Among President Trump’s provocative ideas that have shocked the world since he returned to the White House, the recent proposal to “clean” the Gaza Strip of the locals and turn it into a flourishing Mediterranean Riviera looks like the most outrageous. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it an example of “outside of the box” thinking. It looks ill-grounded and premature from many points of view.

Neither Egypt nor Jordan seem ready to welcome 2 million people, many of whom their governments reasonably count as terrorists and jihadis. Also, Israel doesn’t have full control over the territory it should “hand over” to the U.S. Lastly, the U.S. isn’t ready to send thousands of American troops to pacify this uneasy exclave. With only Israel expressing enthusiasm towards the plan, it is doomed to fail.

Nevertheless, I would argue that both the long history of conflicts in the area and the ongoing war — started with the cruel Oct. 7 attack from the Gaza Strip on Israel — suggest that in principle Trump is right. The........

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