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In his first month back in office, President Donald Trump's prescription for a Middle East gripped by crisis has included a desire for sweeping deals, a departure from long-standing U.S. positions, and a dose of his trademark unpredictability.
That has included suggestions by the president and his top aides that Palestinians be permanently moved out of the Gaza Strip, that his administration could support Israeli annexation of the occupied West Bank, and that the people who call those territories their home have no right to self-determination.
Trump's formula faces a major test this weekend, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio holds talks with regional leaders and probes whether their positions are compatible with Trump's twin goals for the Middle East: ending the Gaza conflict and striking a peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
David Schenker, who served as the top State Department official for the Middle East from 2019 to 2021, said that Trump in his first term demonstrated an unsentimental approach to dealmaking in the region and a willingness to overturn established U.S. policy. While those tactics did not achieve Middle East peace treaties, they did yield deals normalizing Israeli ties with Bahrain, Sudan, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates.
Any opportunities that exist this time will become more clear in the weeks ahead, as Trump tests the tolerance of Arab allies for yielding to his wishes on the fate of Palestinians and Israel approaches a March 1 deadline to enter a second, more difficult phase of its ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
"He is highly ambitious in terms of his desire to end wars and get to a modus vivendi, if not peace, in the region," Schenker said of Trump, using a Latin term for coexistence between warring parties. "At the same time, you're seeing his penchant for disruption and transactionalism at play."
As they have with the war in Ukraine, Trump's opening moves in the Middle East have injected further volatility in an already combustible situation that includes a tenuous ceasefire in Gaza, mounting violence in the West Bank and instability in Lebanon and Syria.
The region has been consumed by cascading crises since Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, which prompted the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to launch punishing wars against the Iranian-backed militant group in the Gaza Strip and its counterpart Hezbollah in Lebanon. It also brought unprecedented direct strikes between Israel and Iran.
Trump's proclivity for disruption was especially clear with his proposal to clear Palestinians out of Gaza - without a right to return, as he told Fox News - and potentially use American aid to convince allies Egypt and Jordan to take in displaced Gazans, a concept that has been met with universal opposition from the Arab world. Jordan's King Abdullah II has offered to fly 2,000 sick children out of Gaza for treatment abroad, a plan Trump praised as a "beautiful gesture."
The plan follows other norm-busting actions during Trump's first term in office, including decisions to relocate the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, both breaks with long-standing U.S. positions under both Republican and Democratic presidents.
While the peace plan Trump unveiled in 2020 included legalization of existing Israeli settlements in the West Bank and a loss of a third of Palestinian territory there, it also offered Palestinians a path toward statehood. Ultimately, Trump prioritized the deals to normalize Israel's ties with the four Arab states over attempts to advance Israeli control of the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967.
Returning to the White House, Trump has tapped officials whose views echo those of Israel's far-right and the most conservative members of Netanyahu's governing coalition, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
His nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Elise Stefanik, said during her confirmation hearing that Israel has a "biblical right" to the entire West Bank, and declined to affirm Palestinians' right of self determination. His pick for U.S. ambassador to Israel, evangelical former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, has said the administration could back West Bank annexation. His defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has voiced support for Jewish control of the Temple Mount, a Muslim holy site where the al-Aqsa Mosque now stands.
While Trump lifted Biden-era sanctions on West Bank settlers on his first day in office, he has stopped short of affirming annexation, saying during Netanyahu's visit to the White House earlier this month that he would have more to say on the subject soon.
The West Bank is "going to work out very well," he added during a later visit by the Jordanian king.
Such actions reflect what Schenker said has been a gradual alignment of the Republican Party with the Israeli right, and the increasing partisan position that Israel occupies in American politics. That trend accelerated during the Gaza war, when Democratic lawmakers criticized Israel's treatment of civilians and former president Joe Biden's provision of weapons to the Israel Defense Forces for that fight.
Trump's recent moves have been cheered by members of Israel's far-right such as Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, a former member of Netanyahu's government. Across Israeli society, backing for a two-state solution has diminished over time, as it has among Palestinians.
