The Scene
Dr. Bishara Bahbah chaired Arab Americans for Trump during last year’s election. As the Biden administration supplied aid to Israel without conditions, and as the war in Gaza continued, Bahbah’s group urged voters to back the GOP nominee, send a message, and get a new deal.
Trump won, helped broker a ceasefire, and seemed to be delivering on Bahbah’s hopes. And then, last week, standing next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said that the United States would take over Gaza and move out its inhabitants before it was rebuilt into something else. Almost immediately, Bahbah renamed his group — it’s now Arab Americans for Peace — and warned that Trump was making a mistake that would affect millions of lives while ending his political alliance with a decisive voter bloc.
Bahbah talked about the aftermath with Semafor, and this is an edited transcript of the conversations.
The View From Dr. Bishara Bahbah
David Weigel: What’s happened since Trump stood next to Netanyahu and made that announcement?
Dr. Bishara Bahbah: It seems like we’ve got two messages coming out of Washington. One is what’s being floated by the president. The other is a series of clarifications and statements made by members of his administration, particularly Steve Witkoff and the secretary of state. So, one day the president floats an idea about making Gaza part of the United States. Another day, he’s calling for the removal of people from Gaza so that it can be rebuilt and they can go back. The message from the rest of the administration is that we’re awaiting the Arab response after the meeting of the heads of Arab states in Cairo later this month.
When Trump proposed this idea, Netanyahu said that “after the jaws drop, people scratch their heads. And they say, you know, he’s right.” The idea is that by being so shocking, Trump can move people into a new negotiating position. Is that wrong?
I describe it not as out-of-the-box thinking. I describe it as out-of-the- stratosphere thinking. The idea of displacing Palestinians in Gaza is just unacceptable, outrageous. You cannot dispossess a people from their land. The president is removing illegal immigrants from the United States, and now he’s proposing to move inhabitants of a land, who own the land, from their own country? Yes, the ideas of the president are out of the box, but they’re totally unacceptable.
Can you break down why exactly this is unacceptable?
Gaza is for the Palestinians. It’s for nobody else. And for somebody to even insinuate that Gazans have to be relocated to make it a beautiful piece of territory for someone else is just ludicrous.
Let me tell you the story of my father. In 1948, my parents fled to Jordan, lived in a refugee camp for two years, and then in 1950 returned to East Jerusalem, which was controlled by Jordan. In 1967, when the war started, neighbors came to us and said to my father: “We are going to go and flee to Jordan because Israeli troops are coming.” My father said to them: “Listen, I’ve left my homeland once. Right now, if I am to die, I would rather die on my land and in my homeland, rather than in another country.” Asking people to leave their homeland is just unthinkable.
I understand that Gaza needs to be rebuilt. But when the President floated those ideas, he was sitting next to the man that demolished and utterly destroyed Gaza. He should have looked at Netanyahu and said: “Why the hell did you do that to Gaza? If you wanted to take your revenge with regard to October 7, maybe, okay, you kill 1,000 people in return, you kill 5,000 people in return, you kill 10,000 people in return. You don’t demolish the entire Gaza Strip, kill 47,000 people, and injure 120,000 people.” That’s a criminal of war that we’re talking about in Netanyahu. He’s handing him more or less a Palestinian-free Gaza so he can enjoy the tranquility of a southern border. Netanyahu can enjoy the tranquility of a southern border, and an eastern border with the West Bank, by recognizing a Palestinian state through the two state solution.
Another big Trump play has been urging Egypt and Jordan to take refugees from Gaza. Is it possible that what he’s doing makes that possible?
They will not. It’s a matter of survival for both countries. Imagine if Palestinians went to the Sinai, for example, and some of them decided to launch missiles against Israel. They’d have war between Israel and Egypt. Imagine if the same happens with Gazans being displaced to Jordan, and they decide to do the same. There’d be a war between Jordan and Israel. The idea of displacing those people is not only a security issue for those countries, it stands against the principle of allowing Palestinians to have self determination and a state of their own. These two countries’ regimes would not survive if they agree to President Trump’s proposals.
If Harris had won the election, what would be happening differently right now? Would you be in a better position?
We were afraid, as a community, that if we supported the Harris-Biden ticket, the war in Gaza would have continued. That was our primary and immediate concern. When we kept telling President Biden to stop arming Israel so that it would stop attacking Gaza, we were ignored. Then we said to the president: “Okay, you ignore us, and you don’t listen to us? We’re going to punish you. We’re going to vote against you.”
So, President Trump gave us two promises. One, he said he would end the wars. Two, he said he would provide a lasting peace in the Middle East that is satisfactory to all parties. Those two promises were very attractive. Yes, the President did not talk about a two-state solution, but we were told they did not want to talk about the two-state solution at that point, because they did not want to reward Hamas. The president fulfilled his promise with regard to ending the war in Gaza by forcing Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire. We are looking for the President to fulfill his second promise.
If the administration wanted to get to a two-state solution, how should it change course now?
Steve Witkoff is in the region, and he’s pushing for the second and third phases of the ceasefire. Now, once the second and third third phases of the ceasefire are completed, that would mean the return of Israeli hostages, the return of thousands of Palestinian prisoners, and the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza. So I think what the President should be doing right now is he should facilitate the arrival of Palestinian security forces from the West Bank to Gaza to take over control of Gaza security. Then, negotiations can begin on a permanent solution to the conflict.
There’s not going to be any normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel unless there is a Palestinian state established. The Saudi position has actually hardened in that regard over the past several months, and they are now adamant about the establishment of a Palestinian state. The Emiratis came out with a statement that they would not provide any funds for the rebuilding of Gaza or the West Bank, unless there is a Palestinian state. I think that President Trump’s ideas that he has been floating around have generated a backlash among Arab countries and toughened their position vis a vis any normalization with Israel.
So if a Democrat is running for president in a few years, and they want to win you over, what do they need to do and say? Do they break from Biden, too?
When Kamala Harris was asked, what would she do differently than what President Biden was doing? She thought about it and she said nothing. That answer cost her the presidency. They should distance themselves from the policies of the Biden administration. If somebody on the Democratic side is courageous enough to say, “Listen, Biden did the wrong thing, Harris did the wrong thing,” then we would look at what they have to say very seriously.
We also look forward to meeting with the president.