In just two weeks since his return to power, US President Donald Trump has proven adept at stirring international unrest. Through a flurry of executive orders, he has upended trade relations and rattled foreign policy frameworks. However, his most bizarre move yet came on February 4 with a shocking announcement regarding Gaza’s future, a proposal so outrageous that it defies belief.

Having previously claimed credit for the Abraham Accords and recently touting his role in brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Trump’s next steps were widely anticipated to be constructive. When he met Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, many expected him to advocate for the release of all the detained Palestinians as part of the second phase of the accord.

Instead, Trump floated an astonishing idea: physically relocating Gaza’s entire Palestinian population to neighbouring countries like Egypt and Jordan, while America assumes control of the land and transforms it into a glitzy “Riviera of the Middle East.”

This harebrained scheme combines two reprehensible elements — ethnic cleansing and a complete disregard for Palestinians’ rights. Unsurprisingly, it has found no supporters beyond, perhaps, Netanyahu, who likely recognises the absurdity of its execution. Of course, it will allow Israel’s hard right to cling to its dream of expelling Palestinians from Gaza and building settlements there.

Neither Palestinians nor their neighbours are remotely on board with this dystopian vision. Even Trump’s staunchest cheerleaders in the Republican Party, despite their ideological fervour, would baulk at sending American soldiers to forcibly remove two million Palestinians from Gaza. For a man who once boasted of never deploying US troops abroad, the proposal is a contradiction wrapped in hubris.

Trump’s ambitions in the Middle East are clear: extending the Abraham Accords to Saudi Arabia while forming an American-Israeli-Sunni bloc to contain Iran, which he claims is perilously close to obtaining nuclear weapons. His reinstatement of a “maximum pressure” campaign to squeeze Iran’s oil exports to zero, announced just hours before his Gaza remarks, underscores this strategy.

However, this latest gambit is morally indefensible and practically unfeasible. It represents a brazen call for conquest and ethnic cleansing, disregarding the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. By proposing such a dystopian plan, Trump risks aligning the U.S. with the authoritarian might-makes-right worldview championed by Russia and China.

The Middle East does need innovative thinking, but Trump’s reckless idea only diminishes American credibility. Rather than paving the way for peace, it threatens to fuel turmoil, sow distrust, and empower extremists. What the region requires is thoughtful diplomacy, not the wild fantasies of a leader enamoured with grandiose, unworkable visions.