511. Is Blair Undermining Starmer on Iran? (Question Time)
11 March 2026
368. Trump’s Plan for Gaza
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Podcast
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6 February 2025
What exactly does Trump mean by "taking over" Gaza? How have others reacted to Trump's proposals? How serious is he?
Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in an emergency livestream, recorded on Wednesday 5th February 2025.
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I just listened to this podcast. One of Alistair’s remarks struck me particularly.
There was a discussion going on about whether Trump (1?) was better or worse than Biden. Alistair said at one point roughly: one of the good things that Trump did was the Abraham Accords (AA). The reason given was that they led to the normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia (and other Arab states). I have (for me) good reasons to believe that the AA were one of the factors that motivated the 7/11 attacks.
A couple of months after the 7/11 attacks when it was becoming clear that the IDF was flattening large chunks of Gaza and killing large numbers of Palestinians in its attempts to destroy Hamas I read in my Swiss news paper (the Tages Anzeiger). a report about an investigation they had done into flow of funds to Hamas. They were able to talk to some of the leaders of Hamas in exile. The reporters asked one of the Hamas leaders, given the massive death and destruction taking place in Gaza, which would Hamas could have easily predicted would have been the result of such an attack, what on earth did Hamas think it was going to achieve?
The answer FWIW was that roughly so that they could not be forgotten or ignored. Although the AA were supposed to be about “solving the Palestinian Problem” the Palestinians were never mentioned by name and above all they had not been involved. They had been living in a Ghetto in Gaza for decades and had largely been ignored. In the Hamas view the Arab states who were supposed to be on the side of the Palestinians were, with the AA, normalising relations with Israel and ignoring them. Out of sight out of mind.
According to this leader at least Hamas thought it had to force itself back into the attention of the world or at least the Arab states.
Part of the hope may have been that the people in the Arab States were still broadly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and would make it difficult for their leaders to ignore what was happening in Gaza. And to an extent it worked. Saudi Arabia did start to say that if they were to help they would want a 2-State solution.
Anyway it would be very worthwhile to try to find out more about the role of the AA in motivating the Hamas to launch the 7/1 1 attacks.