Donald Trump is planning ethnic cleansing in Gaza
This imperialistic “Riviera” project could have been dreamt up by the Israeli far right.
By Rajan Menon
Trump’s second experience of high office has already revealed a destructive geopolitical creativity, and an imperialist cast of mind, that will have surprised some of his most dedicated supporters. But his latest pronouncement on the Gaza Strip is in a league of its own, so outlandish that one has to wonder about the state of the president’s mind. Trump, channelling his former profession as a real estate tycoon, has proposed that Gaza’s two million inhabitants be expelled en masse so that the Strip can, like some all-inclusive resort, be transformed into a “Riviera of the Middle East”, adding for good measure: “We will own it.” This isn’t some gag about annexing Greenland. Trump proposes nothing less than ethnic cleansing on a colossal scale. Gazans won’t just be driven from their homeland. It will cease to be their homeland and become an appendage of the United States.
Who could possibly endorse this scheme? For one, Israel’s far right, both religious and secular. It dreams of inflicting upon Gaza what has been going on in the West Bank for decades, and which has accelerated to a feverish pace under the governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu: the building of settlements and the appropriation of land. This is the vision for Gaza shared by the likes of Itamar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu’s former national security minister, who quit to protest Israel’s ceasefire agreement with Hamas, and his finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who remained in the cabinet only after Netanyahu promised him that the ceasefire would not actually mean the end of the Gaza war. Israelis of their political persuasion don’t want to just re-establish the 21 settlements in Gaza that then prime minister Ariel Sharon dismantled in 2005. They want to build many more settlements, and much deeper inside the territory, as a prelude to annexation.
Trump has, somehow, managed to outdo the Israeli far right in ambition and brutality. But a moment’s reflection shows that his proposal is as preposterous as it is unworkable. Does Gaza need a massive, multi-year reconstruction? Certainly. About two-thirds of its structures – including apartment buildings, schools, mosques, hospitals and shops – have been either demolished or destroyed, reduced to 42 million tons of rubble. Without an ambitious, long-term rebuilding plan, Gazans will never be able to live even a minimally adequate life. But resurrecting their homeland doesn’t require expelling them from it. On the contrary: involving them in a rebuilding project would provide them jobs and incomes, while also harnessing their intimate knowledge of Gazan society.
This plan, by contrast, goes well beyond the dreams of any real estate magnate. It harks back to the imperialism of the 19th century, involving a disregard for human life quite alien to our time. How exactly does Trump plan deport two million people, especially when so many of them have shown such a fierce attachment to their land that they have only recently returned to the debris that was once their dwellings and neighbourhoods? Gazans won’t go quietly; they’ll have to be expelled violently. It beggars belief – even given Trump’s bizarre schemes – that the president would despatch American troops on a mission of ethnic cleansing, especially after seeing Hamas battle the Israeli army, inflict significant casualties on it, and survive to tell the tale. And if Trump plans to have the Israel Defence Forces do the dirty work, its soldiers will be signing up for another round of war, committing this time not only to fighting Hamas but to the forcible expulsion of men, women and children.
It’s already apparent that, Israel’s far right aside, Trump will have no international supporters if he pursues this cruel venture. Britain, which almost always backs the US, has rejected Trump’s plan. Ditto two other major American allies, France and Germany. The same goes for Arab governments, including those of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Turkey, a major non-Arab Muslim country and an American ally, has likewise excoriated it. The crescendo of condemnation will only grow.
Arab governments, notably Egypt’s, are leery of Hamas. But they know that their legitimacy on the street will evaporate and that they could even face mass revolts if they back Trump’s plan, which, in its human scale, would surpass the Nakba, the expulsion of some 750,000 Palestinians by Israeli militias between 1947 and 1948. Why would they jeopardise their hold on power for an idea that’s in equal parts hare-brained and diabolical, especially when it will make them partners of Israel’s far right? Besides, Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Syria could be flooded by refugees, even if Trump’s eviction enterprise is only partly “successful” – if that’s the appropriate word.
Trump’s Riviera dream won’t go anywhere. Yet it’s revealing on at least two counts. It highlights the stark difference between Trump in his first and second terms: far from withdrawing from the Middle East, Trump now seems set on building an American-Mediterranean city-state. And it demolishes the idea that Trump is purely a “transactional leader” with no fixed loyalties or ideology. Trump remains unpredictable, protean. But, clearly, when comes to Israel, we shouldn’t be misled by Trump’s willingness to strongarm Netanyahu into signing the original ceasefire deal. His loyalty sits with the Israeli prime minister, and to the most extreme parts of the country’s politics.