Trump and Gaza
More outrageous behavior.
Okay, so I know that this is the latest outrage and will drive the news cycle into tomorrow morning. I am not going to overreact to it, but I think it is worth nothing because it echoes previous things he has said about clearing out Gaza. These are not responsible things for any world leader to be saying, and especially not for the President of the United States.
Do I think that the US is going to send troops to Gaza and and that we will take an “ownership” stake in the place? No. But I will also state that Trump sending troops to the area in some capacity would not surprise me, despite his campaign rhetoric to the contrary.
So, the following is a combination of simple stupidity coupled with irresponsibility and an utter lack of any appreciation for American power and prestige, and certainly no compassion or interest in the real plight of Gazans.
Side note for those who want to make America great again and all, Trump’s interaction with the rest of the world does not comport with any president of my lifetime, or indeed of the last century, at least. So if you think all of this is good, you don’t want some version of “again” you want something that utterly breaks with the past. Just be clear about what you want and are cheering for.
Here are the basics via the NYT: Trump Proposes the U.S. Take Over Gaza.
President Trump declared on Tuesday that he would seek to permanently displace the entire Palestinian population of Gaza and take over the devastated seaside enclave as a U.S. territory, one of the most audacious ideas that any American leader has advanced in years.
Hosting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House, Mr. Trump said that all 2 million Palestinians from Gaza should be moved to countries like Egypt and Jordan because of the devastation wrought by Israel’s war with Hamas after the terrorist attack of Oct. 7, 2023.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too,” Mr. Trump said at an evening news conference. “We’ll own it and be responsible” for disposing of unexploded munitions and rebuilding Gaza into a mecca for jobs and tourism. Sounding like the real estate developer he once was, he vowed to turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
While the president framed the matter as a humanitarian imperative and an economic development opportunity, he effectively reopened a geopolitical Pandora’s box with far-reaching implications for the Middle East. Control over Gaza has been one of the major flash points of the Arab-Israeli conflict going back decades, and the idea of relocating its Palestinian residents recalls an era when Western great powers redrew the maps of the region and moved around populations without regard to local autonomy.
This is, among other things, an imperialistic call for ethnic cleansing. If someone has a better description, please feel free to share.
And please note that the NYT‘s write-up treats it like an “audacious idea.” I know the pro-MAGA types see the mainstream press as some sort of enemy, but stuff like the bolded clause above (my emphasis) just truly underscores how hard they try to treat him as normal.
This is not just some “idea.” As noted, it is ethnic cleansing and territorial theft in a weird combo of 19th-century imperialism, some version of extremist ideology, and 20th-century real estate development. If any reader cannot see why this is horrible, please inform us as to what the moral justification would be to displace over two million people would be.
In terms of diplomacy and the tenuous cease-fire process, this is not helpful. This is a great way to inflame, not calm, the situation.
Here is some of the video:
Trump Riviera.
It is absolutely wonderfully insane. He’s fucking nuts. Even the MAGAts can’t justify this, and the US Army will really, really not want to do this. We are dancing on the line between comedy and tragedy.
I am out of this country come June.
Trump Hotel Gaza City. All paid for with Saudi money.
@gVOR 10:
I’m pretty sure Hamas will be okay with this. I anticipate no problems. American soldiers will be proud to die for Trump’s next hotel. And lord knows Egypt, Jordan and the WB will be thrilled to import a bunch of Gazans. Tragedy then comedy.
This will teach Genocide Joe a big fat lesson!
@Steven L. Taylor:
Please clarify what you are writing here.
@Michael Reynolds:
Hopefully not in the Middle East. Trump just inflamed the American, uh, image.
At least we all can stop pretending that ethnic cleansing (genocide’s first cousin) wasn’t the goal, right Andy?
Hitting the ground hard, Trump has thrown sharp elbows at our neighbors, Mexico and Canada, on flimsy pretext. He has set his junkyard dogs on USAID and the Treasury. He has eviscerated D.E.I. policies. The Department of Education is now in his sights.
Pretty much everything he gave voice to, or could be intuited from his words on the campaign trail.
And now, Jarod Kushner’s fever dream of a Palestinian-free Gaza real estate development stirs among the haunting image of dust and rubble
Maybe its time to circle back to something else Trump alluded to last summer —- telling his evangelical base that they wouldn’t have to vote again after the 2024.
Much of what Trump says comes out in a fragmented stream of consciousness. But within his seemingly half baked spew, are these fragments of ideas from those who are providing him council and strategy.
