The Riviera of the Middle East … Trump’s Demented Plan Gaza Real Estate Plan To Nowhere.
A Gaza boy among the bombing and destruction saving his school materials.
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“What happened in Gaza is a GENOCIDE, in which the United States was a partner. It is unacceptable for a U.S President Trump to meet with Israeli PM Netanyahu and agree to the occupation of Gaza and the expulsion of its people”
Lula da Silva, Brazilian President
Only someone stupid enough to recommend drinking bleach to cure COVID would think anyone could succeed in getting the Palestinians of Gaza to leave their land.
Linda Mamoun on X
The Gaza Strip is not a free land for anyone to grab…those days in history are gone…Gaza belongs to the Palestinian people.
Riyadh Mansour – Palestinian Representative to the United Nations
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1.
Bib and the Orange Clown are at it already coming up with a plan – actually long considered in the halls of Washington and Tel Aviv, to empty the Gaza Strip of its entire Palestinian population, sell plots of land to contractors and developers – many from Gulf Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar) build luxury hotels and casinos, repopulate the Strip with people from “all over the world”, resettle the Palestinian population to Egypt, Jordan or who knows where ….
Hairbrained scheme par excellence – and actually far worse. Having made Gaza unlivable with the destruction of more than 90% of homes and other structures, the conditions have been created – Israel’s famous “facts on the ground” – for a full scale expulsion of its inhabitants from the world’s largest open air concentration camp. Framed in a “brutalist benign” way, Trump’s proposal is illegal but was framed to suggest Trump is doing a favor for the people in Gaza. Instead it merely sugar coats a genocide into a “harmless” ethnic cleansing campaign and turning lands that are illegally expropriated into this fabulous real estate operation. We haven’t seen anything like this so far in the 21st century
As Pepe Escobar noted:
The whole project is both mind blowing and appalling … but it’s also illegal. It assumes the U.S. can control this whole project. Will the Americans use the IDF to expel the Gaza Palestinians? And then they’ll take over everything; they grant exploitation rights to all these Arab countries and, the Riviera is going to be “an American territory”?
At a White House press conference with the Israeli prime minister sitting next to him smirking with joy, U.S. President Donald Trump “floated the idea” – as NPR put it – of ethnic cleansing the Gaza Strip of all of its 2.2 million Palestinians to other places (Egypt, Jordan) with, at some point, the United States “taking over Gaza”. When Trump comments that “we’ll (USA) own it” he’s basically suggesting a massive expropriation and inviting builders from the world over to participate. The fact that Americans don’t own that land and have no legal rights to cede anything to these construction companies is besides the point.
2.
The global backlash is already mounting from all sides.
The response to Trumps Gaza ethnic cleansing initiative might have brought a smile to Netanyahu’s face and to 80% of Israelis, but it touched off a firestorm of opposition in much of the world, and as might be expected a total rejection for all elements of Palestinian society. Trump’s suggestion that such a plan will actually “save” the Palestinians in Gaza is being met with global derision. The backlash has already started and it is virtually worldwide, most pronounced in the Global South. Trump, who rarely listens to anyone, didn’t expect the backlash to be so strong, including from Arab allies (or vassals if you will) whose construction companies would benefit from the deal should it go through. The Trump Administration is trying to soften the blow by backtracking claiming this is just “an idea”, the president “thinking outside the box”.
Here is a small sprinkling of the push back:
As Colorado Palestinian spokesperson for the Colorado Palestine Club, Reema Wahdan noted on social media:
Trump recent statements about Gaza, including calls for the “evacuation” of Palestinians to other countries and the potential “cleaning out” of the territory, have sparked widespread criticism, with many interpreting them as advocating for forced displacement or ethnic cleansing. His remarks have raised significant international concerns about human rights violations and the feasibility of such actions.
For the record Palestinians don’t want to live in Egypt or Jordan. The forced ethnic extermination and displacement of indigenous peoples from their indigenous lands will forever be met with a call to reject these colonial policies
If implemented, this plan would be one of the most egregious cases of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing in modern history, drawing widespread condemnation and posing grave risks to regional and global stability.
To see an American president endorse what would be the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from their home, in an exodus that would subvert decades of US policy, international law and basic humanity, was breathtaking .
View from the Left Bank: Rob Prince's Blog 