Trump has suggested that neighboring Arab countries should take in Palestinian refugees and “clean out” the embattled Gaza.
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Trump’s serendipity is the only thing geopolitical analysts can bet on as if there’s one thing we can all agree that we can predict with certainty about how he will resolve all the world’s problems, is that he will not be predictable. He relies heavily on his own instincts and vanities and sees opportunity everywhere. His unfettered support for Netanyahu’s genocide might just yet still shock his more die-hard supporters, given that he posted unflattering social media clips about the Israeli leader in December and yet is ready to throw his weight behind Israel’s bolder ambitions of wiping every Palestinian off the surface of Israel.
The big plan is no longer a conspiracy theory.
As months went by and the whole world witnessed the breathtaking depravity of Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinians – at least 100,000 by even the most conservative estimates – some, like myself, were bold enough live on TV to suggest that it seemed that the big plan was to completely eradicate Palestinians from Gaza, forcing neighboring countries to take what was left. For those of us who assumed this, we hoped we were wrong. And yet in the last couple of days, Trump has let the cat out of the bag and revealed this is in fact the plan, one which he supports – explaining perhaps why Netanyahu was never interested in discussing a two-state solution or what the make-up of an administration there might look like under the leadership of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.
Trump has suggested that neighboring Arab countries should take in Palestinian refugees and “clean out” the embattled Gaza.
Speaking to journalists aboard Air Force One on 25th of January, Trump said he spoke to King Abdullah II of Jordan about the war and was planning to speak with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi the following day.
“I’d like Egypt to take people, and I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump said. “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, we just clean out that whole thing. It’s a real mess.”
What is worrying about this statement is how the idea itself, which he must have supported all along, like so many feral schemes that seem to appear from nowhere, is based on Trump being very badly briefed about the Middle East. If he listens to his advisers at all, they should have told him that neither Jordan nor Egypt would ever entertain the idea of taking huge numbers of Palestinians under any circumstances. Any two-bit hack in the region can tell you that the current situation in neighboring countries which have taken Palestinian refugees since 1948 is very bad for both the refugees themselves and for the host countries. In Lebanon, they are kept in ‘camps’ which are off limits, normally, to Lebanese police and security forces, where the UN gives them the bare minimum to eat and where terrorism is rife – creating an internal security problem for the state which often raises its ugly head now and again. In Jordan, the King already has a difficult job keeping his country on an even keel with the high percentage of Jordanians originating from Palestine, which brings its own challenges itself politically; the last thing King Abdullah needs is more of them arriving as refugees. In Syria too, Palestinians have settled in camps and accepted they are third class citizens although it is less clear how the new leaders of the country – who are the most extreme terrorists stemming from ISIS – will treat them, given they are broadly aligned politically with them.
The Trump bombshell is revealing. One the one hand the vitriol that Trump is happy to show against Netanyahu on social media is probably a sham – he has a track record of pretending to not like certain world leaders in front of the cameras while admiring them in private; and secondly, unlike what we are lead to believe, the old doctrine that Israel controls U.S. foreign policy is still true, perhaps even more so under Trump than Biden. The plan to level Gaza and then turn to the international community and say ‘hey, look it’s uninhabitable, there’s nothing there now…it would be inhumane to put people there’ is now looking more and more like official policy. The only real question is how weak western countries will be in supporting this plan. Will the EU just follow U.S. foreign policy blindly like it always has done in the past? It’s unimaginable that Spain and Ireland would allow this genocide to be swept under the carpet so that Israel can rebuild from the ground up a new Gaza for even more illegal settlers, while a new Suez-like canal mega project is built to compete with Egypt’s, right? Is Trump going to be part of this cash cow? Trump 2.0 appears to be even more about finding the deal, than its former term in office. Is it that Trump is listening to his advisors? But their mandate is not to advise him on what’s best for America, just what’s best for him? Show me the deal.
