Bobby. wrote on Feb 8^th, 2025 at 12:10pm:


Offshore airfield and terminals etc.... like China/Japan did .... no problem with an undershoot or an overshoot... water both ends.. plenty of jobs there for those that want it!!  We could send all our crafty 'Palestinian' supporters over to help... their deep knowledge of everything would be a great help...

In his first term, Trump edged the Middle East towards peace more effectively than any president in decades, certainly more than the nearly senescent Joe Biden, or the endlessly moralising but strategically feckless ­Barack Obama.

To reach that conclusion doesn’t require for a second joining up to the legions who think Trump never makes a mistake, that everything he does is four-dimensional chess while the rest of us are playing noughts and crosses.

But nor is Trump remotely an idiot. You don’t win the US presidency twice if you’re an idiot. Trump does some things brilliantly, some things unbelievably badly. The germ of wisdom is to be neither pro-Trump nor anti-Trump, but to try to evaluate his actions and outcomes as they actually work out in the real world.

In his first term, Trump was stunningly successful in the Middle East, producing, in the Abraham Accords, four normalisation and peace agreements between Israel and its neighbours, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.

Don’t think these agreements didn’t involve the most complex American diplomacy. They would have earned any other president a Nobel peace prize. The most important was the agreement with the UAE. Reportedly, part of the UAE’s motivation was that Trump was considering approving Israel formally annexing the West Bank, or a big chunk of it. The Emiratis reportedly got from Trump a promise he wouldn’t do this. That allowed them to sell the deal domestically as protecting the long-term interests of the Palestinians.

Did Trump really plan to green-light annexation? Did the UAE really bargain him out of it? Did Trump or the UAE believe this? Who knows? But Trump introduced a new factor into the equation, a new bargaining chip, and then cashed it in for an extremely good outcome. Maybe some other president could have got it, but only Trump did get it. Biden got nothing in his four-year presidency.
Greg Sheridan

Dave Sharma, Australia’s former ambassador to Israel, knows the dynamics of Middle East politics as well as any Australian. He tells Inquirer he believes the Israel-Hamas ceasefire is now more likely to proceed than it was before the press conference.

Trump offered Gazans, and their ostensible leaders, a different future. Says Sharma: “In his own way, the President was saying: it doesn’t have to be like this.”

Trump was also calling on Arab national leaders – Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians, the Gulf Arabs generally – to do more for the Palestinians, and with the ­Palestinians. He assuredly wasn’t calling on them to run a campaign demonising Israel or asking Israel to tolerate regular terrorist atrocities like those on October 7, 2023.

Trump was asking them to do something about the development of Gaza, and implicitly, because it can’t be achieved otherwise, something to tame Hamas politically. And reminding them of potential outcomes they mightn’t like.

Sharma again: “I think that’s what Trump is trying to do. He’s trying to scare them all (Arab leaders) with the possible alter­native, and get them to take some responsibility.”

Maybe Trump just riffed without discipline, maybe it was all planned, maybe it was a bit of both, with Trump’s instinct for power leading him to produce ­certain effects. Maybe the Arabs can’t achieve anything even if they try. Let’s see.

Trump has standing with most of the Arab world because of his dedicated approach to containing Iran. Most Arab leaders understand Iran is an infinitely bigger threat to them than Israel could ever be. Biden distanced Washington from the Gulf Arabs and made endless, worthless, indeed counter-productive overtures to Iran’s rulers. These overtures did nothing but chew up US credibility and empower Iran’s government.

Trump was doing many things simultaneously in that press conference. He was both empowering, but also subtly limiting, Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump has always approached the Middle East by ­ignoring, even reversing, conventional wisdom. That’s smart, because conventional wisdom on the Middle East has been a dismal, wretched failure for decades.

Frank wrote on Feb 9^th, 2025 at 7:23am:


Sheridan is a another blind fool.

Negotiations between ideologues who are willing to die rather than accept UN resolutions are impossible.

Even peacemaker Israeli PM Rabin was murdered by an extremist Jewish ideologue.

Hence the UNSC - with 99% of the world's latest military technology - must impose the relevant resolutions on the parties, not a ridiculous idea but a necessity. 

