter had arrived in a position of strength. Trump will have destabilized him. At the end of the common press conference, he offered him a dedicated photo of their meeting. “In Bibi, a big leader”he wrote. One way of recalling that, without the United States, Israel would never have gone so far, but especially that with Trump on board, Netanyahu and the whole world are not at the end of their surprises.
