January 19, 2026
Gaza has been a global moral stage. For decades, it has functioned as a place where the world projects its outrage, its opinions, and its accusations. It has become a permanent platform for moral performance, where Israel is judged, condemned, and lectured, while the deeper questions of responsibility, cause, and consequence are quietly avoided.
Governments issue statements. International bodies pass resolutions. Commentators offer judgments. Protest movements fill the streets. Yet what has been largely absent, decade after decade, is accountability—the willingness to carry cost, to enforce security, and to accept responsibility for outcomes rather than for words.
This is where President Trump’s approach breaks decisively from convention. Rather than treating Gaza as a humanitarian abstraction or a theater for moral signaling, he has framed it as a matter of responsibility, ownership, and consequence. Gaza, in this framework, is no longer a place where influence is granted by opinion alone. It is a place where those who want a voice must be prepared to carry weight.
That distinction matters, because Gaza cannot be stabilized by speeches, cannot be governed by committees, and cannot be reconstructed by those who refuse to own the cost of what they demand.
At the center of this moment is a reality that cannot be separated from any serious discussion of Gaza: any framework that claims to offer a future for Gaza does not remove Israel. It cannot. No actor other than Israel has the capacity to dismantle Hamas, demilitarize Gaza, control its borders, eliminate its tunnel infrastructure, and enforce security over time.
The world has spent decades pretending these realities could be bypassed. Turkey has nourished Hamas politically and ideologically. Qatar has sustained Hamas financially and given it strategic depth. The United Nations has failed to restrain Hamas and has allowed its structures to be exploited in ways that embed terror within civilian life. Arab coalitions speak of peace, but none have shown willingness to absorb the cost, the blood, and the long-term responsibility that genuine demilitarization requires.
Only Israel can do this work. Any plan that speaks of reconstruction, prosperity, or governance while assuming this work can be skipped, outsourced, or replaced is not peace. It is illusion. The framework does not replace Israel; it assumes Israel.
This is why the financial requirement attached to participation in Gaza’s postwar framework is not incidental. By tying influence to real financial responsibility, President Trump is forcing the conversation to move beyond opinion and into ownership. When the discussion turns from condemnation to reconstruction, from accusation to tunnel removal, border control, and long-term security, the voices that speak most loudly about Gaza grow noticeably quiet.
Everyone wants to speak about Gaza.
Everyone wants to run Gaza.
Almost no one wants to pay for Gaza.
For those who watch the fulfillment of end-times prophecy seriously, this movement cannot be separated from the prophetic texts that speak directly about Gaza. I approach these Scriptures with sobriety and continuity, having studied and taught them for decades. Prophecy is not meant to excite or alarm, but to reveal order, sequence, and consequence as history unfolds.
ZEPHANIAH, GAZA, AND THE ORDER OF RESTORATION
Zephaniah does not speak about Gaza in passing. He speaks about it with specificity, sequence, and finality, and that alone is a decisive point for anyone who takes Scripture seriously.
Zephaniah 2:4–7 does not merely announce destruction; it announces a reordering:
For Gaza shall be forsaken,
and Ashkelon shall become a desolation…
the seacoast shall become pastures
for the remnant of the house of Judah;
they shall feed their flocks there…
for the LORD their God will visit them
and restore their fortunes.
The structure of the text is critical. Gaza is not simply destroyed. It is emptied. The authority that governs it is removed. The land is stripped of violent control. Only after that clearing does Zephaniah describe restoration, and the restoration he describes is not coexistence with armed hostility, but possession, rest, and security.
The language of pasture, flocks, and lying down at evening is the language of settled authority. It describes a land no longer weaponized, no longer ruled by fear, no longer dominated by bloodshed.
The rebirth of Israel in 1948 marked a genuine prophetic turning point. The land was restored broadly, agriculture expanded, and the people returned. But Zephaniah’s prophecy does not end with agriculture. It speaks of rest.
That rest has never existed in Gaza.
