A widespread international and domestic outcry to Donald Trump’s plan for the U.S. to take over and cleanse Gaza of Palestinians has led U.S. officials to say he really didn’t mean it the way it sounded, reports Joe Lauria.
By Joe LAURIA
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su
A day after all hell broke loose in reaction to President Donald Trump’s plan to remove 1.8 million Palestinians from Gaza, which he said the U.S. would rebuild and make a U.S territory, administration officials began backtracking as it emerged that only Trump himself knew he would make the plan public.
Asked in Guatemala about Trump’s intention to relocate the Palestinian population from the Gaza Strip, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that Palestinians would be allowed to “move back in,” which was not what Trump had said the day before.
At the White House, press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, tried to dial back the story by dampening the idea of U.S. troops in Gaza, while revising what Trump had said about permanent displacement.
Leavitt told reporters “the president has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza. He has also said the United States is not going to pay for the rebuilding of Gaza. His administration is going to work with our partners in the region to reconstruct this region.”
Leavitt showed photos in the briefing room of the destruction of Gaza, as though no one on social media has not seen far worse images of Gaza over the past 15 months.
Of course it is presented, as Caitlin Johnstone points outs, as if the destruction was the result of a natural disaster rather than from the maniacal genocidal attacks by the State of Israel fully supported by the United States. Trump, you see, is just trying to provide disaster relief.
He actually talks about the destruction as if it were the result of 15 months of war between two equally armed militaries, when Hamas has no air force with 2,000-pound bombs or tanks to cause this kind of destruction.
To emphasize that she was backtracking, Leavitt said: “Let me take a step back here, this is an out of the box idea, that’s who President Trump is, … and his goal is lasting peace in the Middle East. That doesn’t mean boots on the ground in Gaza …it doesn’t mean U.S. taxpayers will pay for it, it means that Donald Trump, who is the best dealmaker on the planet, will strike a deal with our partners.”
Asked whether she was now ruling out U.S. troops on the ground when Trump had not, Leavitt said, “He is not committed to that just yet.” Trump had said the U.S. would clear unexploded ordnance, normally a job for the military.
Leavitt also said the plan called for Palestinians to be only “temporarily” housed in other countries, while Trump clearly said Tuesday that it would be permanent.
“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.”
Steve Witkoff, U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, also tried to quell the story, telling Republican senators at a private lunch Wednesday essentially the same talking points as Leavitt, namely that Trump “doesn’t want to put any U.S. troops on the ground, and he doesn’t want to spend any U.S. dollars at all’ on Gaza,” The New York Times quoted Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri as saying.
“Which is good,” Hawley said, according to The Washington Post. “So maybe, I might have misunderstood the president last night.”
Trump later on Wednesday declined to answer reporters’ questions about Gaza.
No One But Trump Knew
Netanyahu and Trump at the White House on Tuesday. (White House/YouTube)
According to the Times, no one in the Trump administration except Trump himself, knew that he would announce the plan.
There had been discussions but no formal planning, the paper said. He only told a beaming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about it moments before they appeared together at Tuesday’s White House press conference.
The Times reported:
“Inside the U.S. government, there had been no meetings with the State Department or Pentagon, as would normally occur for any serious foreign policy proposal, let alone one of such magnitude. There had been no working groups. The Defense Department had produced no estimates of the troop numbers required, or cost estimates, or even an outline of how it might work.
There was little beyond an idea inside the president’s head.”
“But privately, Mr. Trump had been talking about U.S. ownership of the enclave for weeks,” the paper added.
Swift Rejections
Condemnation came swiftly from around the world. At 4 am Wednesday in Riyadh, the Saudi Foreign Ministry issued a statement soundly rejecting Trump’s proposal. Trump is counting on the Saudis to recognize Israel.
But Saudi Arabia said it “will not cease its tireless work to ensure the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. The Kingdom will not form diplomatic relations with Israel without this.”
The statement reiterated the kingdom’s “categorical rejection of the violation of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people by Israel’s settlement, annexation and displacement policies.”
It said,
“The international community has a duty today to ease the deep humanitarian crisis that the Palestinian people are enduring. The people will continue to cling on to their land and their determination will not be shaken.
Permanent and just peace cannot be achieved without the Palestinian people receiving their legitimate rights in line with international resolutions and this issue has been clearly stipulated to the previous and current American administration.”
Trump and the Saudi Crown Prince at the White House in 2017. (Whit House/Wikimedia Commons)
In New York, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres openly warned against “any form of ethnic cleansing.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who has taken aggressive positions on other issues, like Russia, and is a staunch defender of Israel, said in a statement that “expelling the Palestinian civilian population from Gaza would not only be unacceptable and contrary to international law. It would also lead to new suffering and new hatred.”
Trump had left no doubt on Tuesday 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.
The Times reported:
“The prohibition against forced deportations of civilians has been a part of the law of war since the Lieber Code, a set of rules on the conduct of hostilities, was promulgated by Union forces during the U.S. Civil War. It is prohibited by multiple provisions of the Geneva Conventions, and the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II defined it as a war crime.”
Domestic Reaction
In the U.S., several lawmakers, including some Republicans, expressed concern about the plan. Israel hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted, ““I fear putting American troops on the ground now in the midst of a raging Middle East will yield the same results as it did in 1983.” That year 241 U.S. marines were killed in their barracks in Beirut.
Rep. Eric Swalwell of California said on X: “Wait what? The U.S. is going to occupy Gaza? We were promised no more endless wars.”
Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said on X of Trump: “He’s totally lost it. A U.S. invasion of Gaza would lead to the slaughter of thousands of U.S. troops and decades of war in the Middle East. It’s like a bad, sick joke.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who is Palestinian American, said on X: “Palestinians aren’t going anywhere. This president can only spew this fanatical bullshit because of bipartisan support in Congress for funding genocide and ethnic cleansing. It’s time for my two-state solution colleagues to speak up.”
Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas went even further, saying he would introduce articles of impeachment against Trump.
“Ethnic cleansing is not a joke, especially when it emanates from the president of the United States, the most powerful person in the world, when he has the ability to perfect what he says, ethnic cleansing in Gaza is no joke, and the prime minister of Israel should be ashamed knowing the history of his people,” Green said, according to The Hill.
Original article: Consortium News
