Behind Trump's crazy idea for taking Gaza
Are he and evangelicals in his administration establishing a Christian outpost in the Middle East?
By Mike Sorrell
Evangelical Christians were a major voting bloc that put Donald Trump back in the White House. Some believe Trump is God’s emissary on Earth. He likes that idea, of course, and has said he ranks “second to Jesus.”
Trump, meanwhile, surrounds himself with Christian nationalists, many of whom believe the Bible is paramount to the Constitution and democracy is not what the country needs. Some evangelicals prefer a strong leader with authoritarian leanings. Almost all Republicans in the Senate and House apparently think so, too.
Evangelicals also backed Trump during his first term as president. In May 2018, he moved the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, considered a holy city by Jews, Muslims and Christians. The relocation of the U.S. embassy caused an outcry by Muslims. Later, he explained why he relocated the embassy: “That’s for the evangelicals.”
Was that action taken five years ago the first step in Trump’s plan to establish a larger Christian presence in the Middle East?
Consider that a speculative question that falls short of a conspiracy theory.
I am far from knowledgeable about the world’s religions, and I do not pretend to know what is in Donald Trump’s head, but there’s something fishy — as well as insane and utterly cruel — about Trump-the-developer’s dream to evict the 2.1 million Palestinians from Gaza and create a gleaming international tourist destination beside the Mediterranean Sea.
Maybe Trump just wants people to think his zeal as a real estate developer is what drives his desire to “take over” Gaza and “own it.”
He talks of condos in glass towers that sparkle in the sun along the Mediterranean, of economic development generated by tourism. Urban renewal, in other words. Gentrification that, as Trump says, will begin with “demolition.”
First, move the 2.1 million Palestinians permanently off their land along the Gaza Strip, which is 25 miles long and about a half-dozen miles wide. Put them in Jordan or Egypt or, for all Trump cares, dispatch them to the moon on a fleet of Elon Musk’s experimental rockets. Israel, having seized Gaza, would hand it over to developers. That is the Trump plan.
“I would own this. Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land. No big money spent,” Trump said in a Fox News interview aired before the Super Bowl.
That is crazy talk to most people. To political leaders around the world – particularly those in the Middle East, it is shocking.
The leaders of Jordan and Egypt say that under no circumstances will Palestinians get relocated into their countries. Saudi Arabia rejects Trump’s plan. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used words I borrowed up above – the Trump plan is “utterly cruel” because of how it proposes to treat Palestinians.
Middle East experts say Trump’s plan could destabilize the region and lead to war.
William Brennan, former CIA director, said Friday night on MSNBC that Trump’s plan is “dangerous, dangerous, dangerous.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who at first appeared taken aback by Trump’s plan for Gaza, now says he likes it, calling it “the first good idea I’ve heard.”
Maybe Netanyahu wants U.S. territory as a neighbor.
Netanyahu’s embrace of Trump’s plan certainly will not cause Muslims to relax.
Trump sometimes says provocative things just to stir things up and generate something that will grab the day’s headlines.
When Trump announced his Gaza dream, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth both said the president is “thinking outside the box.” Something oozing from the mind of a self-described “creative genius,” in other words.
However, Trump was not the first person to talk about Gaza as real estate. In February 2024, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, remarked on the “very valuable” potential of Gaza’s “waterfront property. I’m sitting here in Miami Beach right now. And I’m looking at the situation and I’m thinking: What would I do if I was there?”
“It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up,” Kushner said, according to The Guardian.
Unfortunate, yes. On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists crossed the Gaza border into Israel, killed about 1,400 Israelis and took prisoners, some 70 of whom remained in captivity as of today (Saturday). Israel responded with attacks on Gaza, where the death toll ranges from 46,000 to 61,700, and the landscape is mainly reduced to rubble.
Other than saying he wants Palestinians evicted from Gaza, Trump has little or nothing to say about the people who have suffered and who want to rebuild. Palestinians consider Gaza their home, and yet Trump does not address the moral implications of seizing the land or the possible violations of international law.
According to the Associated Press, the Geneva Conventions forbid “mass forcible transfers” from occupied lands, “regardless of their motive.” The International Criminal Court says “forcible transfer” can be a war crime or, in some circumstances, a crime against humanity; the United States and Israel are not members of the Court.
In Trump’s world, of course, laws are for sissies.
Meanwhile, real estate development could be secondary to what Trump has in mind.
Trump surrounds himself with extreme-right Christians who probably would love to see Trump make Gaza part of his manifest destiny program and establish a stronger physical presence for Christianity in the Middle East. Those Christians include Mike Huckabee and Pete Hegseth. Below are brief biographies of the two of them.
Mike Huckabee
He is a former Arkansas governor, Baptist minister and Christian nationalist who has appeared as a commentator on Fox News for years.
Huckabee is Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, although he is not yet confirmed. He has said Trump will bring change of “biblical proportions” to the Middle East.