After 1948, Gaza became a base for fedayeen attacks, fell under Egyptian control, and later was occupied by Israel for security reasons. Then came the decisive moment that clarified the unfinished nature of this trajectory: Israel withdrew in 2005, and what followed was not peace, but escalation.
Zephaniah’s order remains clear. Restoration began, but rest did not arrive, because violent authority remained.
Zephaniah’s prophecy advances step by step as the conditions he described come into alignment. The land has been restored. The people have returned. What remains is the removal of violent authority so that rest can finally follow.
Until that happens, Gaza cannot become what Zephaniah describes.
When it happens, Zephaniah’s words will no longer sound distant.
They will sound complete.
ZECHARIAH AND THE FINAL REMOVAL OF VIOLENT AUTHORITY
Zechariah confirms Zephaniah, not by repeating him, but by completing the picture from another prophetic angle. Where Zephaniah speaks of Gaza being emptied and restored to rest, Zechariah speaks of the removal of the ruling spirit that governed Philistia, including Gaza, and the transfer of authority that follows.
Zechariah 9:5–7 states:
Ashkelon shall see it and fear;
Gaza too shall writhe in anguish…
a mixed people shall dwell in Ashdod,
and I will cut off the pride of Philistia.
I will take away its blood from its mouth,
and its abominations from between its teeth;
it too shall be a remnant for our God…
and Ekron shall be like the Jebusites.
Zechariah does not describe negotiation. He describes removal.
The pride of Philistia is cut off. The violent authority that fed on blood is taken away. The language of blood from its mouth is judgment against a system that lives by violence, consumes bloodshed, and sustains itself through terror.
The Jebusites were not annihilated; they were absorbed under new authority when David took Jerusalem. Their independent rule ended. Their hostile sovereignty ceased.
This is not coexistence with armed hostility.
This is the end of hostile sovereignty.
Zechariah, like Zephaniah, insists on order. The land does not change while violent authority remains intact. The transformation comes after the pride, the bloodshed, and the ruling power are removed.
Together, Zephaniah and Zechariah establish a prophetic sequence that is unmistakable. Gaza is emptied. Violent authority is removed. Pride is cut off. Blood is taken from the mouth. Only then does rest, remnant, and restoration appear.
This is why attempts to rebuild Gaza without dismantling its ruling terror structure have failed every time. They attempt to reverse the prophetic order.
Zechariah does not predict timelines. He defines conditions. When the authority that feeds on blood is removed, the land changes. When it is not, the land remains restless.
This reinforces what Zephaniah already made clear: Gaza’s future exists, but not under the authority that has ruled it. Restoration is promised, but it comes through removal, not accommodation.
THE DAVOS PARADOX
What is remarkable in this moment is that President Trump is choosing to take the Gaza question to Davos. It is a paradox. But what makes it effective is not that everyone understands it, agrees with it, or even likes it. It is that he operates outside the predictable patterns that have governed Gaza for decades. He does not argue on the usual moral stages. He does not negotiate inside exhausted frameworks. He does not speak where words cost nothing. He moves the conversation to places where consequences are unavoidable and lets the discomfort do the work.
On a stage where decisions carry real financial weight and consequence, Gaza—which for decades has lived in the realm of accusation and opinion—is placed in a setting where responsibility can no longer hide behind words.
When President Trump speaks about Gaza becoming prosperous, he is not outlining a security shortcut. He is describing post-conflict reality. Prosperity follows the removal of violence. Peace follows justice. Restoration follows judgment.
No board, no funding mechanism, and no international vision can bypass that order. Hamas must be dismantled first.
If this order is maintained, Israel is not diminished. Israel is given the space and time to complete demilitarization fully. Israel bears the security burden. Others bear the financial responsibility that follows.
Gaza’s future does exist. Scripture affirms it. But that future does not exist with Hamas in power or through proxy management. It exists after judgment, after disarmament, after security, when the coast can become pastureland and the remnant of Judah can lie down without fear, because the Lord has restored fortunes in His order.
That path does not bypass Israel.
It runs through it.
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