Benjamin Netanyahu called it ‘ground-breaking’ thinking, but it isn’t. It is idiocy that will make a bad situation worse

• Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s foreign affairs commentator

It’s easy to mistake sheer ignorance for brilliance. Seeming empathy conceals unfeeling stupidity. In demanding the permanent emptying of Gaza and the forcible resettlement of Palestinian civilians on a wholly imaginary “good, fresh, beautiful piece of land”, Donald Trump tried to break the mould. Instead, he broke hearts – and the US’s word. His so-called simple, brilliant big idea is for the simple-minded only – unworkable, unjust and tainted by wilful deceit, recklessness and the monstrous weight of his unleashed ego.

Trump’s incoherent rambling does not amount to groundbreaking thinking, as Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggests, let alone a plan. It’s more akin to bar-room talk by a loudmouthed boor. And yet it’s very dangerous. The fundamentalist aim lurking beneath his mock concern is an enlarged and consolidated Israel occupying and “owning”, through some bizarre form of US lend-lease, all of Gaza and possibly the West Bank. It means death to hopes of a Palestinian state. No wonder far-right Jewish nationalists and religious extremists cheer. No wonder today’s stern warning against “ethnic cleansing” from UN secretary general, António Guterres and today’s prediction from Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas that any such move would “put oil on the fire” in the region.