MALAYSIANS will recall that when Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba visited Kuala Lumpur last month, he selected Malaysia as partner in Japan’s Palestinian state-building initiative known as Cooperation among East Asian Countries for Palestinian Development (Ceapad).
Japan was not alone in international efforts to restore war-torn Palestine. Since the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in mid-January, France and Germany have made similar proposals at the UN while Turkey and the Arab states also nodded their assent toward reconstruction.
Even Israel’s ambassador to Moscow suggested Russia’s assistance to the cause.
This consensus, however, was derailed when President Donald Trump announced last week, upon meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that the United States would take over Gaza unilaterally and undertake its redevelopment exclusively.
Outrage naturally followed, which was inflamed further by Trump’s suggestion to remove the Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan.
There is a clear sense of realpolitik at play here. At stake is the question of Palestinian sovereignty. Rebuilding Gaza under a joint international effort could restore the Palestinian state as well as the primacy of the 1993 Oslo Accords, which recognised a two-state solution.
Trump, on the other hand, will have wanted to push on with his Abraham Accords, which recognises no Palestinian sovereignty. His target, therefore, is not the reconstruction of Gaza per se but rather the international unity in support of it. Any rebuilding must come under US authority.
This manoeuvre does not appear to be a win for Israel. Netanyahu would have wanted Israeli possession of Gaza as a prize of conquest, not hand it to America.
Leaving open the question of the Palestinian population could be Trump’s way of squaring with Netanyahu, or even a card to be played to the Arab States behind closed doors as an agenda for normalisation with Israel.
In any case, Trump’s proposal was not without potential for private consultation and negotiation.
All that has imploded. The absence of diplomacy and one moment of ill-judgment has meant that the Abraham Accords are as good as gone. As such, Saudi Arabia can no longer consider normalisation.
Perhaps that explains why Trump then declared that the US will "own" Gaza. If that does materialise, it also spells the demise of the Oslo Accords.
Yet in this debacle, the Palestinians are no longer the perennial loser. It is hard to see Israel happy to have its superpower patron from across the Atlantic set up court next door.
And it is hard not to see the US create a new Afghanistan, and march headlong into yet another "forever war". In this Gaza affair, not only has American international relations failed, the US also appears to have miscalculated its choices and advantages.
For one critical factor has changed that will determine the dynamics of the region and the wisdom of an American seizure of Gaza. That is the return of Syria to the world stage.
In the past two months, Syria had rapidly removed its autocratic ruler, Iranian political influence, and Russian military presence, shed its dated socialism, and presented itself as an independent sovereign republic. The significance of this development is the reinvigoration of Syria’s strategic character within the Middle East.
Since ancient times, Syria’s geographical location has been both the region’s strength and weakness. It was the key or knot on which depended on Persia's sway in Greece, Alexander’s conquest of Asia, the Silk Road, Saladin’s unification of the Muslim territories, and indeed the Allies’ defeat of the Ottoman power.
Generally speaking, Syria is where the Arabs, Turks, and Persians – the three historical rivals of the region – meet. As such, Syria has the capacity to stabilise the region – or destabilise it.
In the past century, great powers have thus sought to interfere in the country as a means to alter the regional order and balance of power, notably during the Cold War, and more lately the Arab Spring and Syrian civil war. But not so at present. In contrast to its kindred Palestinian state, the reconstruction of war-torn Syria is a certainty and a regional affair, drawing the Arabs, Turks, and, expectedly, Iranians into close cooperation.
The prospect of regional unity rather than American imperial design, and how that will change Palestine’s fate, are what will determine future events in the Middle East. It is worth noting that the failure of the Palestinian state to get on its feet over the past two decades had coincided with the division and competition between the three regional rivals during the War on Terror (when the US invaded Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan) and after. The context has changed somewhat today.
Trump, if he keeps to his threat, can seize Gaza easily. But the US had also invaded Afghanistan easily in 2001. The real point of interest is whether the US can "own" the territory on its own terms.
Realpolitik is an art of subtlety, not a game of poker.
NG TZE SHIUNG
Petaling Jaya
