[Salon] Trump’s Plan: Ethnic cleansing as fascist ambition

Nowhere was there mention of ethnic cleansing or an acknowledgment of who seeks to drive out the indigenous population, let alone why. Even when the coverage leaned critically, it was not the morality of the act that was questioned, but rather its feasibility. The focus, when dissent appeared, was on the practical challenges of such a scheme: the logistical hurdles, the hesitations of Arab governments, the potential for regional instability, and Trump’s overall seriousness. An Economist assessment of Trump’s “eye-popping” plan viewed it in part as a “leveraging” position intended to ease normalization with Saudi Arabia and give the Saudis a justification for normalizing relations after 15 months of massacres and destruction in Gaza.

One should perhaps remember that Trump, after all, was not saying anything particularly radical when placed alongside the policies and, at times, the rhetoric of the previous liberal and Democratic administration led by Biden. They all share the same wish: for Palestinians and Palestine to disappear. The only difference is a matter of framing — how best to present it, when it might be feasible, and at what cost to the region, to the normalization effort, and to America’s moral standing. But Palestine and the Palestinians, those unsettling troublemakers, must be resettled — anything but allowed to persist.

The humanitarian logic of ethnic cleansing so bluntly articulated in Trump’s words are all part of the same hubris that has long defined, and continues to define, American imperialism, just as British imperialism before it, when it comes to Palestine.

The humanitarian logic of ethnic cleansing, the sanitization of crimes, and the transactional callousness — so bluntly articulated in Trump’s words — are all part of the same hubris that has long defined, and continues to define, American imperialism, just as British imperialism before it, when it comes to Palestine.

In fact, the same language has been used before. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson justified the Indian Removal Act as a necessary measure for the “happiness” of Native Americans, ethnically cleansing them under the guise of protecting their way of life. In 1947, British officials, as they prepared to withdraw from India, spoke of the partition as an inevitable “solution” to sectarian strife, framing the displacement of millions as an administrative necessity rather than an orchestrated upheaval. Even in Palestine, before 1948, British colonial officials like Sir Edward Grigg spoke of Jewish immigration as a means of “developing” the land, dismissing Palestinian presence as an obstacle to modernity. The logic remains unchanged — displacement framed as pragmatism, ethnic cleansing cloaked in the language of order and progress, and for Trump: Palestinians as an obstacle to a beautiful beachfront where everyone could live, including “some Palestinians.”

Setting the fascist agenda

Not long ago, Trump claimed that if he were to shoot someone in the middle of Manhattan, he would get away with it. The importance of this statement lies not in its arrogance, but in its obscene truth: power, when unrestrained, does not merely operate outside the law — it dictates what the law is. This is precisely the logic at work in Israel’s destruction of Gaza. It is not merely an act of war, but a performance of impunity, a demonstration that international norms, like the proverbial bystanders in Trump’s Manhattan, will simply watch and do nothing.

But the crucial point here is that Israel is not merely “getting away with it.” Israel does not simply expect non-interference; it demands affirmation, deference, and a ritual display of fealty to its project of cleansing Palestine of Palestinians. It was hardly surprising, then, to see Netanyahu standing beside Trump, grinning. Here, at last, was an American president willing not just to endorse but to exceed the obscenities of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich and render their provocations almost quaint by comparison.

Israel fully anticipates that it will be rewarded, that the project of ethnic cleansing will not only proceed unchallenged but will be naturalized, legitimized, and framed as the inevitable course of history. This is where Trump’s role emerges — he is not simply an enabler, but one that makes the previously unspeakable fully speakable. His crude, unapologetic style offers Israel something even Netanyahu could not fully deliver: the hope of forcing this agenda on Arab governments, of returning to Gaza not as an occupier of an uncooperative population, but as a power that drives out Palestinians.

One of the defining features of contemporary fascist movements is their ability to present themselves as the only viable response to structural malaise, to foundational and unresolved deadlocks. In this sense, they do not merely react to crises; they set the agenda. Figures like Trump or Ben-Gvir propel their societies toward what they frame as necessary direction—whether it is the mass deportation of immigrants in the United States or the forcible ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. They unleash the psychic, ideological, and political forces that make the intensification of these policies seem not just conceivable but inevitable. Liberals, for their part, sometimes object to the form, occasionally to the excess, but rarely to the substance. They do what liberals always do: cling to the coattails of reaction, grasping at the hem of the inevitable, hoping to slow it down but never daring to break with it. In private, they agree; in public, they offer the same solution, only softened, recast in the language of pragmatism and restraint.

