On the surface, the plan for the clean-up of Gaza by President Trump and by the Arab nations couldn’t be more different. Trump wants to resettle the Gazans in Arab countries, take over the land and build it into a resort, a “Riviera.” The Arab nations want to keep the Gazans in Gaza, raise billions of dollars and rebuild Gaza for the Gazans. The two plans, for all of their apparent differences, actually share a strong common plank: Hamas is off the hook. Hamas precipitated the whole “demolition” of Gaza, as Trump calls it, and neither Trump nor the Arab nations look to Hamas for the slightest fiscal responsibility for what it caused.
Lest looking to Hamas to clean up Gaza seem ridiculous, look at the damage that Hezbollah precipitated in Lebanon, and guess who the affected Lebanese look to in order to compensate them for the damage to their homes (or their destruction). They look to Hezbollah. They don’t look to the US or the Arab nations, or even mainly to the Lebanese government. Hezbollah made the mess. Hezbollah has to clean it up. That’s the take by the victims in Lebanon.
Not that Hezbollah is stepping up, but only because it can’t. Its foolish attacks on Israel, beginning Oct. 8, 2023, the day after the Hamas attack, and ending with the ceasefire with Israel in November, 2024, left Hezbollah in the lurch for some $3 billion in losses of damaged property. Hezbollah turned immediately to Iran to supply the cash, but Israel wisely bombed the first planes from Iran bringing cash to Lebanon and threatened to bomb any future deliveries, since none of this money would have been used to develop southern Lebanon. At least for now, that put an end for at least most of the cash that Iran wants to deliver to rebuild Hezbollah’s weaponry and fighters.
So much for the reality. But the expectation is different.
After Israel called Hezbollah’s bluff and made mincemeat out of its leadership, its boobytrapped houses, its other weapons depots and its walkie talkies, the residents of Lebanon expected Hezbollah to make them whole. That’s because Hezbollah has billed itself as the de facto government of southern Lebanon and provided all kinds of social services whose only price was hatred of Israel. Naturally, when the group that arrogated to itself the status of a government failed, the “citizens,” i.e., the followers of Hezbollah, looked to the government to make good.
Hezbollah is not making good and therefore faces the real possibility of losing the loyalty of the people. That would be a victory for Lebanese and Israelis alike.
The same dynamic should play out in Gaza because Hamas arrogated to itself a status even higher than Hezbollah’s. Hamas considered itself not the de facto government but the actual government of Gaza. Hamas billed itself as responsible for social services for the Gazans. Of course, Hamas provided few services since it funneled its funds — from both Iran and international sources — to terror tunnels and weaponry. But in name and in practice Hamas was the government. It precipitated Gaza’s ruin. Hamas — not the US under Trump and not the Arab nations — should be held fiscally responsible for rebuilding Gaza. If Hamas can’t meets its obligations to its citizens, then let Gazans’ loyalty to Hamas dissipate, as apparently is starting to happen in Lebanon.
Why should Hezbollah and Hamas be different? Why should Lebanese victims of Hezbollah’s fatal follies see Hezbollah differently from how Gazan victims see Hamas’ fatal follies? The answer is the hand-out mentality that the UN in general and UNRWA in particular has fostered for some 77 years. Gazans have been trained to live on the basis of victimhood for five generations. Gazans have been taught to see somebody else as responsible for their welfare. Gazans have been taught to be hopeless and helpless. So even Hamas itself can’t be held responsible for what Hamas does since Hamas is also is a victim.
That’s the mentality.
That’s the circus here — the circular reasoning that has Hamas going to war and losing, but expecting someone else to pick up the pieces.
Neither Trump nor the Arab nations should play into this. They should not be co-dependents of Hamas.
There is a better idea: Let Hamas come up with the plan and the money. That is, after Hamas throws away its counterproductive and unrealistic hate-Israel ideology, and after Hamas disarms. That is, after Gaza is denazified.
Let Gazans be told: You looked to Hamas. You see how that worked out. Now you’ll have to look to yourselves. Grow up.
On that basis alone, judiciously calculated foreign aid to Gaza, strictly for civilian purposes, would be appropriate.
© IJN 2025
