Witkoff and Trump’s Gaza dream has one thing missing: Palestinians
Steve Witkoff is no ordinary Middle East envoy; not for him the grisly fate of predecessors like Tony Blair or Brett McGurk.
Witkoff says he is blessed. He is on a mission, if not from God, then at least the next best thing - which is US President Donald Trump.
Witkoff truly worships the man: “He’d come to 101 Park Avenue, where I was a lawyer,” Witkoff told Tucker Carlson in a new interview. “He had this swashbuckling style. I used to see him come in, and I used to say: God, I want to be him. I don’t want to be the lawyer. I don’t want to be the scrivener. I want to be that man. Yeah, I can remember saying that. He was like the Michael Jordan to me.”
Oracles like Witkoff don’t normally talk to mortals, and if they do, it is in riddles. The last thing you would expect from a man currently trying to put together a ceasefire in Gaza is to tell all to a conservative talk show host - for 90 minutes.
But that is exactly what Witkoff did. He revealed every thought in his brain. Carlson salivated. For the rest of us, the picture that Witkoff painted was jaw-dropping.
No self-respecting teacher would let a child out of ninth grade with what Witkoff appears not to know about the world’s oldest territorial conflict.
In Witkoff’s portrayal, there is no Palestinian claim to the land or Palestinian national rights. No settlers are turfing them out of their homes in the occupied West Bank. Thirteen settlements have not just been announced there. There are no Palestinians in Israel, either. It’s all about Hamas and Gaza.
And the problem in Gaza is not about where to put its two million people. We have been getting this all wrong. They can be shovelled off anywhere: Somaliland, the Balkans, wherever.
It’s about where to put Trump’s skyscrapers.
Imperial envoy
Gaza is so full of tunnels that it’s like “Swiss cheese underneath”, Witkoff told Carlson, as if he was revealing a secret. “And then they got hit with bunker-buster bombs. So there’s no rock there anymore. There’s no place to put footings if you’re going to build buildings … If we had buildings in those conditions in New York, there would be yellow tape all around and no one would be allowed in.”
I would imagine so, but if the population of New York had been subjected to a 17-year siege, and had 80 percent of its housing been destroyed by drones using Manhattan as a free-firing range, I would imagine New Yorkers would have gotten used to cowering behind shards of concrete, with or without the aid of yellow tape.
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But first things first: Witkoff is not just another negotiator. He is an imperial envoy. The emperor sets the table for all of his boyars, declaring he will have “peace through strength”.
That is not just a slogan. It really works, Witkoff says: “So when he dispatches you to go to the Middle East, people are almost a little bit intimidated before you get there.”
But before you clamber aboard your Gulfstream G650, you have to know where you are headed. Negotiations, Witkoff assures us, are all about being outcome-oriented.
The outcome is nothing short of paradise.
It would be comic, a self-parody, were Gaza not being shredded with the bombs Trump has given Israel, as Witkoff and Carlson preened and admired each other
“The Gulf coast could be one of the most undervalued opportunities if we get peace and stability throughout the region. If we solve Iran and you can finance in that market, the Israelis are brilliant from a technological standpoint … They’re in AI, robotics, blockchain. That’s where the UAE is today, that’s where Saudi Arabia is today, that’s where Qatar is today,” Witkoff said.
“Can you imagine all these countries working collaboratively together and creating that type of market? It could be much bigger than Europe. Europe is dysfunctional today. Imagine if they became functional. And everybody is a business guy there. It could be amazing.”
For Witkoff, it’s all about business. There appears to be no room in his brain for dignity, Palestinian national rights, ending the occupation or pursuing equality.
So Europe is finished, along presumably with the Republican project to establish New Europe as its natural partner. The rebuilding of Eastern Europe into a neoliberal paradise is another bauble to be discarded by Trump’s America. Poland and the Baltics are all so yesterday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is “super smart”, even if Witkoff can’t quite remember the names of the Ukrainian territories Russia has seized.
But 20 percent of Ukraine is just a detail. Once you have figured out where you want to get to, basically a global business deal between like-minded dictators, your next task is to “level set the facts”.
Stumbling across truth
The “facts” in the Middle East are simple. It was a spiritual experience for Witkoff to attend one of the demonstrations in Hostage Square; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top aide, Ron Dermer, are “well motivated”; the US would not be as effective as it currently is, were it not for the fact that Hezbollah and now Hamas have now been decapitated and the axis of resistance “largely eliminated”; and Hamas cannot be allowed to stay in Gaza, or if it does, it must demilitarise.
Oh, and by the way, Iran’s nukes are next. Trump cannot tolerate “a North Korea” in the Gulf.