“Let’s hope that people will listen to President Trump. He’s not thinking out of the box. He throws out the box and says let’s start with a blank slate,” The Times of Israel reported.
Since the 1980s, Huckabee has guided religious pilgrimages to the Middle East, but avoids places where Palestinians live, according to Brittanica.
Yair Rosenberg, reporting for The Atlantic, has written, “In his decades-long religious love affair with the land of Israel and general disinterest in its Palestinian inhabitants, Huckabee resembles many members of Israel’s hard-right government.”
Huckabee has said there is no such thing as a Palestinian. He does not favor a two-state solution, which would let the Palestinians live side-by-side with Israel.
He is a Christian Zionist as well as a Christian Nationalist. He believes the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people.
Diane Winston, a journalism professor at the University of Southern California who specializes in religion, recently wrote an article in The Forward, an independent newspaper that focuses on news of interest to Jews. “Jewish Zionists have had a long, if somewhat problematic, relationship with Christian Zionists, who see the Israeli state as the first step toward the Second Coming” of Jesus, Winston wrote.
“They’ve been able to accept an alliance because the evangelical contingent has mostly stayed in the pulpits and pews. With Pete Hegseth bringing these beliefs to the Pentagon, and Huckabee advancing his own version of them, they will have a very different proximity to power.”
The Second Coming is the Christian belief that Jesus Christ will return to Earth after his ascension to Heaven, which is said to have occurred about two thousand years ago. Some Christians believe Jesus will return just east of Jerusalem, and the arrival could occur in 2025 or 2026, or as late as 2050.
If Huckabee is confirmed as Israel’s ambassador, he will live in Jerusalem, 69 miles from Gaza.
“For Jews,” Winston wrote, “that proximity must necessarily be uneasy. In a Christian nation, members of other faiths are second-class citizens — even when those in power appear to be advancing their interests. With Hegseth’s particularly aggressive theology so close to the presidency, there’s no telling what other, and more unwelcome, changes could come next.”
Winston does not say what sort other “more unwelcome” things might happen.
Is one possibility a Middle East war triggered by a U.S.-Christian attempt to put roots down in the Middle East? Or a clash of religions between Christians and Jews?
Pete Hegseth
Pete Hegseth spent 19 years in the National Guard. He is a combat veteran of Iraq and was a Fox News weekend anchor when Trump nominated him for secretary of defense.
At a hearing before the Senate confirmed him Hegseth, said, “I am a Christian and I robustly support the state of Israel and its existential defense and the way America comes alongside them as their great ally.”
Winston wrote in The Forward that Hegseth began deepening his Christian faith in 2018. In 2023, he and his wife decided that their seven children need “a Classical Christian education, which Winston wrote is “important to many white, right-wing evangelicals, which is why they steer clear of public schools.”
The family moved from New Jersey to a community outside Nashville, where they attend Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, a church with a small congregation that embraces teachings that “dovetail with Christian Reconstructionism.
That is “a little-known evangelical movement with big dreams of establishing a theocratic Christian government,” according to Winston. An “extreme version” of Christian nationalism is part of Pilgrim Hill’s teachings.
Hegseth has called for building a third Temple on Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a spiritual site for Jews, Christians and Muslims. Two previous temples were destroyed long ago. Each of those religions has different beliefs about the Temple, so that issue alone could spark trouble.
James Lasher, a reporter for Charisma News, recently wrote that, from the Christian perspective, the building of The Temple in Jerusalem “is becoming a reality backed by influential figures and historical momentum.” Hegseth’s “recent appointment to Secretary of Defense places him in a position of unprecedented influence, and his unwavering support for the Temple’s reestablishment suggests that the conversation is far from over.".
Winston wrote in the Forward, “For Jews, Hegseth’s beliefs raise a whole host of separate issues, including the Department of Defense’s stance toward Israel.”
Rebuilding the Temple is “a move that evangelicals see as a prelude to the Second Coming, and which many analysts have warned could spark a massive war.”
Hegseth, when not dropping down and doing dozens of pushups wherever he goes, tends to say things in a shoot-from-the-hip manner that better serves Fox News anchors than it does cabinet officers who traditionally try to maintain some semblance of statesmanship.
A few days ago, on his first trip overseas, Hegseth left Ukraine to hang out to dry. After criticism back home, he reversed himself. And then he reversed himself again.
Joining Hegseth on the trip was Jack Posobiec, an online influencer considered a white supremacist. That is not indicative of good judgment, to say the least.
Meanwhile, Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, Hegseth’s church, is aligned with the Commission of Reformed Evangelical Churches, according to Winston. That organization was founded in 1998 by Douglas Wilson, who has “propounded a number of extreme views.” Wilson is a Moscow, Idaho pastor.
Winston wrote that just recently the Guardian discovered a series of Pilgrim Hill 2024 podcasts in which “Hegseth affirmed his adherence to Wilson’s teachings.”
Among things Hegseth said was this: “We want our nation to be a Christian nation because we want all nations to be Christian nations.”
This helps put the evangelical influence in perspective . Thank you.