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“President Donald Trump proposed taking ownership of the Gaza Strip and redeveloping it, after saying earlier that Palestinians should move out of the region. ‘The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too,’ Trump said on Tuesday during a joint conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.” BBC
“At a White House briefing on Wednesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt hailed his Gaza proposal as historic ‘outside of the box’ thinking but stressed that the president had not committed to putting ‘boots on the ground’ in the territory… At the same time, Leavitt walked back Trump's earlier assertion that Gazans needed to be permanently resettled in neighboring countries, saying instead that they should be ‘temporarily relocated’ for the rebuilding process…
“Jordan's King Abdullah, who will meet Trump at the White House next week, said he rejected any moves to annex land and displace Palestinians. Egypt said it would back Gaza recovery plans, following a ceasefire that took effect on Jan. 19, without Palestinians leaving the territory.” Reuters
The left is critical of Trump’s proposal.
“Trump’s Gaz-a-Lago plan has just one minor defect: It is a nonstarter with pretty much all of the parties required to make it work. Fresh off failed forays into Iraq and Afghanistan, many Americans will balk at inserting themselves into one of the Middle East’s most intractable conflicts…
“Trump named Jordan and Egypt as two Arab countries that could take in displaced Gazans during the territory’s reconstruction, but both regimes would rather swallow broken glass than grant citizenship or even a foothold to large numbers of Palestinians, whose cause they celebrate but whose people they routinely denigrate…
“As for the Palestinians, many Gazans would readily seek a new life elsewhere if offered the opportunity to escape their horrific circumstances, but many others would not. If done at the point of a gun, such a transfer would constitute ethnic cleansing—a far-right Israeli dream into which Trump just breathed new life, whatever his intentions.”
Yair Rosenberg, The Atlantic
“The idea that the land, having been requisitioned by the US government, will then be transformed into a Mediterranean ‘riviera’ is disturbing and grotesque in its detachment from reality. Mr Trump is treating a war zone at the centre of one of the world’s most intractable conflicts as if it were a patch of derelict Manhattan real estate. He is toying with the lives of millions of people in the idiom of a corrupt property developer and with the methods and ethics of a mafia boss.”
Editorial Board, The Guardian
“None of it comports with Trump’s isolationist, ‘America First’ vision. It seems, rather, like poorly conceived neoconservatism, not unlike the delusional belief that America could export democracy to Iraq through the barrel of a gun…
“A more generous read on Trump might be that he is offering an unworkable proposal that could satiate Israel’s far right and maintain the cease-fire. If so, it’s unclear how long such a bluff can hold.”
Ross Barkan, New York Magazine
“[President Richard] Nixon considered himself to be a profound thinker on global strategy. And yet it’s important to recall that, though he might have convinced himself that his act would bring the North Vietnamese leadership to heel, that misbegotten war ended in American defeat…
“The President’s decision to deploy, yet again, a display of chaotic bravado—an enactment of the Madman Theory, if that’s what it is—will do nothing to bring a lasting peace to the Middle East, and brings disgrace to the United States.”
David Remnick, The New Yorker
The right is divided about Trump’s proposal.
The right is divided about Trump’s proposal.
“There is no way forward for Gaza other than—to borrow from Elon Musk—the fork in the road. One path is to go all-in with Hamas once again, and to use every dollar (Hamas is wealthy) to rebuild the tunnel system, rearm the terrorists, and repair some infrastructure from which to continue the attack on Israel’s existence…
“The other path is to embrace the unknown, and to break free of Hamas, perhaps to go after some stability and wealth. Israel has, again, and again, offered the option to do this to Gazans, and each time, Gazans have chosen Hamas. What makes anyone think they will do it differently this time? Trump’s statements are correct: the only way Palestinians in Gaza can choose anything except Hamas is to remove them from Gaza.”
Steve Berman, Racket News
“The scandal isn’t that displaced Palestinians now could be ‘transferred’ voluntarily out of Gaza; it’s that they have been forced to stay there… Even as Arab states claimed Israel was slaughtering Palestinians indiscriminately, they insisted Gaza’s borders stay shut. When Palestinians tried to flee the war, as is their human right, Egypt forcibly closed the border—with the support of the international community…
“When Mr. Trump says he would like to ‘resettle people permanently in nice homes and where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed,’ he is accused of inhumanity. The humane solution, by liberal lights, is to sacrifice another generation of Palestinians to permanent refugee status and a forever war on Israel. That’s what life in Gaza holds for them.”
Elliot Kaufman, Wall Street Journal
Others argue, “Not a single American soldier should die protecting [Gaza] from Muslim terrorists or Zionist zealots, and not a single tax dollar should be spent rebuilding it when North Carolina, East Palestine, Los Angeles, and Lahaina are still recovering… These are the politics of the old GOP, the ones many conservatives hoped we had thoroughly discarded into the trash heap of malignant ideas.”
Spencer Neale, American Conservative
“The existence of Gaza is an Israeli problem, not an American one. It’s not our business. We have neither the right nor the interest in doing what Trump has floated here (which, it is reported, was a Jared Kushner initiative, not a Bibi Netanyahu one). I hope the pushback in Congress is instant and overwhelming. The moment any US soldiers land on the Gaza beaches and start rounding up Palestinians is the moment terrorist acts against American targets around the world explode.”
Rod Dreher, Substack
