President Trump’s plan to place Gaza under American occupation and transfer its two million Palestinian residents has delighted the Israeli right, horrified Palestinians, shocked America’s Arab allies and confounded regional analysts who saw it as unworkable.
For some experts, the idea felt so unlikely — would Mr. Trump really risk American troops in another intractable battle against militant Islamists in the Middle East? — that they wondered if it was simply the opening bid in a new round of negotiations over Gaza’s future.
To the Israeli right, Mr. Trump’s plan unraveled decades of unwelcome orthodoxy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, raising the possibility of negating the militant threat in Gaza without the need to create a Palestinian state. In particular, settler leaders hailed it as a route by which they might ultimately resettle Gaza with Jewish civilians — a long-held desire.
To Palestinians, the proposal would constitute ethnic cleansing on a more terrifying scale than any displacement they have experienced since 1948, when roughly 800,000 Arabs were expelled or forced to flee during the wars surrounding the creation of the Jewish state.
“Outrageous,” said Prof. Mkhaimar Abusada, a Palestinian political analyst from Gaza who was displaced from his home during the war. “Palestinians would rather live in tents next to their destroyed homes rather than relocate to another place.”
“Very important,” wrote Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right Israeli lawmaker and settler leader, in a social media post. “The only solution to Gaza is to encourage the migration of Gazans.”
“Comical,” said Alon Pinkas, a political commentator and former Israeli ambassador. “This makes annexing Canada and buying Greenland seem much more practical in comparison.”
But it is the very outlandishness of the plan that signaled to some that it was not meant to be taken literally.
Just as Mr. Trump has often made bold threats elsewhere that he ultimately has not enacted, some saw his gambit in Gaza as a negotiating tactic aimed at forcing compromises from both Hamas and from Arab leaders.
In Gaza, Hamas has yet to agree to fully cede power, a position that makes the Israeli government less likely to extend the cease-fire. Elsewhere in the region, Saudi Arabia is refusing to normalize ties with Israel, or help with Gaza’s postwar governance, unless Israel agrees to the creation of a Palestinian state.
Mr. Trump’s maximalist plans may have been an attempt to get both sides to shift their positions, Israeli and Palestinian analysts said.
Faced with a choice between preserving its own control over Gaza and maintaining a Palestinian presence there, Hamas might perhaps settle for the latter, according to Michael Milshtein, an Israeli analyst of Palestinian affairs.
And Saudi Arabia is being prodded to give up its insistence on Palestinian statehood and settle instead for a deal that preserves Palestinians’ right to stay in Gaza but not their right to sovereignty, according to Professor Abusada, the Palestinian political scientist.
Saudi Arabia swiftly rejected Mr. Trump’s plan on Wednesday, issuing a statement that underlined its support for Palestinian statehood. But some still think the Saudi position could change. During Mr. Trump’s previous tenure, in 2020, the United Arab Emirates made a similar compromise when it agreed to normalize ties with Israel in exchange for the postponement of Israel’s annexation of the West Bank.
“Trump is showing maximum pressure against Hamas to scare them, so they make real concessions,” Professor Abusada said. “I also think he is using maximum pressure against the region, so they would settle for less in exchange for normalization with Israel. Exactly like what the U.A.E. did.”
In turn, Mr. Trump has given the Israeli right a reason to support an extension of the cease-fire, Israeli analysts said.
For more than a year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing allies have threatened to collapse his coalition if the war ends with Hamas still in power. Now, those hard-liners have an off-ramp — a pledge from Israel’s biggest ally to empty Gaza of Palestinians at some point in the future.
Nadav Shtrauchler, a former adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, referring to those right-wing elements, said, “In time, they will need to see some evidence that it is actually happening.”
But for now, he added, “They will be more patient.”
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel.