American history makes it clear that the United States went to great lengths to ensure Southern white nationalists retained their land and prospered. Northern whites may have been less overt in their racism, but they were often just as complicit, preferring not to acknowledge their biases.

In the same way, I see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict not as a problem with a solution, but as a predicament—one with no resolution, only a range of bad outcomes. Trump’s position is inherently contradictory: he cannot champion border security and mass deportations at home while simultaneously pressuring other nations to accept Palestinian refugees. Meanwhile, he is deporting Palestinian protesters, but to where exactly? Israel? That remains an open question.

The most likely outcome is that Gaza will continue as an open-air failed state, with Israel periodically striking back at armed uprisings as they flare up—again and again, for decades to come. It’s a grim reality, but there is no practical solution, only the management of an ongoing and intractable crisis.