To fully unleash its American- and European-made arsenal, Israel does not simply require impunity; it benefits from a broader shift in the global order, one in which force is reasserted as the primary means of resolving political questions.

For Israel, the UN Charter, the various resolutions, and the nominal constraints on the use of force are not merely inconvenient; they are obstacles to be circumvented. A truly radical solution — whether in the form of ethnic cleansing or genocide or a combination of both — requires excess, a rupture that renders legal restraints obsolete. To fully unleash its American and European-made arsenal, Israel does not simply require impunity; it benefits from a broader shift in the global order, one in which force is reasserted as the primary means of resolving political questions. This is why Israel finds itself at the vanguard of a global revisionist movement that seeks to revise long-standing international norms, setting new precedents for the use of military power under the banner of necessity. If the liberal international order serves as one constraint, no less significant are the region’s geopolitical considerations.

Trump’s endorsement of ethnic cleansing is, in many ways, an affirmation of the Religious Zionist project — fascism addressing fascism, arriving at a shared conclusion. The only imaginable horizon, they agree, is not one of decolonization, the dismantling of apartheid, or the unmaking of ethno-nationalisms, but their consummation to their highest form of articulation: the cleansing of the land through killing or expulsion.

Ethnic cleansing in the age of normalization

In 1948, as Israel embarked on the ethnic cleansing of Palestine — destroying more than 500 villages, reducing cities like Jaffa to rubble, and erecting a state atop the ruins of Palestinian life — its leaders did not speak of ethnic cleansing openly. Dispossession was a material fact, not a subject for debate. One might argue that the contemporary moment differs largely due to the ubiquity of communication technologies, the immediacy of information, and the impossibility of concealment. Yet what has changed is not only the visibility of violence but the geopolitical conditions that shape its execution and containment.

At the time, Israel had few formal agreements with the Arab world. It did, however, engage in secret negotiations with the Hashemites, who had their own ambitions in Palestine. Even before the war, Golda Meir, then representing the Jewish Agency, met with King Abdullah I of Transjordan in November 1947 to secure an informal understanding. Despite these covert dealings, Israel’s regional position remained precarious. There were no Abraham Accords, no Camp David agreements with Egypt, no Oslo Accords, and no prospect of normalization with Saudi Arabia. Israel was a fledgling power in the region, and while many Arab rulers maintained informal contacts or formal alliances with Britain, France, and the United States, direct relations with Israel were not yet codified.

When the Nakba unfolded, and Zionist militias embarked on massacres and the wholesale destruction of ancient villages and towns, the Arab regimes were either too weak, too complicit, or outright antagonistic. Today, the picture is different, though not necessarily better. The Saudis funnel money into Jared Kushner’s investment funds, many of the Gulf states have signed normalization agreements, and both Egypt and Jordan remain indispensable pillars of a regional architecture whose regimes are pragmatic, highly accommodating to American hegemony, and deferential to both American and Israeli imperatives. Yet they are also deeply resistant to instability and the fracturing of their own regimes, as well as the prospect of millions of Palestinians arriving in their states and doing what Palestinians so often do: unsettle, disturb, and challenge. At the same time, these regimes are constantly searching for ways to bolster their legitimacy. While Trump’s rhetoric on Palestine may seem unhelpful, it paradoxically provides Arab rulers with a rationale for their own accommodation of Israel. So long as the threats of mass expulsion and demographic engineering remain speculative, they can claim that their normalization with Israel and deference to the United States serve as moderating influences, preventing the worst outcomes.

The paradox of ethnic cleansing in the age of normalization lies in the way normalization both enables and constrains Israeli expansionism.

The paradox of ethnic cleansing in the age of normalization lies in the way normalization both enables and constrains Israeli expansionism. On the one hand, normalization strengthens Israel’s regional position, securing its military supremacy, economic integration, and political legitimacy. All recipes for more wars. It does not halt Israel’s settler colonial project but reinforces it by embedding Israel within a broader regional framework. On the other hand, this very framework imposes some limits on Israel’s actions, making large-scale ethnic cleansing more diplomatically costly.

