Decision Workshops
Trump's 2025 Gaza Proposal
In February 2025 president Trump made a proposal for peace in Gaza. What are the implications of this proposal, and is it likely to work? Let's examine the situation in the Middle East in 2025 using Confrontation Analysis.
Developments prior to the proposal
Prior to the attacks on October 7th 2023 the position was as above. The Palestinians wanted Israel to give all its land back "From the river to the sea". It had a Persuasion Dilemma as Israel did not agree to this. The Palestinians had therefore been attacking Israel, but the attacks had not deterred Israel. Note that Israel has a dash rather than a cross for Israel's position on the Palestinians attacking Israel as although it would have preferred the Palestinians not to attack, Israel didn't care about it enough about the attacks to want to change the political situation.
The Palestinians had a problem: The Israelis did not.
Let's see what happened on the 7th October 2023:
The Palestinians were able to attack Israel so effectively that it needed to do something. The dash turned in a cross for Israel's position. Israel had a persuasion dilemma and needed to do something about it. What it did was invade Gaza in an attempt to make the Palestinians unable to attack Israel effectively. The diagram below shows this. We put the small cross in the 2nd column, as Israel doubts the Palestinians are able to attack Israel effectively, and so Israel does not have the dilemma anymore. However the Palestinians have a Threat Dilemma as well as their Persuasion dilemma.
Trump's proposal
Trump's proposal is that Gaza is evacuated, with the Palestinians going to Egypt and Jordan and that the USA occupies the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians have said they do not want to go. and the Egyptians and Jordanians have said that they do not want the Palestinians. We therefore have to expand the tableau to include two extra players, the USA and, as a single player, Egypt and Jordan.
The diagram above shows the situation at the time of writing (6th Feb 2025). The USA and Israel have a dilemma in that the Palestinians do not want to leave voluntarily, so the tableau will have to change if they want to eliminate their dilemma. The USA's dilemma is written out in full below, it is what you would get from Dilemma Explorer by clicking on the blue bar showing the USA's dilemma: Israel has a very similar dilemma.
Possible Way Forward: A Hard Line Approach
In this scenario the Israelis force the Palestinians out of Gaza. This is a variant of option D above (Change things so that it DOES NOT MATTER if the Palestinians will leave Gaza voluntarily for Egypt and Jordan or not). Even if this was done, it would still need a country willing to take them. Egypt and Jordan are not willing to take the refugees, There would still be a dilemma for Israel and the USA.
Perhaps a solution would be that the Egyptians and Jordanians might be willing to accept them under some circumstances provided they were sent on to Europe.
Even if this were acceptable by the Europeans, the fact remains that the Palestinians still have dilemmas, and will work to eliminate their dilemmas. They will attempt to overcome them by thinking of other things to do. This will not be the end of the story. With Dilemma analysis, there is not a strong stable solution unless all sides have eliminated their dilemmas.