We better put some thought into his “never vote again promise” without assuming there was nothing to it.
@Michael Reynolds:
Trump identifies Egypt and Jordan as refugee destinations for the millions of displaced. Two Arab countries among the least endowed to handle such a massive influx.
Jordan has approximately 3 million Palestinians already living in that country. A good many generations have been there since the 1948 war.
Egypt has its own internal political instability exacerbated by its own impoverished economy. The resulting pressure of 2 million Iraq war refugees imposed on Syrian society should give concern over similar outcomes in Egypt.
But Trump identified Jordan and Egypt as dumping grounds Their proximity to Gaza probably equates to expediency in his mind. And so, Trump alluding to “nice homes” for the displaced Palestinians should be taken with a grain of Dead Sea salt.
Excellent. Just a quick note to mention that the NYTimes has updated the adjective in the linked article from “audacious” to “brazen.” How bold! They seem to want to make Trump seem brave or courageous. He is neither.
More dangerous MAGA recklessness. Trump isn’t content with causing or worsening farm labor shortages, US Treasury data privacy breaches, aviation safety gaps, Trumpflation trade wars, uncontained disease outbreaks, stock market volatility, crime from pardoned Jan 6 thugs, and record egg and coffee prices. He’s taking his chaos agent clown show worldwide.
This call for ethnic cleansing could prompt Hamas to kill the remaining hostages and declare the ceasefire null and void. Just ike their gutting USAID, this Republican regime is alienating allies and sending countries closer to China, Russia, and Iran.
Remember when Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and other Putin propagandists insisted Harris was the WW3 candidate? Harris wouldn’t be threatening to send US troops into Gaza to establish an inflammatory permanent American presence there — a magnet for attacks from Iran and its Islamofascist proxies.
Netanyahu and Zionist extremists like Ben-Gvir can’t believe their luck, that a US president might be stupid enough to put US personnel in the line of fire, to do their dirty work for them.
And where’s Jill Stein and Uncommitted? Where’s the Genocide Don protests? I wish I could say I’m shocked at the relative quiet on social media from the most performative “Free Palestine” leftists I know, but I’m not. They never really cared much, past their own self-aggrandizement. That was clear when Trump lifted Biden’s sanctions on West Bank settler terrorists with barely a peep from Tlaib et al.
@Michael Reynolds: I am disappointed to read that you intend to decamp your country. I understand why you and others, like EddieinDR, have done so or seek to do so, but I confess a touch of abandonment resentment. My wife and I are comfortable, but emigration is not a realistic option; we are committed to the east mountains of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
We will keep up the fight, and we will leave the porch lights on for you and yours.
Jared and Ivanka are already on this.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/19/jared-kushner-calls-gaza-property-valuable-00147817
If anyone thinks this all makes the ME more stable, or America safer, they should seek professional help.
@DK:
The Uncommitted vote was very clear — status quo was not going to win their votes. And they turned out in the Michigan primary in greater numbers than the margin Biden won by in 2020. The Democratic constituency isn’t large enough to go without those voters without making inroads elsewhere.
But, both the Biden and Harris campaigns pissed on a chunk of the base without trying to do anything to get them onboard other than having people say “vote blue no matter who” and “Trump will be even worse than we are.” And they didn’t seriously try tobring in other votes elsewhere. Milquetoast moderate “we stand for nothing other than a slightly slower decline.”
Not even a decently forceful “protesting Israeli actions against civilians is not antisemitism,” and sticking with that over and over, and defending that wing of the base.
And then Harris doing everything she could to not have the word “transgender” uttered within 50 feet of her. Trump was playing “transgenders are coming for your inbred children” ads every commercial break in swing states, and the Harris campaign let that go without responding for fear of upsetting moderates.
How about having some values, stating them clearly and actually standing for them? No, can’t do that, it might upset the moderates in the center.
Playing to the center didn’t work.
Has it ever worked? Maybe Biden 2020, but he barely won over an amazingly unpopular president who was massively mismanaging a pandemic. And it was happening as people were voting so they couldn’t just memory hole the whole thing along with their trauma. Morgues were running out of space, and still Biden barely won.
But yeah, Harris got Liz Cheney’s vote. Big fucking deal.
And now we have the same spineless Democrats doing nothing while Elon Musk and his incel college students run ramshackle over the treasury, USAID and now the VA.
