UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and the rest of Europe’s leaders are clear about what they want to see in Gaza: an immediate ceasefire, the release of the 50 remaining hostages in Hamas’s grasp, an acceleration of aid supplies and an end to a nearly two-year war that has turned the coastal enclave into a real-life version of Dante’s Inferno. Macron went one step further several days ago, announcing that France will recognize an independent Palestinian state at next month’s UN General Assembly meetings in New York. Starmer, under pressure from Labour backbenchers, is moving in a similar, albeit more conditional, direction.
Compare this to President Trump, who often has trouble articulating what US policy goals in Gaza are and what he actually envisions happening there.
The confusion started weeks into his second term, when Trump, hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, shocked the world by telling everybody that his grand plan for the war-shattered Palestinian territory was to expel the roughly two million Palestinians who lived there to make room for a bunch of resorts and spas. The Trump administration insisted that this plan – if you could call it that – was based the president’s humanitarian motives. It was simply too dangerous and chaotic for Palestinians to continue living in Gaza, the White House said.
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