This creates a strategic dilemma: is it worth expelling Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza if doing so risks destabilizing Israel’s relationships with neighboring states like Jordan and Egypt or jeopardizing future agreements with Saudi Arabia? Even more critically, is it worth ethnically cleansing a population that has historically given rise to radical politics and unsettled regional regimes? Rather than outright preventing ethnic cleansing, normalization compels Israel to pursue it in more “manageable” forms — through bureaucratic, legal, and economic mechanisms rather than mass expulsions — which has been the reigning logic since Israel’s military occupation in 1967. Home demolitions, land seizures, economic strangulation, and gradual displacement replace more overt forms of ethnic cleansing, ensuring that the process continues, but in ways that are less visible and less immediately disruptive to regional stability.

Normalization, to be precise, does not serve as a genuine restraint on Israeli expansion but rather as a mechanism that disciplines and regulates its execution. The drive to remove Palestinians remains, but the methods are adjusted to minimize diplomatic fallout. Normalization, then, does not signal a departure from ethnic cleansing but a transformation in its pace and visibility. In Gaza, Israel was able to intensify its massacres and destruction, embarrassing its regional allies and exposing their complicity. Yet when Egypt closed the border and profited from selectively allowing Palestinian exits, it justified its actions under the banner of “maintaining Palestinians on their land.” Meanwhile, as Trump and Netanyahu set the agenda for further displacement, the Israeli right wing remains increasingly fixated on the West Bank rather than Gaza. Ethnic cleansing, when framed within the logic of enmity toward neighboring states, is easier to execute than in the context of a fixed regional architecture — one that demands negotiations, diplomatic tit-for-tat, and occasional compromises.

Israel’s problem is compounded by another dimension: the persistent presence of Palestinians themselves. Despite Israel’s capacity for a slow, systematic process of elimination — whether through bureaucratic suffocation, military terror, or the destruction of homes — Palestinians remain. Their very existence continues to disrupt the settler colonial calculus, refusing to be erased, absorbed, or silenced.

Palestinians walk past collapsed buildings along the streets of Gaza City on February 5, 2025. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images) — PALESTINIANS WALK PAST COLLAPSED BUILDINGS ALONG THE STREETS OF GAZA CITY ON FEBRUARY 5, 2025. (PHOTO: OMAR ASHTAWY/APA IMAGES)

The Great Return: ruins as a structure of refusal

Since the outbreak of Israel’s genocidal war, Palestinians in Gaza have endured a relentless bombing campaign — one that has reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble, turning homes, hospitals, and universities into ruins. Yet it was still striking to see hundreds of thousands of Palestinians returning to the devastation. A return not to the familiar, but to absence — to zero-level, to the necessity of beginning again from scratch. Many Palestinians asked in frustration how they would rebuild their lives. Others contemplated leaving Gaza and starting anew somewhere else. But, the majority affirmed their presence, and tens of thousands erected tents on the ruins of their now destroyed homes.

The ceasefire in Gaza, wrested through the sheer endurance of Palestinian resistance — and here I mean much more than armed resistance — briefly compelled Israel to acknowledge, if only momentarily, the possibility of return. That return, however, was not a magnanimous concession but the byproduct of confrontation, defiance, and the attrition of Israel’s pursuit of total victory. Even in retreat, Israel retains the mechanisms of control: the power to sanction or obstruct reconstruction, the ability to calibrate suffering, and, above all, the implicit threat of summoning its fighter jets once again.

However, it should be said that the Palestinian relationship to land is complex. Indeed, capitalism has entered the fray, and the commodification of land is also a surging force. But unlike Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the land is not a commodity for Palestinians.

When Palestinians speak of land, they speak of something else not fully commensurate with the capitalist logic of land ownership, nor entirely prescribed by the Lockean understanding of the state. Offering a grand theory of land, the people, and their history, would go beyond the scope of this discussion.

Nothing captures the depth of Palestinian attachment—the material, political, and symbolic character of the land—more vividly than the sight of people returning to rubble and ruin, or those who refused to leave the north of Gaza.

However, nothing captures the depth of attachment — the material, political, and symbolic character of the land — more vividly than the sight of people returning to rubble and ruin, or those who refused to leave the north of Gaza. The idea that land is either sacred or, in the capitalist sense, profane — a commodity to be exploited, a profitable enterprise — finds only a partial place in Palestinian discourse. Land is life; it is the possibility of instituting life, the medium of dignity, the irreducible idea of home. And for those of us well attuned to Israeli designs, well accustomed to their tricks, plans, and desires, there is solace in being the obstacle, in being the hurdle they shall not pass.

