U.S. President Donald Trump has said that the United States should become party to a major crime against humanity by expelling 1.8 million people from their land in the Gaza Strip as it becomes a territory of the United States.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday at a press conference with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “We’ll own it and be responsible” for the territory, Trump said, which would be turned into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
Trump did not explain under what legal authority the Israeli occupied territory of Gaza could become the territory of the United States. It is not legally Israel’s territory to give away to anyone, but international law has rarely impeded Israel, or the United States.
Trump failed to mention that Hamas, which still controls Gaza, would have to be defeated first, something Israel has failed to do.
Trump said the U.S. would “level the site, get rid of the destroyed buildings, create an economic development and supply an unlimited number of jobs and housing for the people of the area.”
Trump did not define who the “people of the area” are going be who get new housing in a rebuilt Gaza, but said people from all over the world would live there. In the meantime he said he expected as many as 1.8 million Palestinians to be removed permanently. “I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza,” Trump said in the Oval Office next to a beaming Netanyahu.
“They live like they’re living in hell,” he said. “Gaza is not a place for people to be living, and the only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is because they have no alternative.”
Hamas’ Answer
Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, indeed offered an alternative: “What is needed is the end of the occupation and the aggression against our people, not expelling them from their land,” he said in a statement.
Abu Zuhri called Trump’s shocking proposal “a recipe for creating chaos and tension in the region. Our people in Gaza will not allow for these plans to come to pass.”
Any authority trying to force the population out of Gaza would have to contend with the still armed and trained militias of Hamas and other militant groups. The U.S. would almost certainly have to go to war with Hamas in order to make Gaza a U.S. territory.
It does not seem Trump and his people have fully thought out the implications of U.S. ground troops trying to defeat Hamas to take over Gaza, when Israel has failed to do that in 15 months of unrestrained attacks.
Asked by a reporter whether the U.S. would send troops to Gaza to “secure the security vacuum,” rather than the real task, to takeover the territory, Trump said, “We’ll do what’s necessary, if it’s necessary we’ll do that. We are going to take over that piece, and we’re going to develop it.”
Netanyahu told the press conference that he’s committed to militarily defeating Hamas, so one can be certain the ceasefire will not last.
Israel’s real aim in the war is doing exactly what Trump is proposing, removing the Palestinian population from Gaza. For Netanyahu’s and members of his radical cabinet who have expressed genocidal intent, this is the chance they have been waiting for, to fulfill Israeli Founding Father David Ben Gurion’s promise of an ethnically cleansed Gaza (and West Bank) to create Greater Israel.
“I think it is something that could change history,” Netanyahu said of Trump’s proposed takeover of Gaza, “and it is worthwhile really pursuing this avenue.”
West Bank Coming
Asked by an Israeli reporter if he supported “Israeli sovereignty” over “Samaria, which many believe is the Biblical homeland of the Jewish,” otherwise known as the West Bank, Trump said, “Well, we are discussing that with many of your representatives … who do like that idea, but we haven’t take a position on it yet. We will be making an announcement on that specific topic over the next four weeks.”
If the U.S. runs Gaza for Israel, the West Bank would be the final piece of controlling all of historic Palestine — from the river to the sea.
Despite their already firm rejection, Trump said in the end Jordan and Egypt will not refuse to take in the Palestinians. “They won’t say no to me,” Trump said.
Something "Spectacular"
Without naming them, he said other countries have come forward to take in the population. Trump also said wealthy nations in the region, an obvious reference to the Gulf monarchies, could pay for the new “location.” In reaction, Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry put out a statement at 4 am local time calling for a Palestinian state.
“It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn’t want to return [to Gaza],” he said, trying to couch his proposal as great humanitarianism on his part. He called for something “spectacular” for the “wonderful” Palestinian people, something the “entire Middle East” would be proud of — proud of ethnic cleansing.
“If we can get a beautiful area to resettle people permanently, with nice homes and where they can be happy and not be shot at, not be killed, not be knifed to death … I would think that they would be thrilled,” he said. “I see a long-term [U.S.] ownership position.”
Trump left no doubt that this would be the permanent, forced relocation of 1.8 million people in clear violation of international humanitarian law.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention “prohibits the forced transfer of protected people out of or into occupied territory” and customary international law considers involuntary population transfers to be illegal.
Dayan’s Prediction
Israeli army in Gaza in 1956. (National Library of Israel/Wikimedia Commons)
Palestinians living in Gaza are descendants of an earlier crime of ethnic cleansing at the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
In what can be seen as a prediction of the Oct. 7, 2003 Hamas breakout and attack on Israel, Moshe Dayan, one of Israel’s other Founding Fathers, predicted in 1956: “What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived. … We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house. . . . Let us not be afraid to see the hatred that accompanies and consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who sit all around us and wait for the moment when their hands will be able to reach our blood.”
It is unlikely Dayan could have foreseen a U.S. president who wanted to finish Israel’s job for them.
Main photo: Netanyahu and Trump at the White House on Tuesday © White House / YouTube.
Source: Consortium News.