And make no mistake — the Republicans deserve the blame for every awful thing they do (the genocide portion of Trump’s presidential library is going to be amazing!), but the Democrats have been failing to rise to the occasion for basically every occasion since 9/11. November, longer than that, I forgot what a worthless piece of shit Bill Clinton was.
@DK:
I can’t speak to Tlaib’s current status, but I can say Omar is busy dealing with Musk tweeting that she is “literally breaking the law” [I know, I know, rich to say the least] for daring to explain to undocumented immigrants that they have rights, and what those rights are.
Of course, the barely literate, and woefully ignorant, maga [I am nearly always successful in my attempts to avoid pettiness, but they don’t deserve capital letters] crowd ate up Musk’s lie, and extended it by claiming that undocumented immigrants do not have rights.
Not only is this not true, it is particularly galling for historical and philosophical reasons–the founding documents are an expression of natural rights, meaning independent of place of origin. Meaning, the only question is not whether those rights are endowed to an individual, but whether they are in a place that recognizes those rights as inaliemable.
To be more specific, the Constitution does not grant rights, it enshrines limitations in order to protect rights from popular passion. This argument is often used to justify particular (note: non-originalism, non-textual) interpretations of the 2A by the same crowd.
I will say that watching non-Americans school magas who included American flags in their handles and bios on the laws and traditions of those idiots was tasty. Unfortunately, you can try to school someone, but there is no way to get them to accept the lesson.
@Leonard Grossman: I’m loathe to defend the NY Times, but they probably aren’t taking Trump seriously. After all, he’s a malignant narcissist whose signature move is prompting chaos with half-baked bluster, before backing down
and declaring victory for “fixing” his own chaos — knowing his “genius” negotiating skills will then be cheered by buttlicking MAGA fanboys who have nothing going for them besides the thought some woke deep state lib elite somewhere has thus been duly owned.
The problem is Trump’s bluster is not without consequence. Whether or not the North American trade war actually happens, the threat has already weakened national security and Western democracy. Xi, Putin, and others can now gain influence (and contracts) by reasonably asserting the US is an unreliable partner led by an unserious, errratic manbaby.
And, again, Hamas still holds hostages. Trump’s demented calls for ethnic cleansing makes the hostages’ safe return less likely, even though the idea of relocating millions of Palestinians is a farce. Netanyahu’s grinning agreement is shameful but unsurprising. What he and the Ben-Gvir types want is to annex Gaza and the West Bank, and kill every one of those Palestinians. And Trump has just given them cover and legitimized their cause, whether or not he puts US troops on the ground to assist.
I have been reading the late night open thread at BJ, a couple of comments worth quoting:
My emphasis added.
Utterly insane.
This would wreck all US alliances and Israeli accords in the region.
And likely break the Israeli/European relationship into the bargain.
The main person to benefit from this is Netanyahu, who can turn to to the settler ultras and say: “Look, you get what you wanted!” (be interesting to see if Ben-Gvir comes back into line, after resigning over the ceasefire).
At the same time he can say to the less insane: “Hey, not my idea, it’s Trump’s plan.”
Not to mention the bill for rebuilding Gaza is in the billions, and any chance of the Gulf Arabs putting up the money just went bye-bye.
So, wait. We’re going to take over Canada, Greenland, Panama AND NOW Gaza???
Cool.
America First. Right after all those other places
@JohnSF:
$Trillions.
Incidentally, the NYT is wrong about something:
This seems to be a commonly shared position of US historical discourse,
However, it never happened.
Most European Powers borders imposed were based on extant historical frontiers: between the Egypt khedivate and Syrian provinces of the Ottoman empire, between Iraq and Syria, Ottoman Iraqi provinces and Persia, Ottoman ruled northern Arab lands and the autonomous sheikdoms and emirates of Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf.
Nor did the Western great powers engage much in “moving around populations”.
Generally speaking, they had more sense.
Good morning all of you Michigan Democrats who voted for Trump (or sat-it-out) because you were incensed at Biden’s support of Israel. Do you feel better now?
@JohnSF: I’m sure European gamblers will gladly forego trips to Monte Carlo in favor of excursions to Trump Gaza Hotel and Casino.
Trump was reading prepared remarks on paper when he talked about how the US will take over Gaza. Normally we’d wonder what the secretaries of State and Defense had to do with this, but Rubio just doesn’t want to get fired after giving up a safe Senate seat for this gig, and the other guy is a finalist for Dunning-Kruger person of the year, so expectations are not great.