You get the picture. It would be comic, a self-parody, were Gaza not being shredded with the bombs Trump has given Israel, as Witkoff and Carlson preened and admired each other.
Occasionally, Witkoff stumbled across a truth in his ramble through la-la land. Egypt, he blurted out, is extremely weak. It’s bankrupt. Youth unemployment is a major issue.
“All the good” that came out of the recent Lebanese presidential election, won by army chief Joseph Aoun in the aftermath of Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, “could all be reversed if we lose Egypt”, Witkoff said.
Witkoff should ask himself why Egypt is so weak, after all the billions of dollars Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have poured into it since the military coup 12 years ago. It is precisely because it has been run into the ground by Trump’s favourite dictator, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Nor do Gaza’s destroyers have any agency. The territory is so devastated that it will take an estimated 15 to 20 years to rebuild, but Witkoff makes no mention of who destroyed it. Palestinians in Gaza need an education system, Witkoff declares. And what has Unrwa, the maligned United Nations Palestinian refugee agency, been providing? Under its education system, Gaza has one of the highest literacy rates in the world.
Just think what Gaza would be like if it became a hub for AI, Witkoff muses. Gaza is no stranger to AI, which has been responsible for the most horrific culling of innocent civilians, doctors, paramedics, journalists, academics, and teachers in the history of this conflict.
Economic mirage
Strip away the allure of the new, and Witkoff is repeating a very old formula. Take your mind way back to the Oslo Accords, and there was the same rubbish about an economic miracle around the corner.
Palestinians have been promised railways, a canal from the Jordan Valley to the Red Sea, and an oasis in the West Bank, if only they put down their arms and signed up to Israel. Blair promised Jenin an industrial park. It never came.
Witkoff and Trump are not motivated by the pursuit of a better life for the Palestinians. They simply want to create a Middle East dominated by Israel and funded by the Gulf.
Both delude themselves that everything was going very well with the Abraham Accords before 7 October 2023, as if the attack by Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist group in the UK and other countries, was an aberration with no cause. In fact, the attempt to bypass the Palestinian national cause in the accords was one of the major reasons for the attack.
When all pathways to dialogue are blocked, armed resistance will be the only alternative. That is one of the facts of this conflict that Witkoff would do well to get his head around.
Witkoff suggested that Gaza was the only stumbling block and did not mention the occupied West Bank at all. But if the Israeli operation in the West Bank continues, no Arab leader can endorse the Abraham Accords.
Witkoff needed to experience Hostage Square to feel spiritual. I would advise him to listen to what other spiritual leaders are telling Muslims to do, before calculating his next move.
He should heed what the chief imam and president of Mecca’s Grand Mosque, Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, said during Thursday prayers last week: “Oh Almighty, bring justice upon the oppressive Zionist occupiers. Oh God, strike them down, for they are not beyond your power.”
Words like these channel the anger in every Arab's heart. If Witkoff thinks that calming, or rather suppressing, the people of Gaza will quench this degree of hatred in Arab hearts, he is living in a fantasy.
Sowing the seeds
Each time the Arab peoples have been hit, they have come back. The war of 1948 and the establishment of Israel was a big hit. It took Egypt four more years to overthrow the king and establish a republic. In 1977, then-president Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem to open a new chapter. Four years later, he was dead. His successor, Hosni Mubarak, was overthrown just two years after the 2008-09 Israeli war on Gaza.
This is what Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman surely has in mind when he warns the Americans that although he is fine with normalising with Israel, his people are not.
Every attempt in the history of this conflict to declare peace without achieving a just settlement for the Palestinian people has sown the seeds for another chapter of conflict further down the line.
Like all those bunker-busting bombs Israel has been drilling into Gaza, Trump is undermining whatever shreds of legitimacy are left in every Arab regime that kowtows to him
What Netanyahu and Trump are sowing today is a regional conflagration of far greater dimensions. Everything they do and say weakens the hands of the dictators upon whom Israel and the US depend.
The Gulf states are seen by Trump as cash cows. Saudi Arabia has declared that it will invest $1 trillion into the US economy, and the UAE $1.4 trillion. Kuwait is being bullied to stump up. No one, except Israel, has agency.
To the Arab peoples, this conveys a devastating message. How is it, they ask, that our richest princes are willing to spend $2 trillion on the US when they cannot even get a bottle of water into Gaza? Their rulers are either impotent or complicit, or both.
The calm that Witkoff is trying to construct is very far from being stable. Like all those bunker-busting bombs Israel has been drilling into Gaza, Trump is undermining whatever shreds of legitimacy are left in every Arab regime that kowtows to him and Netanyahu.
In that sense, I agree with Witkoff’s assessment of his boss. Trump is a true revolutionary. But his revolution will not quite have the result he intends.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
posted by Satish Sharma at
15:29
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