This week, after Spain, Norway, and Ireland recognized an independent Palestinian state, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman called their action the “latest brick in the wall of rejection being built around Israel’s current far-right government.” Friedman also highlighted one cause of the rejection: Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, he wrote, is “asking the world to let it destroy Hamas in Gaza while refusing to work on a new future with non-Hamas Palestinians.”

The day before, Friedman had drawn a more detailed picture of what Netanyahu is up to. The more you think about this picture, the more unsettling it gets—especially if you think about its implications for three, six, nine months down the road.

Netanyahu, Friedman explained, is insisting that there is no moral difference between Hamas and the more moderate Palestinian Authority, which performs some governmental functions in parts of the West Bank. This claim, however implausible, allows Netanyahu to insist that there’s no Palestinian entity that can be trusted to play a role in governing post-war Gaza. And this position gratifies his far-right coalition partners—“Jewish supremacists,” Friedman calls them—because they want Israel to reoccupy Gaza and annex it. Netanyahu is determined to keep them happy, since their continued support “can keep him in office and out of jail if he is convicted in his corruption trials.” 

Friedman worries that occupying and annexing Gaza will lead Israel “into a muddling, endlessly draining conflict.” And that is indeed one likely outcome. But there is an alternative annexation scenario that has definitely not escaped the attention of those Jewish supremacists: the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Two weeks ago, one of them—Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir—said this at a rally near Gaza’s border:

To end the problem, in order that the problem won’t come back, we need to do two things: One, return to Gaza now! Return home! Return to our holy land! And second, encourage emigration. Encourage the voluntary departure of Gaza’s residents…It is ethical! It is rational! It is right! It is the truth! It is the Torah and it is the only way!

And how might Israel “encourage the voluntary departure” of Gaza residents? One clue came from Israeli Minister of Intelligence Gila Gamliel in early January, when she addressed the Knesset. In October her ministry had prepared a report, later leaked to the Israeli press, recommending the permanent transfer of all Gazan civilians to Egypt. Speaking before the Knesset, she said that after Hamas is destroyed, there will be “no municipal authorities, the civilian population will be entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. There will be no work, and 60 percent of Gaza’s agricultural land will become security buffer zones.” That’s the kind of thing that could “encourage” a Palestinian to go to Egypt.

Of course, Egypt would resist a mass transfer of Gazans. And so, presumably, would President Biden. But Egypt could be pressured into accepting some refugees, and Israeli officials have reportedly held talks with Congo and other nations about resettling Gazans. And as for Biden: Well, he may not be president much longer. Which brings us to this week’s Trump Truth, and the speculation it spawned.

That’s “Truth” not as in “factually accurate information” but as in, “what you call a post on Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social.” Trump posted:

Evan Gershkowitz, the Reporter from the Wall Street Journal, who is being held by Russia, will be released almost immediately after the Election, but definitely before I assume Office. He will be HOME, SAFE, AND WITH HIS FAMILY. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do that for me, but not for anyone else, and WE WILL PAY NOTHING!

This led journalist Brian Beutler to wonder whether Trump might be reaching other politically useful “implicit or explicit” understandings with world leaders. In particular: Is he “mounting a shadow diplomacy to lengthen Israel’s war on Gaza”?

This kind of thing isn’t unheard of. In the fall of 1968, Richard Nixon, running against Vice President Hubert Humphrey, secretly and successfully encouraged the South Vietnamese leadership to derail peace talks with the Johnson administration so that the war would still be an issue on election day.

In Trump’s case it’s not clear that there would be any point in going to this much trouble. Netanyahu already has an incentive to keep the war going as long as possible, since the conventional wisdom in Israel is that he’ll have to step down once it’s over. Besides, he would prefer a President Trump to a President Biden, and he knows that if the Gaza war is still raging, or even simmering, in November, that will hurt Biden’s chances.

On the other hand, there are no doubt things Netanyahu could do, in addition to extending the war, that would increase Trump’s chances of winning in November. He understands American politics and has various ways to influence it, as he’s demonstrated to the acute discomfort of such past presidents as Barack Obama. So, even though Netanyahu will try to help Trump’s campaign in any event, it’s not inconceivable that he’s offered to pull out all the stops—and that in exchange Trump has promised to let him do whatever he wants with Gaza once the war ends.

For that matter, Trump might well let Bibi do whatever he wants in Gaza even without a secret deal. Certainly Trump would be more tolerant of ethnic cleansing than Biden would be. Tolerating it would bring less intra-party blowback for Trump than for Biden. And conspicuously, even performatively, callous indifference to mass suffering is more on-brand for Trump than for Biden.

Besides, Trump has a history of doing whatever Israel wants. He withdrew from the arduously negotiated Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and then, in 2020, authorized the assassination of Iran’s most important military commander—two things that Biden, notwithstanding his own rich history of accommodating Israel, wouldn’t have done.

And imagine the real estate opportunities that ethnic cleansing could bring! Jared Kushner drew fire this year for saying, “Gaza’s waterfront property, it could be very valuable… it’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.” 

Kushner complained that reports in liberal media failed to quote him immediately adding that “I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.” But you can bet that Donald Trump wouldn’t be too picky about whether any Gazans who left oceanfront property—or left Gaza itself—did or didn’t come back. Bibi Netanyahu would no doubt prefer that they didn’t. 

Given Biden’s repeated failure to significantly moderate Israel’s behavior since October 7, it’s easy to conclude that no American president could give Netanyahu much more leeway than he’s gotten lately. So it’s easy to assume that, so far as the Israel-Palestine situation goes, the outcome of the November election doesn’t matter. But to Palestinians in Gaza it could wind up mattering massively.

Vir: Robert Wright, Nonzero