The Trump administration wants to pivot U.S. military assets away from the Middle East to Asia. That’s good. But, without a major course correction on Gaza (which appears nowhere in sight), that pivot won’t happen. Even if a new ceasefire emerges, Trump has gone all in on an Israeli occupation of Gaza that experts argue, and history shows, will bog down Israel and, in turn, bog down the United States in the Middle East given the U.S. role as Israel’s main security guarantor.
Given this reality, the big question now is how does the United States limit the damage to its own security interests in Gaza going forward? The answer: avoid getting sucked directly into the conflict.
That starts by turning aside two bad proposals — U.S. roles as caretaker in Gaza and major benefactor for Israel’s new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – currently being debated inside the Trump administration. Both roles are a slippery slope for the United States to land in yet another forever war in the Middle East, further detracting from bigger U.S. challenges elsewhere. Trump needs to reject these ideas to keep America out of war in Gaza.
The caretaker plan for Gaza requires inserting U.S. contractors to demilitarise and stabilise Gaza, according to a top U.S. official, until a permanent government is set-up. The U.S. role is being compared to the Coalitional Provisional Authority in Iraq (CPA) that the U.S. set-up after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Trump views the caretaker plan as a way to make Gaza a “freedom zone”.
The plan won’t lead to freedom though and is generally a terrible idea for U.S. national security. Experts agree, Hamas won’t be defeated, even with the kind of full occupation of Gaza that Israel is now committed to. For every Hamas member killed since the group’s October 7 attack on Israel, another fighter has joined the Hamas ranks, indicating force alone won’t get the job done. Israel’s past attempt at occupying Gaza failed, leading to more violence not less, which forced Israel to abandon the occupation in 2005. Today, Hamas still has an estimated 20,000 fighters in Gaza.
That means by taking up the role to demilitarise and stabilise Gaza, U.S. contractors will be dropped in the middle of an active warzone. U.S. contractors were in Gaza managing checkpoints during the recent ceasefire, so Hamas didn’t target them. That won’t be the case in the caretaker role, however. Instead of being restrained, Hamas will view the contractors as no different from Israeli occupying forces — i.e., as juicy targets for attacks. The chaos of recent days around food distribution sites that caused some U.S. contractors to flee for their own safety will become the norm.
When attacks on contractors come, U.S. ground forces will almost certainly go in to protect them and American credibility. At that point, the United States will be directly fighting Israel’s war. Comparison of the caretaker role in Gaza to the CPA in Iraq would effectively turn prophetic. Experts view the CPA as the catalyst to an insurgency that bogged the U.S. down fighting for a decade in Iraq, at the cost of $3 trillion and thousands of lives lost. Washington will again land in the kind of nation-building war that Trump said was a thing of the past just last month.
The benefactor role for the GHF carries all the same dangers for U.S. security. Meant to undercut the legitimacy of Hamas, the GHF is a recently initiated Israeli and U.S.-backed program to distribute food aid in Gaza. The Trump administration is now considering a massive $500 million investment to become the main benefactor in GHF so as to beef up its legitimacy and get more Arab states on-board with Israel’s aid and occupation plans.
Critics at the State Department argue that the benefactor plan will mean the U.S. owns aid distribution in Israel in ways that will eventually drag the U.S. into the Gaza war. They’re right.
By betting the farm on the GHF, the U.S. would be putting its credibility on the line (or many will think that’s the case, including Trump). That will create, in turn, strong incentives for the United States to make it work if it faces problems. And it will face problems.
Let’s dump the benefactor and caretaker ideas for Gaza — the sooner the better
The roll out of GHF has been rough. Chaos and violence at distribution centres has led to the deaths of more than two dozen Gazans. If starvation continues or Hamas attacks distribution centres (as some report is happening), pressure on the U.S. as benefactor to make things right will grow and U.S. boots could hit the ground in Gaza. Like Somalia in the early 1990s, the Gaza food-aid program will then morph into a nation-building mission for the United States with all the potential for a repeat of the tragic Black Hawk down incident.
Nobody wants that, Trump included.
Trump is reportedly “troubled” by the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and desperately wants peace in Gaza. Fair enough, but fixing Gaza shouldn’t come at the cost of U.S. security interests, so let’s dump the benefactor and caretaker ideas for Gaza — the sooner the better.