Most Palestinians are not waiting for offers of resettlement; indeed, the vast majority have no desire to start anew elsewhere. Few wish to become the targets of right-wing European hostility by making their way to Europe. Even fewer would choose exile in Arab countries, where life without a homeland would be a hollow existence. Many would rather die than leave.

In the past several months, most Palestinians in Gaza have embodied this resilience. Talking about ethnic cleansing did little to serve Israel or the United States; openly professing the project might have stirred Palestinian nightmares, perhaps even subdued some of their more proactive pursuits of resistance. Yet this rhetoric has turned the question of remaining — shaped by a long history of ethnic cleansing — into a deeply political decision for each of us.

In Gaza, people returned to the ruins, demonstrating their resolve to disrupt Israeli designs, and with victory signs, they proclaimed they shattered Israel’s “Generals’ Plan” to cleanse north Gaza. In the West Bank, an ordinary conversation often begins with, “It looks like they want to cleanse us.” While some among the upper classes have already secured a Plan B, specifically those close to the Palestinian Authority and their current cadre of security and political leaders, most — including many within those very circles — speak instead of their death. Some would send their son or daughter abroad but insist they themselves will stay. Others simply say, “We are here until they kill us.”

The ruin, that ever-insistent remnant of catastrophe, is not merely a backdrop but a site of recurrence. It is not a space to be cleared for your projects of settlement, it is lived in, breathed in, built upon, and returned to. The ruin, then, is a structure of refusal. A failed eviction. A testament that no matter how often the scene is razed, the Palestinian remains: unvanquished, untranslatable, and, above all, unrelenting.

The question of remaining — often dismissed as passive, even defeatist, when measured against the imperatives of proactive political praxis — has become the defining question of the moment. It will take many more bombs, many more massacres, and millions killed and injured for Israel to erase us from the land. And to be frank, even if they were to succeed, that would only mark the beginning of a new chapter—a renewed praxis from outside Palestine, one that reasserts the Palestinian right to return, to home, to land, and to dignity, and the story will continue, the plot will find new characters and new twists.

Let us pause here, for a moment, at the fault line, at the rift that rends the categories of return. There are those who negotiate with their state, maneuvering within its bureaucratic contours, lobbying for the requisite funds to replant themselves in Gaza’s enclaves or the northern settlements that hang precariously near the Lebanese border. And then, there are the others, the ones who return not to land but to its wreckage, not to homes but to the memory of their erasure.

This is not simply the result of an asymmetry of power, though asymmetries abound. Nor is it merely a matter of civic entanglements — the punitive embrace of the state for its own. No, what is at stake here is a question of ownership, of ontological tenure. Who possesses the land, and who is possessed by it? Who returns by decree, and who returns by defiance? To return is to reckon with ruins, but for some, ruins are a condition of being.

It is both our tragedy as Palestinians and our condition that we have become accustomed to the sight of ruins, and you should probably thank Israel and the U.S. for this habituation. So, for all those contemplating the idea of re-settling Palestinians and imagining a landscape cleansed of its people — out of sight, out of mind — please don’t bother. We will not leave “voluntarily.” Yes, some might study abroad or immigrate, but even those who depart are bound to the ones who stay. They send money back, they sustain the lives that persist, and they build the homes that others in our families live in.

And so, the ruin, that ever-insistent remnant of catastrophe, is not merely a backdrop but a site of recurrence. It is not a space to be cleared for your projects of settlement, nor for your treatment of land as another commodity form, nor a relic to be mourned from a safe distance. It is lived in, breathed in, built upon, and returned to. The ruin, then, is a structure of refusal. A failed eviction. A testament that no matter how often the scene is razed, the Palestinian remains: unvanquished, untranslatable, and, above all, unrelenting.

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2 COMMENTS

Most Voted

brent

February 6, 2025 9:27 pm

“And for those of us well attuned to Israeli designs, well accustomed to their tricks, plans, and desires, there is solace in being the obstacle, in being the hurdle they shall not pass.___________________________________________________________________

I puzzled, since my time there during the First Intifada, about the explanation for the apparent pride parents took in their young boys throwing rocks.

Pride and dignity seem fundamental ingredients there too.

This article is a fascinating discourse on the psychology of land in Palestinian culture.

I wonder how the “Great March of Return” factors. Gaza had been characterized as a concentration camp.

-1

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