Simon Mabon, Professor of International Politics at Lancaster University spoke to CGTN Europe on Trump’s plan to take over Gaza.
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00:00Simon Mawen is a professor of international politics at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom.
00:07I guess that's the million dollar question. Do we take him seriously?
00:12Do we take him at his word that this is a shift, a marked shift and a significant shift in US policy towards Gaza, towards the wider Middle East?
00:20Or is this more performative, rhetorical bombast, the sort that we've seen time and time again, the sort that he's become known for?
00:29And I guess it's difficult to ascertain the answer to that question right now.
00:33We don't know if he's serious about this, whether this is just a diplomatic ploy to put pressure on other people, other states to accept other types of deals,
00:44or if this is a significant ideological shift and he's serious about committing US troops to Gaza,
00:52because that's what it would take to engage in the rebuilding of Gaza, the establishment of something, and I quote, that the Middle East can be proud of.
01:03This is a very strange, very peculiar approach and it's one that would not be palatable for many around the world.
01:12What do you make so far of the reaction that his suggestions have been met with?
01:19So I think there's a pretty clear and a pretty unified response of condemnation and outrage.
01:29Experts around the world expressing concern that this will constitute ethnic cleansing, that this would be in breach of the Geneva Convention.
01:38So there's a lot of condemnation. There's a lot of condemnation from the Arab world, of course.
01:44There have been a lot of Arab states already expressing concern about the direction of travel.
01:50We know that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt had all previously signed a statement to say we do not want this to happen.
02:01So I think there's a lot of outrage, a lot of concern. We know that across Europe as well.
02:09Some on the Israeli right have expressed support for it for obvious reasons.
02:14It matches their ideological approach to Gaza and the quote unquote day after question.
02:20But on the whole, and this is not at all surprising, there has been concern and outrage.
02:26Do you think that his comments have the potential to upset the very fragile balance in negotiations between Israel and Hamas?
02:36It's a really tricky one because there's already a huge amount of pressure and a huge amount of concern on the negotiations
02:46and the ability to reach the next phase of the ceasefire deal.
02:51And what this does is that it adds additional noise, additional pressures, additional concerns to an already fraught, already fragile situation.
03:02And the cynical view is to say that this is perhaps putting pressure on it so that it could potentially collapse even.
03:09I'm not sure that that's necessarily what he's trying to do here.
03:13But there are certainly many on the Israeli right, again, who are anti-ceasefire deal,
03:19who are against the idea of a diplomatic agreement and are very supportive of Trump's plan, if indeed it is a plan.