Dodging question on two-state solution, White House says Trump’s priority is ending Gaza war

Asked whether US President Donald Trump’s administration no longer supports a two-state solution, as his ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee indicated yesterday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dodges the question, while asserting that Trump’s top priority is to end the war in Gaza and free the remaining hostages.

Trump “views the situation in Israel and Gaza as deeply unfortunate and needing to end,” Leavitt says during a press briefing.

“The president is realistic about the current state of affairs in this region. That’s why the president has said that the number one focus and priority of this administration is to release all of the hostages from Gaza and to end this conflict as soon as possible,” Leavitt adds.

The comments appear to echo what Trump told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a call earlier this week when he reportedly urged the Israeli premier to not only agree to a US proposal for a temporary truce but also a permanent ceasefire. Netanyahu has resisted ending the war, asserting that doing so would leave Hamas in power.

But critics argue that in addition to risking the lives of the remaining hostages, Israel’s current military operations lack a clear end-game or metric for defeating Hamas, given that the terror group is now largely operating as a decentralized guerrilla insurgency, after the IDF succeeded in dismantling Hamas’s critical military infrastructure months ago, along with eliminating the vast majority of its leadership.

Accordingly, Netanyahu is facing increasing accusations that he is prolonging the war in order to keep his coalition intact, as his far-right partners who envision Israel permanently occupying the Strip, establishing settlements there and encouraging the mass-migration of its Palestinians threaten to collapse the government if he agrees to a permanent ceasefire and withdrawal from Gaza.

“As for what happens next, clearly Gaza is an uninhabitable place. It needs to be rebuilt with the help of our Arab partners, and the president wants to see that happen as well,” Leavitt says, notably leaving out Trump’s February call for the US to take over Gaza and clear the area of its residents.

Arab countries have indeed offered to take part in the post-war rehabilitation of Gaza, but they have conditioned their assistance on being able to work in tandem with the Palestinian Authority, which Netanyahu has blocked to date.