Donald Trump announced that he had achieved peace in the Middle East for the first time in 3000 years. The statement appears strong at first but proves false when tested against fundamental evidence. The Middle East has had conflicts for thousands of years, sure. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict exists without any substantial historical background. It’s barely 80 years old. And Trump’s grasp of it is so detached from reality that it makes previous presidential attempts at Middle East peace look like masterclasses in diplomacy.
We should begin by examining the historical events which Trump appears to be unaware of. Israel didn’t exist as a nation until May 14, 1948, when David Ben-Gurion, head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel in Tel Aviv. The United States recognized it immediately—President Harry Truman did so on the same day. So, this “3000 years” of conflict Trump mentioned? The Israeli state itself has existed for less than a century. The notion that Trump just brought peace to something that’s been going on for three millennia is mathematically absurd.
The events of 1948 established the fundamental reason why Palestinians along with Arabs maintain their ongoing anger. After World War II, following the Holocaust and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees, the United Nations voted to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The partition plan gave the Jewish state roughly 55 percent of Palestine, even though Jews made up less than half of the population. The Arab inhabitants who had lived on that land for generations weren’t consulted about having their homes handed over to a new nation. The Palestinians refer to this occurrence as the Nakba which translates to “the catastrophe.” Around 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. They fled or were expelled, and most were never allowed to return. Their land became Israeli territory.
To put this in American terms, imagine if the federal government decided to give the best piece of American land—say, all of California, which is roughly the same size as Israel—to a group of people from another country. Imagine they were given this land because of historical and religious claims to it, and because of atrocities committed by a different nation entirely (Nazi Germany committed the Holocaust, not Americans). Now imagine that millions of Americans who had lived in California for generations were told to leave. The people lost their homes together with their businesses and their olive groves and their historical family lands. When they tried to go back, they were shot at. The refugees who fled seventy-seven years ago remain in camps while President suggests California should transform into an exclusive resort for wealthy visitors. The proposal Trump has made for Gaza resembles this plan.
The current proposal from Trump contains such an extreme level of offense that it stands out from all his previous statements. In February 2025, during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump announced that the United States would take control of the Gaza Strip after Palestinians are forcibly expelled. He envisioned to turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” To underscore how serious he was, Trump even released an AI-generated video in February depicting Gaza transformed into a luxury resort called “Trump Gaza,” featuring Trump and Netanyahu sunbathing, children emerging from rubble into an upscale setting, and a golden statue of Trump. He said Palestinians “would not have a right to return” to their homeland. The reporter asked him about Palestinian reasons to leave Gaza, but Trump answered with an unreasonable statement that exposed his actual position: “Why would they want to return? The place has been hell .”A reporter replied: “But it’s their home, sir.”
The instant demonstrates how Trump maintains his core distinction from other people. The area has become a hellish environment because of fifty years of fighting, blockades and foreign military control. But it’s still their home. The village holds special meaning because it was home to their grandparents and serves as the final resting place for their ancestors and the location of their family olive groves. Trump sees a “demolition site” to be redeveloped. Palestinians consider their homeland to be their native territory.
The proposal reveals its arrogant nature through its comparison with previous peace deals which Trump claims to enhance. Every recent American president has attempted to broker Middle East peace. George H.W. Bush and James Baker negotiated the Madrid Conference in 1991. Bill Clinton brought Arafat and Rabin together at Oslo in 1993 and spent his entire second term pushing for a comprehensive settlement. George W. Bush supported the Road Map for Peace. Barack Obama tried repeatedly. The three presidents understood that peace would not work in this region because one group maintained control through continuous forced relocation and military rule. You cannot achieve lasting stability by expelling millions of people from their land.
The proposal from Trump stands against all international laws which have been established during the past several decades and against all diplomatic work that has been done. The concept opposes what society views as essential rights which every human being should possess. His statement about Palestinians having no right to return to Gaza amounts to support for ethnic cleansing. The UN defines ethnic cleansing as a planned strategy which one ethnic or religious group uses to forcibly remove another ethnic or religious group through violent and intimidating methods. The description Trump provided exactly matched that particular situation. And yet he announced it as if he’d invented peace.
The current state of Trump’s ceasefire remains unstable. The announcement of his supposed breakthrough has not stopped the ongoing threats of new violence. Hamas officials have condemned the plan. Arab nations have rejected it. The international community has called it a violation of international law. A former Israeli security minister described Trump’s plan as “a beautiful friendship” which reveals that Trump’s proposal benefits only the most radical Israeli settlement supporters.
To suggest that Trump has achieved something previous presidents couldn’t is to misunderstand what “peace” actually means. It doesn’t mean silencing one side by expelling them. The process of transformation does not involve turning stolen land into a tourist resort. The solution requires identifying and solving the fundamental reasons which lead to conflict including forced population movement, territorial control and the refusal to recognize Palestinian statehood. Trump’s plan does the opposite. It’s not peace. The victory came through ethnic cleansing which used luxury real estate terminology to disguise its actions.
Presidents before Trump understood that Middle East peace required treating Palestinians as human beings with rights, not as obstacles to be removed from valuable land. Trump sees a development opportunity. That’s not naïveté. That’s something far more dangerous: the assumption that everything—including people’s rights to their own homeland—can be bought, sold, or bulldozed away.
–Katherine Davis is a journalist and Middle East analyst based in Washington, D.C. She writes about international law, human rights, and the politics of displacement.