Palestinians rejected Trump's Gaza proposal, which Varsen Aghabekian, the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority's minister of state for foreign affairs and expatriates called "outrageous."
"Just hearing this coming out from the United States - we're not talking about any country, the United States - and the United States calling for displacement and looking at us as objects that can be moved from one place to the other, negating the fact that we Palestinians are very resilient," she said in an interview. "By now the whole world should understand that we will not move."
Rubio, in a radio interview on Thursday, said the Trump administration would wait to see the plan for Gaza's future that Arab nations now are scrambling to draft as an alternative to Trump's bombshell proposal to take U.S. ownership of and develop the battered strip. He also credited the president for keeping the Gaza ceasefire intact by threatening that "all hell is going to break out" if Hamas backed away from a scheduled hostage release.
"A lot of these foreign leaders are used to American diplomacy where you sort of talk around issues and use flowery language, and you say, well, this is what we might do, this is what we could do. Trump doesn't work that way," Rubio said. "He kind of says, this is what I'm going to do, and then he actually does it. And then there's a shock factor at this point, but … he's the only person in the world that can serve as a catalyst for some structure in the Middle East that prevents just endless cycles of war."
A State Department spokesperson said that Rubio would emphasize "out of the box thinking" in his inaugural visit to the region, where he is expected to meet with Netanyahu in Jerusalem and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh.
"The era of stale ideas is over," the spokesperson said. "The reality is President Trump's proposal right now is the only option on the table."
But experts caution that Trump's Gaza proposal and his backing for other steps popular with Israel's far-right could backfire if they make it harder for Saudi Arabia, where popular support for the Palestinian cause has been galvanized by Israel's war in Gaza, to embrace a deal with Israel.
While U.S. officials have long said the Gulf kingdom would require some sort of pathway to peace as a prerequisite for any deal normalizing ties with Israel, potentially a vague or elusive one, Trump's suggestion of evicting Palestinians appears to have prompted Saudi leaders to double down on "non-negotiable" demand for a two-state solution.
Ofer Shelah, a former Knesset member who is a researcher at Tel Aviv's Institute for National Security Studies, said Netanyahu was unlikely to back any actions that would lead to the withdrawal of coalition members from and the collapse of his government.
"The current Israeli government will not take any steps that would mean progress on the Palestinian issue," Shelah said.
Major General Israel Ziv, who previously served as head of the Israeli military's Operations Directorate, said Trump's Gaza proposal and other actions that appealed to Israel's far-right could have the effect of discouraging Israeli leaders from making concessions required to advance more realistic options for peace.
"Maybe Trump means well, but in practice moves like this can only hurt the deal to bring the hostages home," Ziv said of the hostages Hamas has held since its attack on Israel. "Right now, it's like an elephant in a china shop. It's not helping, and we're watching everything fall apart."
In the near term, Trump's approach will be tested by the timing of the Gaza ceasefire framework - established with unusual collaboration between the Biden and Trump administration officials - which is scheduled to move into a second, potentially more tricky phase on March 1.
While Israel and Hamas were supposed to have begun high-level talks for that second phase, which would include the release of additional hostages, the withdrawal of Israel Defense Forces from Gaza and a lasting ceasefire, they have not yet started, a sign of the difficulties the two sides will face in reaching agreement.
Ilan Goldenberg, who served as Middle East adviser to former vice president Kamala Harris, said it was unlikely the two sides would agree on post-conflict governance, a core aspect of the hoped-for second phase, but might be able to reach a pared back deal that could include the release of additional hostages in exchange for increased humanitarian aid, a renewal of outside funds, and the withdrawal of most or all IDF troops from the battered enclave.
That would likely set the stage for a return to the reality before the Oct. 7 attacks, with Hamas in de facto control of an isolated Gaza, periodic militant rocket fire on Israel and IDF incursions in response - little change following a period of spectacular violence and loss of life.
"They'll basically go back to the prewar situation, but with the whole strip totaled," he said.