As the world justifiably hyperventilates in reaction to Donald Trump’s statement that the United States will “own” a Gaza Strip that has been ethnically cleansed of Palestinians, the remark that may best symbolize the Trump administration’s attitude might have been made by Trump’s lead Middle East negotiator Steve Witkoff.
Speaking to Fox News on Tuesday, Witkoff said, “Peace in the region means a better life for the Palestinians. A better life is not necessarily tied to the physical space that you are in today.”
At the root, this statement demonstrates the complete ignorance of not only the very core of the Palestinian nation, but even the recent evidence of the resilience and determination to hold on to their land the people of Gaza have demonstrated.
Trump himself, speaking at the press conference where he floated his plan for ethnic cleansing said something very similar, stating, “”The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative.”
To say such things is to reveal that you have never bothered to listen to a word Palestinians have said, a condition which, as we’ve seen, is not unique to Trump and his administration, but has been consistently displayed by one American leader after another, in uniquely bipartisan fashion.
Presenting an unfeasible plan
The statement Trump made seemed to emerge from his meeting with Netanyahu, but it was not one of Trump’s spur of the moment thoughts. It was part of his prepared remarks.
It’s the sort of statement Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself would love to make, but he knows he can’t. Too many in Israel would know the idea is unrealistic, and Netanyahu would have to address the global opprobrium that is now being directed at Trump.
The danger is that Trump may take steps to pursue this idea, which will be extremely destructive, even if they are ultimately doomed to failure. Trump did not rule out dispatching U.S. troops to make this happen, but when we consider the difficulties a far more motivated Israeli military continue to face in Gaza, that mission, even in the unlikely event it ever comes to pass, won’t last long.
Short of literally forcing two million Palestinians out of Gaza at gunpoint, there is no path to forcing them out. But if Trump tries, it will inflame the region, will force even staunch allies like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt to stand against the United States politically (while also refusing to take in the Palestinians, an issue Trump continues to be in denial about), and will raise anti-American sentiment in the region to an all-time high, with unpredictable, but surely dire, consequences.
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham—as staunch a supporter of Trump and of the worst of Israel as you will find in the Senate—opposes the idea of American troops on the ground in Gaza. “I fear putting American troops on the ground now in the midst of a raging Middle East will yield the same results as it did in 1983,” Graham said.
Netanyahu, of course, is not bothered by that prospect. He has manufactured a stunning victory here. By getting Trump to make this statement, he appeases his right flank, which now sees an opportunity to empty Gaza of Gazans. Simultaneously, he opens opportunities to present himself as a shrewd tactician to the larger mainstream right wing in Israel by offering “reasonable” alternatives when this idea collapses.
Most of all, the very presence of this idea in the air moots the entire idea of the final phase of the ceasefire agreement, which is essentially the rebuilding of Gaza after a full Israeli withdrawal. Now, even if Trump forces Netanyahu to accept even the second phase of the deal, which would bring all the remaining living Israeli captives home, he has effectively put the United States, rather than Israel, in the role of controlling post-genocide Gaza. With the U.S. blocking UNRWA, and dismantling its own agencies that deal with rebuilding after wars and humanitarian aid, Gaza is to be locked in a limbo where the United States “owns” Gaza, whatever Trump means by that, but has neither the means nor motivation to rebuild it unless it is to be done by the private sector in order to create this obscene idea of a “Riviera of the Middle East.”
The roots of all of this lay in the fact that the United States, under Joe Biden, funded and armed a genocide whose only goals were vengeance, murder, and destruction. That can’t be forgotten in all of this. As bizarre as any Trump display might be, it is all built on the murderous, anti-Palestinian, racist policies of Biden and his predecessors for decades.
Even so, the response to Trump’s idea forced the administration to walk back the President’s remarks. Witkoff told a private meeting of top Republican leaders that Trump “doesn’t want to put any U.S. troops on the ground, and he doesn’t want to spend any U.S. dollars at all” on Gaza. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also walked the comments back, saying Trump was only talking about the rebuilding of Gaza, not permanent U.S. ownership.