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/08/nx-s1-5183216/how-trump-was-able-to-win-support-from-many-muslim-voters-in-michigan “I do agree with the notion that we have to punish the Democratic Party … Faye Nemer, founder of the MENA American Chamber of Commerce, says she would have loved to see the first female president, but she voted for Trump.”
This article is what I find so insane about this election. I remember listening to this back in November and being hit with a wave of sadness for these voters not realizing how self-destructive this was. How is that protest vote working out now that the aspiring dictator of the US wants to use the power of the US government to advance ethnically cleanse Gaza to advance his business interests.
@Rob1: Sorry. I was interrupted several times when writing this.
I have amended the weird sentence to:
I wish watching all of the Trump supporters who assured us that he would end foreign entanglements and sending our military to foreign lands suddenly turn on a dime to explain this as what they voted for would be a source of joy for me.
But it just adds to the overall sense of “this is so bad….”
@Leonard Grossman: Ugh.
@Matt Bernius: Indeed.
@DAllenABQ:
Einstein left Germany in 1932 because he saw where things were going. Looking back over my life I have left many places – first because my Dad was Army, then on my own whim, then because I was on the run from the law, and then for our kids in search of good schools and broadening experiences.
I have never had cause to regret a single leaving.
I will do what I can, which is write checks and when possible use my authorial skills. But there is no real resistance at this point. Dems are in denial and ‘unfit for combat.’ Dems don’t fight except in court. They lack any killer instinct. They can’t even begin to look honestly at why we lost, let alone develop a strategy.
A year from now maybe Dems will field a leader, but right now all we have are lawyers. Maybe American democracy survives. Maybe not. Right now I don’t like the odds. London, Provence and Tuscany beckon. I can walk the streets there without wondering if every man I encounter is a MAGAt. That will be liberating.
I don’t know what we’re all surprised by. Ethnic cleansing was obviously Netanyahu’s plan from the beginning. All that’s changed is he promised Trump a big enough piece of the pie to drag us into it.
@charontwo:
This has been before us in full technicolor for the past 8 years. The progression of decline is obvious.
His enablers, including public officials and similarly impaired billionaires, have seized upon the opportunity Trump has opened up, to push through their malignant and antisocial vision for America.
His voters are dutifully following in his wake, having been incrementally drawn into Trump’s pathological worldview by constant flow of disinformation and invective from the Right’s media outlets for decades. They are living in a cocoon. Video pieces by Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper, consisting of interviews of MAGA voters, show person after person who have not viewed any footage whatsoever the Jan 6th violence. Trump voters who know nothing of his felonies or his sexual assaults. Sure, Klepper’s pieces are anecdotal, but most of us know those people. We’ve had terse conversations with them.
Ordinarily, someone as pathologically malignant as Trump would be subject to family and community mechanisms that would “take away the keys,” get them off the streets, and keep them from hurting themselves and others.
Clearly, Trump’s family hasn’t made any attempt to assert sanity, other than psychologist niece, Mary Trump. And Trump’s community is part of his malignant grand delusion, feeding off his accumulating power like “remora.”
So, who’s going to address the crazed elephant in the room?”
Mitch McConnell’s time to assert sanity has come and gone. Same with Mike Johnson and the pack of Trump sycophants he “leads.” GOP SCOTUS has joined the malignancy, indeed, fueled it.
Controls for self righting the ship are being stripped away.
At some point in the future, looking back at the wreckage caused to entire societies by narcissistic, pathological personalities like Trump, and like Putin, humans will need to come to terms with how these people hijack entire nations to do their warped bidding.
The analysis will include unpacking the dynamics at play where legions of seemingly “good neighbors” are drawn into grand visions of antisocial self-destruction. This phenomenon is the result of so many intertwined factors: human social dynamics, personality disorder, neuro-biology. Complicated stuff that requires entirely new concepts and terminology.
But meanwhile, we have a very big problem.
@Michael Reynolds:
As I caution friends who are of like mind, the malignancy is growing, and not confined to the U.S.
@JohnSF:
Important interjection. Thanks.
I saw a comment on Bluesky yesterday claiming Biden’s plan was to kill every person in Gaza, while the rapist merely wants to expel them.
People don’t want to be told they made a massive mistake. Especially not one that makes them responsible for further atrocities.
@Rob1:
Maybe. But they aren’t my problem. I’m not British, French or Italian.
