US gets off to shaky start in Middle East

In his second stint as United States President, Donald Trump got off on the wrong foot with the Arab world by brazenly proposing to displace Palestinians from their ancestral homeland while simultaneously suggesting taking away portions of Egyptian and Jordanian territories to accommodate Palestinian refugees. The proposal not only disregards international law and basic norms but also infringes on the territorial integrity of two sovereign nations.

The new US administration assumed office at a time the global order is going through a deep structural shift, including in the Middle East, where the US' role is being redefined. The US is finding itself dealing with an increasingly unfamiliar world and an assertive Middle East, which is defying US diktats while remaining determined to realize its full potential.

This has been clearly demonstrated by the Arab nations' flat-out rejection of the US proposal to displace Palestinian people. A ministerial meeting on Feb 1 of six Arab states — Palestine, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Qatar — in addition to the Arab League — rebuffed the proposal and refused to even consider it for discussion.

The latest proposal is another step in the wrong direction by the US administration. Although the Middle East is still dealing with the consequences of US adventurism in the region, the recent arrogant public statements by some US and Israeli officials that they are on a mission to "reshape the Middle East" are outrageous, and have caused a huge uproar in the Arab world.

Unlike the US of post-World War II and post-Cold War that was supremely powerful and self-confident, the current US is confused and paralyzed domestically while exhausted and insecure internationally. Such a US is failing its own people; how can it take the lead in shaping or reshaping the Middle Eastern order against the will of the regional states, let alone single-handedly define the new global order?

Israel is an integral part of the US strategy in the region. Despite being supported by the massive Western war and propaganda machines, Israel is too tiny and too weak to change the Middle East. The Israelis, excluding Palestinian citizens, number less than 2 percent of the Arabs; their economic output, in purchasing power parity terms, is approximately 5 percent of that of the Arabs, and their geographic area, which they are yet to define, is a minuscule fraction of the huge Arab landmass of 13 million square kilometers.

The US policies of the last 25 years, from the disastrous Iraq War and the Arab Spring chaos to the unconditional support for Israeli war crimes, have backfired and caused the US to lose the long game in the Arab and Muslim world. Recent survey results in Tunisia revealed a stark 90 percent negative perception of the US in the country, highlighting a significant shift in sentiment, especially since Oct 7, 2023. On the other hand, the respondents' view of China was 75 percent positive.

The displacement proposal content is not as surprising as the identity of the person who has announced it. This is the first time that a US official, let alone a US president, has publicly suggested the removal of Palestinians from their land.

This is not outside-the-box thinking; this is way outside any box. The idea is detached from reality, history and international law, and most importantly, it is divorced from the universal consensus on the Palestinian unalienable right to self-determination and the establishment of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The Palestinian cause is not a real estate case disputed by two businesspeople; it is much deeper than that. It is about protecting and restoring the Palestinians' right to live in dignity in a state of their own in their homeland, guaranteed under international law and numerous UN resolutions.

Unlike most Israelis who have dual citizenship, Palestinians view this land as an integral part of their dignity, life, history and future. Unlike most Israelis, who have other places to go to — more than half a million Israelis have reportedly left the country since Oct 7, 2023 — the Palestinians have nowhere else to go, hence their unwavering determination to stay on their land.

Many in the Arab world hope that the US administration acknowledges that instead of futilely and perilously attempting to impose its will on the Arab world and, in the process, deepening misgivings about US trustworthiness and risking further loss of influence, the US should forge a new policy of a mutually beneficial partnership on an equal footing.

If the US and Israeli officials are so concerned about the wellbeing of the Palestinian people in Gaza and genuinely want to help them, a good idea would be to place them back in their original cities on historical Palestinian land from which they were violently and unlawfully expelled in the first place.

The author is former adviser to the chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Office and an Asia Global fellow at the Asia Global Institute of the University of Hong Kong.