President Trump is speaking Arabic

Trump’s announcement on his plan to evacuate all Palestinians out of Gaza for the sake of rebuilding the Gaza Strip is a long overdue overhaul of Israeli-Palestinian negotiation tactics.

What exactly is this historic but simple shift in approach to negotiating with the Arab stakeholders involved in the century-long conflict? Speaking in Arabic.

As scholars and commentators of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have observed, with their voices amplified since the October 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks on Israel, the American-led Western approach to settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been in the dialect of International English. International English not in its literal definition, but the language of Western multilateral, humanitarian, diplomatic, State-Department-Ministry-of-Foreign-Affairs-Foreign-Office softness that at best falls deaf on tuned-in Arab ears, or at its most counterproductive, shows the Arab public that this same coalition is just a band of wimpy, weakened Westerners who can be easily warped with right potion of wrath and whining.

Even though portrayed by international media and politicians as preposterous, Trump is proving that there is a method to his madness. President Trump has nothing to lose by approaching the conflict in its mother tongue, with the same scare tactics native to the political culture of the Arab world. Transferring up to two million Gazans is not only scaring the sh** out of diplomatically minded global officials, but also all of the parties with something to lose, or gain, if the war in Gaza is not ceased with favorable security terms for Israel and its closest ally.

Trump is using the same Arab mentality to negotiate with Arab partner states that are critical to assuring Gaza’s reconstruction is unpolluted from Hamas political influence, or even worse, control. These US partner states like Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia must adhere to the terms of a social contract with a public who are avowedly pro-Palestinian—with affectionate attitudes towards Hamas and Palestinian terrorist ideology. Even though leaders of influential Arab countries might be privately set on a favorable outcome for the Jewish state, it in no way expresses the pro-Palestinianism baked into Arab public consciousness since the modern Zionist movement and Arab nationalism coalesced throughout the twentieth century.

Trump cannot sit at the conference table with his Arab partner states without keeping this reality in the forefront of his demands to heads of state.

So how can he successfully circumvent this stumbling block? By starting his negotiations with a high—excessively high—price. It’s an age-old tactic that is more familiar to souvenir merchants in Amman’s central souq than it is to that long-standing coalition of wimpy Westerners. So Trump’s announced intention to relocate Gazans is not only a threat, but a disguised opportunity for Arab heads of state to bend to the Trump administration’s will to make sure that Hamas has zero financial, material, or even tacit political support to paraglide back into action after both phases of the current ceasefire. This week’s announcement, which has shocked and then after-shocked Arab public discourse, gives the necessary wiggle room to Arab leaders in the face of their actively pro-Palestinian public.

When they come to the table with the Trump administration, Arab leaders have no choice but to either contend with an institutional re-building of Gaza that leaves no room for Hamas or radical Palestinian jihadism, or risk Trump proceeding with his plan to relocate the entire population of the Strip. It’s an easy choice to make when faced with the wrath of the souq.

Trump’s tactics may be infuriatingly unpredictable— but his administration and advisors know when to harness this feature of the presidency in order to correct a long unedited error in translation.