According to ChatGPT, President Donald Trump made over a hundred promises during his 2024 campaign. However, the most formidable one came in a Truth Social post after the polls had closed: “If the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity. Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America.”
With less than two weeks remaining until his inauguration, the question arises: How can hell be unleashed upon hell?
I recently visited Jabalia, once the most densely populated place in the Middle East, now transformed into a vast ruin as far as the eye can see, unlike anything seen perhaps since Dresden. Only packs of starving dogs remain in what was once Hamas’s pride. But the lesson hasn’t been learned, and the population isn’t rising up against the regime that brought this catastrophe upon them. To date, 100,000 tons of explosives have been dropped on Gaza, equivalent to four atomic bombs. What good will another hundred thousand tons do, this time from the United States? What good will it do to turn tens of thousands more into refugees, for people who have perpetuated their refugee status for 76 years, since the War of Independence?
The gang of murderers known as Hamas refuses to back down because, unlike democratic countries, the fundamentalist terror regime doesn’t considera bug, but a feature: Those who locate their headquarters in hospitals, schools, and kindergartens do so not only to protect from possible attacks but to exploit the inevitable killing of civilians for propaganda purposes. More killing – more world empathy. Those who steal humanitarian aid from their own citizens and then sell chicken and eggs at prices even higher than in Chelsea Market to a population with 97% unemployment clearly care nothing for their welfare, and prioritize only their own interests.
Trump has two options. The most immediate and urgent is to halt the humanitarian aid in its current format, as its misappropriation sustains Hamas’s rule. For the past 15 months, the Biden administration has aided Hamas’s survival by forcing Israel to continue transferring aid, despite Secretary of State Blinken’s explicit assurances at the onset of the war that such aid would be stopped if the aid fell into Hamas’s hands. If Trump honors Blinken’s promise and approves the transfer of aid by IDF soldiers or a private entity, Hamas would collapse within weeks because it wouldn’t be able to pay salaries or intimidate a starving population.
But there’s a strategic move that would help eliminate Hamas: allowing Israel to annex parts of the Gaza Strip. Nothing hurts more in the Middle East than loss of territory. In Arabic, it’s known as “tsumud,” attachment to the land. Territory is the most precious and stable currency in the region. When a war meant to conquer Israel ends with Israel taking territory from you, the implications will resonate throughout the Middle East.
In the 1948 War of Independence, Arab nations rejected the establishment of a Jewish state as mandated by the United Nations. Following Israel’s victory, the international community acknowledged Israel’s annexation of 2,400 square miles that had been designated for Arabs. In 1967, the Syrians sought to destroy Israel, and the world recognized, albeit belatedly, the annexation of the Golan Heights captured from Syria in the war.
Since then, however, there’s been a shift and the world now demands that Israel withdraw after every war to its original borders. Is it then surprising that aggressors repeatedly try to destroy the Jewish state, knowing that, at worst, the world will preserve their rule within their original territorial boundaries?
There is nothing sacred in Gaza’s borders, which were determined when Gaza was still Egyptian territory. Such border changes have a security justification: taking several dozen square miles to create a buffer between northern Gaza and the Israeli communities brutally attacked on October 7 would be a necessary security measure, a morally sound decision, and a strategically beneficial move.
The borders of the Middle East were drawn arbitrarily in the previous century by European diplomats representing colonial powers. This resulted in nearly a century of bloody violence, because artificial borders cannot forge nations from conflicting tribes. The turmoil in Syria is just the most recent example.
Trump already signaled in his 2020 “Deal of the Century” that he was open to rethinking the Middle East, when he recognized the Golan annexation and considered allowing sovereignty over Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria. President Biden tacitly permitted the IDF to take control over portions of southern Syria to establish defensible borders. Now Trump has an opportunity to extend this to northern Gaza and signal that terrorism doesn’t pay. This map change could represent a significant advancement toward peace in the Middle East.