We'll soon find out who are fools who want to die rather than live - and assist them if it comes to that; they will in fact be a small minority of Jews and Palestinians.

And not all Jews are blind ideologues, even when Israel is hiding under US skirts:

(AAP)

Australian Jews take Israel, Zionists to task over Gaza

The son of Holocaust survivors and other Jews opposed to Israel's war in Gaza are highlighting concerns that anti-Semitism is being exaggerated for political purposes in Australia.

The group of Jewish activists will gather on the steps of Victorian Parliament on Sunday days after Australian lawmakers passed harsh new penalties aimed at curbing rising anti-Semitic attacks.

Those attacks are "tragic but isolated" and being used to create a narrative that Jews are living in fear, rally organisers say.

"We stand against the genocide in Gaza ... and we reject that the Palestine movement is fermenting anti-Semitism," spokesman David Glanz told AAP.

"We think there's a highly political agenda here, where people claiming to be highly motivated by anti-Semitism are actually motivated to shut down Palestine voices."

Exactly.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-says-palestinians-would-not-have...




By Simon Lewis and Susan Heavey

February 11, 20257:28 AM GMT+11Updated 2 hours ago

Summary

Gaza residents would have a 'permanent place' built for them elsewhere, says Trump

Palestinians have rejected suggestion they must move from Gaza

Rubio meets Egypt's foreign minister in Washington



WASHINGTON, Feb 10 (Reuters) -

U.S. President Donald Trump said Palestinians would not have the right of return to the Gaza Strip under his proposal to redevelop the enclave, contradicting his own officials who had suggested Gazans would only be relocated temporarily.
In an excerpt of a Fox News interview released on Monday, Trump added that he thought he could make a deal with Jordan and Egypt to take the displaced Palestinians, saying the U.S. gives the two countries "billions and billions of dollars a year."
Asked if Palestinians would have the right to return to Gaza, Trump told Fox News: "No, they wouldn't because they're going to have much better housing."
"I'm talking about building a permanent place for them," he said, adding it would take years for Gaza to be habitable again.
In a shock announcement on Feb. 4 after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, Trump proposed resettling Gaza's 2.2 million Palestinians and the U.S. taking control of the seaside enclave, redeveloping it into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
Residents of Gaza have broadly rejected any suggestion of moving from the strip, as has the Palestinian Authority and the militant group Hamas that administers Gaza.


Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Trump's statement that Palestinians would not be able to return to Gaza was "irresponsible."
"We affirm that such plans are capable of igniting the region," he told Reuters on Monday.
Netanyahu, who praised the proposal, suggested Palestinians would be allowed to return. "They can leave, they can then come back, they can relocate and come back. But you have to rebuild Gaza," he said the day after Trump's announcement.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who will depart later this week for his first visit to the Middle East in the job, said on Thursday that Palestinians would have to "live somewhere else in the interim," during reconstruction, although he declined to explicitly rule out their permanent displacement.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the disparity between Rubio and Trump's most recent remarks on the plan.
Trump's comments come as a fragile ceasefire reached last month between Israel and Hamas is at risk of collapse after Hamas announced on Monday it would stop releasing Israeli hostages over alleged Israeli violations of the agreement.
Israel's Arab neighbors, including Egypt and Jordan, have said any plan to transfer Palestinians from their land would destabilize the region.
Rubio met Egypt's Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty in Washington on Monday. Egypt's foreign ministry said Abdelatty told Rubio that Arab countries support Palestinians in rejecting Trump's plan. Cairo fears Palestinians could be forced across Egypt's border with Gaza.

Trump is set to host Jordan's King Abdullah at the White House on Tuesday.
Trump said in the Fox News interview that between two and six communities could be built for the Palestinians "a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is."
"I would own this. Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land. No big money spent," he told Fox.

Bobby. wrote on Feb 11^th, 2025 at 8:45am:


The Trump admins.  policy made 'on the run', again...

And you think Palestinians would trust Rubio who is contradicting Trump?   

John Smith wrote on Feb 11^th, 2025 at 10:08am:


Is it only the dead Jews that you think should go back to Europe?

John Smith wrote on Feb 11^th, 2025 at 10:26am:


I was asking for clarification John.

Which Jews do you think should go back to Europe? And why do you think that is a stupid question?