Reinforcing pro-Israel myths
In one of the cruelest, most repulsive twists of the Trump argument, he actually argued that his plan for ethnic cleansing was intended to benefit the Palestinians. “This could be so magnificent. But more importantly than that is the people that have been absolutely destroyed that live there now can live in peace in a much better situation because they are living in hell. And those people will now be able to live in peace. We’ll make sure that it’s done world class.”
This statement is cynical and offensive, and it sounds like typical Trump bombast. But it holds a pernicious implication.
Trump, or at least someone on his staff, knows that the vast majority of Palestinians will reject this plan. But his audience—including a great many Americans who may not necessarily be blind supporters of Israel, but simply don’t know much about Palestine—will perceive that Palestinians are being offered a better life, one of potential and one where they don’t have to live under the yoke of Israeli occupation. Thus, when they reject it, that will be taken as “proof” of the anti-Palestinian trope that the struggle is not against occupation, or for freedom, but is motivated by anti-Jewish animus.
More than that, the framing of the idea as one that would be beneficial to the Palestinians means that when it is rejected, the United States and Israel can blame the Palestinians for Gaza to continue to lay in rubble rather than be rebuilt.
Those who want to rebuild Gaza
There is a reality that must be confronted by everyone involved. Gaza has, indeed, sustained massive destruction after 15 months of unrelenting Israeli violence. While many of us where justifiably heartened by the images of tens of thousands of Palestinians streaming northward back to their homes in northern Gaza a few weeks ago, those people had then to confront the reality that not only their homes but entire neighborhoods, towns, even cities were demolished by Israel.
The conditions in Gaza are such that the genocide is, in fact, far from over. The lack of hygienic facilities throughout Gaza, but especially in the north, are a breeding ground for disease. And those diseases are running rampant because Israel destroyed Gaza’s health care system.
Rebuilding Gaza will take many years, and the beginning of that rebuild is not yet in sight. It is not just a matter of reconstructing roads and buildings; the very infrastructure of Gaza, above and below ground, has been devastated, and Trump wasn’t lying about unexploded ordinance all over Gaza. This is an unusually huge rebuilding project, even by the standards of the most devastating wars. Rather than planning for it, the United States and Israel have acted to undermine the few systems we have that could take on the necessary tasks.
USAID—which certainly had serious issues, but did fund important infrastructure projects in many places including Palestine—has been shuttered. UNRWA has been de-funded by the United States, is facing funding cancellations from European and other states, and has been legally barred from, operating by Israel, leaving the sustenance of the Palestinian population in Gaza (as well as in the West Bank and East Jerusalem) in serious jeopardy and removing the infrastructure for the homeless people of Gaza to receive aid while their homeland is rebuilt.
For all their innovation, creativity, and determination, Palestinians simply don’t have the resources to undertake the massive task of clearing the debris and remnants of Israeli genocide from Gaza, let alone to rebuild. With Western aid curtailed, the funding and enabling of rebuilding efforts would then fall to the Arab states, particularly the oil-rich Gulf monarchies.
Those states, as has been noted before, are interested in underwriting the rebuilding of Gaza. But that interest is based on the prospect of gaining influence in Palestine going forward and is conceptually rooted in partnership with the United States, and specifically the Trump syndicate.
Their statements, which take care to be supportive of the Palestinians on the surface, reveal much if we examine them carefully.
In response to Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan, the Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministry reiterated Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s (MBS) statement from September where he said that a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem was a red line for any normalization agreement with Israel. The Ministry’s statement also “reaffirms its unequivocal rejection on the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, whether through Israeli settlement policies, land annexation, or attempts to displace the Palestinian people from their land.”
That second statement was separate from the first, indicating it is not a key condition on which normalization depends, although dispossession and exile are clearly things the Saudis oppose and would be serious obstacles to normalization politically. The Saudi monarchy still must account for strong feelings within its population, as well as the larger Muslim world.
Qatar was even more equivocal in its response. “We know there is a lot of trauma with the Palestinian side when it comes to displacement. However, again, it’s too early to talk about this, because we don’t know how this war will end,” said Majed al-Ansari, the spokesperson for the Qatari Foreign Ministry.
Qatar is clearly playing this very conservatively, The Qataris have extensive business ties to Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner and those ties grew during Trump’s first term in office.
