This puzzling move speaks volumes about his plans for Gaza.

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The Trump administration has announced that it will deny visas for Palestinian Authority officials who want to attend next week’s high session of the U.N. General Assembly. Examined closely, the move marks a clear sign that President Donald Trump endorses the Israeli government’s desire to expel Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank—the entire area that the Jewish state’s far-right nationalists call “Greater Israel.”

The rationales for the ban, cited by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an official edict on Friday, are mainly bogus. The ban’s intent, Rubio wrote, was to hold the Palestinian Authority, the formal leadership for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, “accountable for not complying” with its “commitments” to act like “partners for peace,” notably its failure to “repudiate terrorism—including the Oct. 7 massacre.”

However, the PA has frequently denounced terrorism, especially the Oct. 7 attack carried out by the terrorist militia Hamas, which has no relationship to the PA. In fact, Hamas reviles the PA for advocating a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—whereas Hamas calls for wiping Israel out.

Rubio also demanded that the PA end its campaign of “international lawfare”—his words for the effort to persuade world leaders to recognize Palestinian statehood. This effort to “bypass negotiations” with Israel, which he sees as the only legitimate path to a two-state solution, has “materially contributed” to “the breakdown of the Gaza ceasefire talks” and stiffened Hamas’ refusal to release Israeli hostages.

This charge is misleading at best. Israel has long been evading sincere negotiations for a two-state solution. In fact, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will never allow such a thing as long as he’s in power and has refused to allow diplomatic talks about the subject. Yet Trump and Rubio have not chastised Israel for its resistance, much less barred its officials from entering the U.S.

Even on the war in Gaza, as Hamas has (too slowly) moved toward a gradual ceasefire accord in recent months, Israel has shifted to an “all-or-nothing” stance—proposing to end the war, release the hostages, and disarm Hamas, all at once, or keep fighting—which had no chance of succeeding.

Not that the PA is a thoroughly commendable organization. Only in the last few months has President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the Oct. 7 attack in unequivocal terms. He also continues to subsidize families of Palestinian “martyrs”—including Hamas militiamen—who have been arrested or killed while attacking Israelis (though he may have recently ended this policy).

Still, these practices have been going on for many years. Back in 2012, the U.N. granted the PA “observer” status to attend General Assembly meetings. (Before then, its predecessor, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, was given similar status.)

So what’s really going on? Why is Trump taking this step now? One reason is that the PA’s campaign to win near-universal diplomatic recognition of Palestinian statehood is gaining ground. So far, more than 145 of the world’s nations have passed resolutions of recognition. France, Great Britain, Australia, and Canada were scheduled to declare recognition—the first major U.S. allies to do so—at a summit co-hosted by Saudi Arabia during the upcoming U.N. session.

Rubio—perhaps at Trump’s instigation, certainly with his consent—sees the session as context for his visa ban. It means Abbas won’t be present to receive the handshakes and standing ovations of world leaders. However, his absence won’t stop those leaders from declaring their support for Palestinian statehood. Nor will PA officials be entirely absent from the proceedings. The visa ban does not apply to members of the organization’s U.N. mission, who are already in New York and, by U.N. rules, cannot be banned from meetings, regardless of their political positions. (Abbas argues that the same rules bar the exclusion of all PA officials, including himself, but this is unclear.) So someone will smile and wave at the plaudits.

The move is also puzzling because, from Trump’s point of view, it’s politically unwise. All the motions of diplomatic recognition are, at this point, strictly symbolic. For Palestinians to win real statehood, there need to be clearly defined borders, an established government, and all the other paraphernalia of the modern nation-state (a currency, terms of trade, a diplomatic corps, an army, etc.). Palestine (or whatever name a state of Palestinians might one day be called) has none of this at the moment.

In other words, from Trump’s and Netanyahu’s viewpoint, the shrewdest thing they should have done is to shrug their shoulders. They don’t take the U.N. very seriously to begin with; they could have dismissed this whole Palestinian-statehood business as particularly meaningless, and said, “Hey, if these people want to play games, let them.” The visa ban flashes a neon sign over the session, heightens the news interest, dramatizes the political conflict—and gives the Palestinians and their champions a high-profile forum to state their case.

Trump may well know this, as the story’s top-of-the-hour prominence gives him a chance to state his case—which is: I don’t care. Some critics of the ban have noted that the PA will be necessary to help create a new order for Gaza, and possibly the West Bank, after the war with Hamas is over. To which Trump now seems to be saying: I won’t need a PA, because there won’t be Palestinians.

The Washington Post reported on Monday that Trump and his people are circulating a 38-page prospectus for a revamped Gaza that begins with the “temporary” relocation of 2 million Palestinians and ends with massive development investments. The plan—called the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration, and Transformation Trust (or GREAT)—was, the Post reports, “developed by some of the same Israelis who created and set in motion the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, now distributing food inside the enclave” (which, as reports of famine indicate, has been far from effective).

Earlier this year, Trump talked at great length about an idea to empty Gaza of its people and make it a Middle Eastern Riviera. The notion was derided, not least by his Sunni Arab friends and allies, as foolish, inhumane, and unrealistic. But something like it seems seriously on the table now, especially as the Israeli army prepares for a new offensive to occupy all of Gaza.

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Whether it will really happen is another matter. Israel is having a hard time recruiting reservists to take part in the offensive—a new thing (both the reservists’ reluctance and the scope of the offensive) in Israeli history. None of the countries approached to take in the Palestinian population, including South Sudan, have expressed the slightest interest. Meanwhile, as the Israeli army wreaks more destructive havoc on hospitals, schools, and other civilian structures in Gaza, and as Gaza itself has been declared a land of famine, Israel—even in the eyes of its erstwhile allies—is coming to be seen, more and more, as a pariah state.

Trump seems to think that blocking avenues of diplomacy—and condemning the beneficiaries of diplomacy as threats to national security—will bolster his own standing, strengthen his friends in Israel, and demonstrate the weakness of those who resist the path he prefers. Whatever happens at the U.N. next week, his tactics will only wreak greater devastation and sire deeper worldwide alienation from everything he touches.

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