In the chess game that is Middle Eastern foreign policy, the past few days have been a doozy. It started with Hamas’s release of three more hostages last Saturday. The three Israeli men were emaciated and not in good shape. According to The Jerusalem Post, the hostages had lost 30% of their body weight. Any viewer could see how frail and skeletal they were.

What Hamas did next was declare, once again, that it would release no more hostages because Israel had violated the ceasefire agreement. Israel had not. The more likely reason was the visceral backlash Hamas was receiving for the treatment of the hostages. The harrowing images of the surviving men evoked images of the Holocaust.

President Donald Trump’s reaction to Hamas’s duplicity was colored by pity for the hostages. He told reporters: “They were in horrible condition. They were emaciated. It looked like many years ago, the Holocaust survivors. I don’t know how much longer we can take that when I watch that. And then we have a deal where we’re supposed to get — they dribble in, and keep dribbling in — but they are in really bad shape. They have been treated brutally, horribly.” The president also added, “As far as I’m concerned, if all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday at 12 o'clock — I think it’s an appropriate time — I would say, cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out.”

Trump later clarified that he would defer to Israel. As of publishing, Hamas has backtracked on its demands and will release more hostages tomorrow. Israel is in a very tough situation; it’s under pressure from the Israeli people to secure the release of the hostages, and it’s under the microscope from the rest of the world.

The other pressing element of this situation is that the Gaza Strip is a war zone. It is virtually unlivable. While this is entirely the fault of the Hamas terrorists who govern the country, the residents are stuck. President Trump presented a plan earlier this month to temporarily rehome the Gazan population in neighboring co-religionist countries while America rebuilds and makes Gaza a beautiful and livable place. Once rebuilt, Gazans are free to come and live there once again. It would be an international hub.

The Gaza rebuilding plan is perhaps also an opportunity on which other Arab leaders in the region can capitalize. Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, for example, has long been looking for a way to provide an income to his people that doesn’t rely on oil. It may also provide another opportunity for Arab nations to band together with Israel and form a strong front against the menace that is Iran.

The likes of The New York Times decry this plan as ethnic cleansing and point out the sad truth: No one wants the radicalized and terror-crazed Gazans. The residents of the Gaza Strip have created a culture based on the idea of killing Israelis and wiping the Jewish state off the face of the world. Their presence is so destabilizing that Jordan, which had taken in many of the Gazans, deported them after they tried to stage an uprising and overthrow the king.

Britannica defines ethnic cleansing as “the attempt to create ethnically homogeneous geographic areas through the deportation or forcible displacement of persons belonging to particular ethnic groups.” While civilians would be temporarily displaced under Trump’s Gaza plan, it shouldn’t be counted as ethnic cleansing when the plan is to bring them back after the rebuild and offer them a beautiful home, jobs, and peace. That would be rather poor ethnic cleansing.

As for persuading Egypt and Jordan to help with rehoming the Palestinian people, there has been little done in that direction. King Abdullah II of Jordan said he would take in 2,000 Gazan children. These children would be those fighting cancer or dangerously ill. Egypt remains firm on the Palestinians staying in the Strip but has offered an alternative to Trump’s Gaza Riviera. Egypt has offered to fund and facilitate the rebuilding effort in Gaza after the U.S. takes control of the territory. Egypt is presenting its plan to other Arab leaders at the end of February. Throughout the Israel/Hamas war, Egypt has kept its border with Gaza firmly closed; it doesn’t want the Palestinians in Egypt, and historically, it has supported a two-state solution.

The way Hamas is acting, it is pretty clear that it doesn’t seem to care if the ceasefire falls apart. According to the New York Post, it seems that Hamas may have gotten reinforcements during the ceasefire and feel like it is in a better place to continue its pogrom against Israel. While this tenuous lull in fighting holds, the chess pieces continue to move. The question is, who will get the checkmate — Israel and its allies or Iran through Hamas?