Remember the “Riviera of the Middle East” idea for the Gaza Strip? The shelf life of President Donald Trump’s “plan” to have the United States take control of the war-torn area and force millions of Palestinians to leave and never to return seemed to be just a few weeks. Or was it?
As the mini-media frenzy around this provocative idea faded, Trump admitted that his notion is unlikely to become a reality. Speaking last Friday in a telephone interview with Fox News, Trump acknowledged that Egypt and Jordan had rejected his idea, saying, “I’ll tell you, the way to do it is my plan. I think that’s the plan that really works. But I’m not forcing it. I’m just going to sit back and recommend it.” At the same time, in typical Trump fashion, he kept the door open, asserting in the same interview, “They say they’re not going to accept. I say they will.”
Some analysts try to explain Trump’s words as an effort to provoke a new type of conversation and to break the mold — advising that we should all take them “seriously, not literally,” as journalist Salena Zito famously wrote when Trump first ran for president in 2016. Adding to the confusion, perhaps intentionally, the president posted a bizarre artificial intelligence-generated video promoting once again his “plan” for Gaza to be transformed into a beach resort, complete with a golden Trump statue, someone looking like Elon Musk eating hummus, and the current US and Israeli leaders hanging out on the beach.
How pro wrestling helps explain Trump’s foreign policy approach
Trump’s use of “troll power” to garner the spotlight or attempt to gain leverage over foes and friends is legendary, even if it has a mixed record of achieving results in international relations. In Trump’s first term as president, he said many things that did not come to pass on foreign policy — Mexico didn’t pay for the wall that wasn’t fully built on America’s southern border, Saudi Arabia didn’t fund reconstruction of parts of Syria, and America didn’t take Iraq’s or Syria’s oil.
Given the zigzags in Trump’s statements, something he himself acknowledged and once described as the “weave,” it might be difficult to distinguish between what the US president is saying and what his team is actually doing on foreign policy.
One unconventional source that helps explain Trump’s tactics is pro wrestling, a popular form of athletic performance theater with scripted outcomes. Trump is the only US president who has ever performed in events staged by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), one of the leading entertainment companies that produces and hosts these televised spectacles.
In pro wrestling, there is a word that applies to what Trump is doing here: that term of art is kayfabe, defined as “the tacit agreement between professional wrestlers and their fans to pretend that overtly staged wrestling events, stories, characters, etc. are genuine.” Trump is at his core a reality television show character, and that is the most direct way to explain that latest abovementioned Gaza video and the oft-confusing jumble of statements on the Middle East that he utters, but which are frequently not aligned with the actions of his team.
Trump supporters, staff, and “talking heads” in media and think tank echo chambers explain these unrealistic statements as a way of trying to prompt others to act. And in fairness, they often do end up producing a new discussion that helps people break out of the old ways of thinking. But as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently noted, there is a short distance “between out-of-the-box thinking and out-of-your-mind thinking.”
Case in point: US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff suggested this week that Syria and Lebanon could potentially join the Abraham Accords. While a nice idea in theory, it’s probably as realistic for now as the notion Trump himself offered as a political candidate last year about the Islamic Republic of Iran joining a deal to recognize Israel and have normal relations.
I support the notion of creative thinking about the Middle East that moves beyond the current parade of horribles plaguing the region, and I have written and spoken regularly about the need for a “silver linings playbook” for the Middle East that gets the discourse out of the constant reaction to an awful news cycle.
But to paraphrase the late, great Lebanese-American radio DJ Casey Kasem, we need to keep our feet on the ground while we’re reaching for the stars.
There are many problems in the current environment that need to be dealt with, and the United States and its Middle East partners can’t wish away the existing threats or pretend like the region can be fixed with loose brainstorms that sound like a mix between a game of Risk and Monopoly.
Back to reality — here comes gravity
The good news about the Middle East today is that the relative calm that has been in place for over a month is still holding. The bad news is that the architecture of the cease-fires in Gaza and Lebanon remains fragile and could come undone quite soon. Israel reportedly has been trying to shift the terms of the talks to continue the cease-fire with Hamas as the first 42-day phase comes to an end this weekend. Hamas, for its part, is reportedly preparing for another round of conflict by appointing new commanders, even as it continues to adhere to the terms of the agreement by releasing hostages and the bodies of hostages it held, including those of a baby and a peace activist.
Also, Israel conducted attacks this week in Syria against groups it saw as a threat to its security and called for a complete demilitarization of southern Syria, making Witkoff’s idea that Syria might join the Abraham Accords a more distant vision. Tensions between Lebanese Hezbollah and Israel remain high as well and could once again escalate into a major conflict.
Witkoff is back in the region this week, trying to keep things from blowing up while attempting to build a bridge to these broader ideas of a more inclusive peace. He described his mission in advance to Margaret Brennan on the CBS News program "Face the Nation," and he got into the details of the complicated negotiations he is engaged in to deal with the current moment. His mission centers on trying to ensure the Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal, which the Trump team helped the Biden administration strike, continues to hold.
Two things to watch in the coming days and weeks on the Arab-Israel front include:
- Whether the current cease-fires endure and if they lead to some opening to wider discussions about realistic game plans for producing stability and prosperity in the Middle East.
- What plan the Arab states present next week to offer support for a post-war scenario in the Gaza Strip.
Arab leaders met last week in Riyadh to discuss their plan in advance of another summit set for Cairo on March 4. The key thing to watch is whether the proposed solution has any potential to shift the discussion inside of Israel’s current government, which includes extremist right-wing ministers who reject the current cease-fire and hostage release deal, let alone if it can create a credible pathway to a two-state solution. Trump’s actual Gaza “plan” as he stated it sounds closer to something out of the 1977 Likud Party platform in Israel than a new, innovative idea connected to the current reality and any possibilities for the future. In today’s Middle East, old ideas are often a road to nowhere.
In this complicated context, Trump’s Middle East kayfabe might entertain and titillate, and it may even produce results no one thought of before. But as with pro wrestling, absent proper planning and precautions the performance could end up with people getting hurt or even killed in the still-volatile Middle East.
Brian Katulis is a Senior Fellow at MEI.
Photo by Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images
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