We were in London looking for places to live during Trump #1, and were seduced by possibilities in Hollywood. We like new places, we have a very short attention span. Moving is our default condition – ten minutes after we move to a place we’re looking for what’s next.
I spent better than $50,000 on political contributions in this last cycle. If Democrats manage to pull their heads out of their asses, I’ll donate again.
I have a very busy week and little time for commenting, but a little birdy told me my name was mentioned here, and surprise:
@Raoul:
Interesting phrase there, “the goal” detached and by itself. Rhetorically convenient!
I’ll just give my quick views and then I need to bow out because I have work to do:
– There are a lot of people on both sides of this conflict that want ethnic cleansing and that have that as a goal. That is, I think undeniable, and is a big reason why this conflict is so enduring.
– However, as I constantly try to remind people, aspirational goals are just that – aspirational. When analyzing various people who want various things, including ethnic cleansing, one needs to consider the context of the real world, not fantasyland scenarios – even if one assumes aspirations are honestly held, which I think is questionable when it comes to Trump.
– As I’ve noted before, the various groups that are enjoyers of murdering Jews, like Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and others, and openly state they want to see Israel destroyed and ethnically cleansed, are countered by the facts on the ground that they have no actual ability to achieve that goal. That they’ve kept trying and losing and failing over most of the last century is proof that aspirations and even actual concrete plans that are much more than mere brain excrement, aren’t enough to get what one wants.
– In the same way, there are parts of Israeli society who want to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from Gaza. The problem, of course, is that it’s much easier said than done. Talk is cheap.
– Trump’s comments (more on that shortly) fall into this bucket. I realize that it’s very challenging for some here to do this, but I would urge you to game out the scenario where the US takes the lead in ethnically cleansing Gaza and then turning it into a resort town (the real estate angle from Trump on this is very on-brand and not new when it comes to Gaza). Consider all the assumptions that would need to fall into place to make that actually happen. The underpants gnome strategy is too kind of a way to consider it – it is so completely out of touch with reality that it should not be taken seriously as any kind of actual possibility.
– In short, this isn’t going to happen and the reason is there is no way for it to happen. It’s even dumber than the fantasy of building the wall and getting Mexico to pay for it or asserting that only foreigners will pay tariffs, or that Canada should be the 51st state. Some of you seem capable of engaging the reasoning centers of your brains when it comes to Trump’s dumb statements in those domains and see them for what they are, but not when it comes to Gaza and Israel.
– Now, for Trump’s comments themselves, they are, IMO, worse than Steven describes in the post. Although the idea itself is a dumb fantasy, those words coming from the President are – at the very most charitable strongman interpretation I can think of – stupidly stirring the coals of a bloody conflict at a very crucial and sensitive moment. They are not, in any way at all, helpful, quite the opposite. They could very well lead to the collapse of the fragile and ongoing ceasefire deal; they play into the fears and hopes of various people in a completely unconstructive way; they fool the ignorant; they empower the more radical elements on each side; they openly rhetorically support the idea of ethnic cleansing, which works to normalize it generally, which is something that no one, particularly the President, should do. The unfortunate reality is that no one can control what Trump says except Trump, and it will be a very long four years.
@Andy:
Israel may have the ability and means to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank. The reason they haven’t done so yet is 1) most Israelis are not inhuman monsters who’d do such a thing, 2) those who are have not been in control of the government.
Point 2) is not entirely so any more, plus Bibi will do what he has to to die in his bed rather than in prison. So that’s changing.
But there’s point 3) No country on Earth, and certainly no major power, would ever support such a thing, and the condemnation Israel would get, and deserve, would involve things like tough trade sanctions and make the country a pariah.
Except now a major power is saying they’ll do it for Bibi.
I’m not confident at all the tinpot tyrant won’t at least try.
Gaza Strip Club!
@Andy:
What you said. Except for the assumption that Trump won’t actually try to do it.
@Andy:
I don’t disagree.
And I will utter cop to having a hard time determining the appropriate tone to take as I address this stuff.
The walk back has begun, by those in the rapist’s circle who are not totally insane.
I expect the tinpot tyrant to walk back the walk back soon.
@Rob1:
I suspect the misunderstanding comes in part from the straight lines on the map of the ME borders re Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Arabia.
Which overlooks the point that those lines are mostly in the desert, and the Ottomans never bothered with precise demarcations in the desert.
The villayets and sanjaks were generally based on the settled areas, and everyone knew which town was in which.
The desert belonged to the Bedu, and trying to control them was not worth the bother.