Qatar is keen to be a part of the Gaza reconstruction, especially if Israel is not involved directly, given the frequency with which Israel has targeted Qatar for criticism in recent months. If the U.S. in some way “owns” Gaza, as Trump called for, Qatar, with its connections to many different Palestinian factions, could be in an influential position.
Absence of Palestinians
It is hard to overlook the absence of the Palestinians in all of these machinations. Trump’s statement robbed the Palestinians of their agency and reduced their national aspirations—which cannot be separated from the land of Palestine—to irrelevant vapor.
Bassem Naim, a key figure in Hamas and former Minister of Health in Gaza, called Trump’s plan “…”a crime against humanity, and a reinforcement of the law of the jungle at the international level.”
Naim continued, “The problem of reconstruction is not in the presence of the Palestinian people on their land, but rather in the continuation of the Zionist occupation and the stifling siege of the Gaza Strip for more than 17 years with American support.”
This, of course, points to a way to satisfy Trump’s plan and meet the hopes of the Palestinian people.
Most of the people living in Gaza are refugees who fled from their homes in 1948. If Trump wants the Palestinians out of Gaza, I imagine many would be happy to accept returning to the cities and towns in Israel their families were driven out from.
That, obviously, is not on the table. Indeed, Trump refused to rule out Israeli annexation of the West Bank at his press conference either, saying that he had not decided on a policy yet. But Miriam Adelson was reported to have been in attendance at the Trump-Netanyahu press conference Tuesday, and she was Trump’s second biggest benefactor, behind only Elon Musk, during his campaign. Her support was conditioned on West Bank annexation.
Trump, like Netanyahu, has made it clear that he will make policy without considering the views of the Palestinians. That attitude from both Israel and the United States, has proven disastrous time and again, yet it is being tried again.
In the end, it is very unlikely—though not impossible, as one can never rule out supreme foolishness when it comes to American and especially Trump’s actions—that the United States will send troops to move the Palestinian people out of Gaza. Israel can try, but we have already seen that such aspirations in Gaza might lead to genocide and massacres but still don’t achieve their goals.
To the best of my knowledge, US forces have never acted as UN peacekeepers. Partly, that is because the Pentagon gets stress-related diarrhoea at the prospect of US soldiers having to take orders from goshdarn furriners; partly because the idea of soldiers actually stopping people from blowing things up and killing folks is “computer says no” in their military doctrine.
I would not put it past Netanyahu to persuade Trump to send in US troops to be used for target practice by resistance fighters. (Anyone who puts their life on the line for their country is a loser in Trump’s opinion.) A six-Martini lunch at the White House with SecDef Hegseth would seal the deal.
What could possibly go wrong?
The whole thing is such an obscenity. How can anyone with a straight face continue to claim the US to be a democracy? It is a crime syndicate. Tony Soprano would be proud. As for US troops, the US is there already via mercenaries.
Do Americans in positions of power have no shame, morality or patriotism? An Israeli-born billionaire, Miriam Adelson, is able to bribe a US politician with $100 million to do another state’s bidding. An Apartheid state that has committed genocide. Note that Trump let something slip. He used the figure of 1.8 million Palestinians to be ethnically cleansed. On October 7, the population was between 2.3 and 2.4 million. Israel with full US backing has likely killed a minimum of 500,000 people, and counting. No wonder Trump has sanctioned the ICC.
Charity starts at home…but of course, taking care of ALL THE NEEDS America has doesn’t draw as many headlines.
Gaza roads……take me home……to the place I belong………my village in Palestine.
That’s the only alternative.
“Netanyahu….. has manufactured a stunning victory here”. Not my reading.
If “owning Gaza” means taking responsibility for its future, that means Netanyahu could have been checked. It should come as no surprise that Trump buys into the proposition that effecting change entails being “Israel’s best friend”. Hug tightly to castrate.
Trump seems to be persuaded, as all objective observers, the 2SS must give way to a1SS. He keeps it alive, even at seeming indifference from both parties.
Note indifference to justice played a role in the change in administrations. With such a giant ego, it’s smarter to go for details and clarifications than dismiss and insult. Palestinians did that last go round.
Was the “Great March of Return” about breaking out of Gaza? The old charge of forever “No”, may emerge.
Everyone hears what they want to hear. IMO, it would be a blessing to have US contractors policing the ceasefire Trump imposed on Israel.