Eurasia Press & News
The United States president announced that he wants to push Palestinians out of Gaza
United States president Donald Trump has doubled down on his call to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza. During a press conference with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, he said the United States will “take over” Gaza and “own it”.
Netanyahu had flown to the US to meet with Trump to discuss how they could “redraw the map” in the Middle East.
Tuesday marked the beginning of the second round of ceasefire negotiations. “The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative,” Trump said. “Gaza is a hellhole right now. It was before the bombing started, frankly.”
The man responsible for creating that hellhole through the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians, Netanyahu, stood smirking beside Trump.
Trump previously said he wanted to resettle Palestinians while Gaza is rebuilt. He called on Egypt and Jordan to take in those Palestinians the US would forcibly remove. But Trump’s new plan calls for Palestinians to be removed “permanently” from Gaza.
“The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too,” he said.
Trump wants to present himself as a “peacemaker” and key mover behind the ceasefire deal. But he sees it as an opportunity for the US—and its imperialist watchdog Israel—to start a new phase of securing control in the Middle East.
Trump, the president property mogul, also said he wanted Gaza to become the “Riviera of the Middle East”. “We’re going to develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it’ll be something that the entire Middle East can be very proud of.”
Trump’s remarks reflect and intensify the crisis of US imperialism in the Middle East and deepen divisions inside the Israeli state.
Netanyahu promised “absolute victory” over Palestinian resistance group Hamas. But the ceasefire deal hammered home Israel’s failure to break the Palestinians after more than 15 months of genocide.
The scenes of Palestinians returning to northern Gaza, and resistance fighters rejoicing, enraged the Zionist state.
There is an emerging power struggle over who would control Gaza in the wake of the ceasefire. The Palestinian Authority (PA), which has controlled the West Bank since 1993 and policed Israel’s occupation, said it is ready to “clash” with Hamas for control over Gaza.
But Trump doesn’t want to outsource control to the PA. When asked about US military intervention in Gaza, Trump said he will “do what is necessary”. Part of that could be the £800 million arms package Trump is readying to send to Israel.
The Israeli far right fantasised about ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Gaza and allowing settlers to grab the land.
But important sections of the Israeli state didn’t want to occupy the Gaza Strip, fearing it would lead to a permanent state of counter-insurgency. Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant—an avowed racist who described Palestinians as “human animals”—represented this “moderate” faction.
He had dismissed talk of absolute victory as “gibberish” and clashed with Netanyahu about how best to murder and oppress the Palestinians. Netanyahu sacked Gallant on the day that Trump won the US presidential election in November.
Gallant has given his first interview since being sacked. The Times of Israel newspaper published released extracts on the same day as Trump’s call for ethnic cleansing. “I think that the Israeli government did not do everything it could have to return the hostages,” he said.
He said the ceasefire deal was the same as one that was proposed in the summer. If that had been accepted, he said, Israel would had to release fewer Palestinian prisoners as part of the hostage swap.
“In practice, we could have gotten the same deal with more hostages, and at a lower price, because 110 terrorists serving life sentences were not in discussions then,” he said.
Gallant says that far right politicians Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich opposed a deal and “dragged the cabinet in their direction”.
But Trump has boosted the likes of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and the other sections of the Israeli state that want to ramp up the genocide.
Trump’s plan has been met with applause by Israel’s government. Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar said it’s necessary to “consider out of the box ideas” and that Trump is simply looking for “another solution”.
Far right finance minister Smotrich said Trump’s plan was the real response to 7 October—and that those who “lost their land” will never regain it. Israeli settlers plastered Tel-Aviv with posters fawning, “Thank you Mr President”.
Trump’s remarks will deepen the crisis of US imperialism in the region.
The Arab regimes, which align with US imperialism, have opposed Israel “transferring” Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt or other states. They fear it would light the touch-paper of revolt across the Middle East.
“Genocide Joe” Biden funded and backed Israel’s genocide, but worried its scale could spark revolt and destabilise other US allies in the region.
There is a great deal of continuity between Biden’s and Trump’s foreign policies—defending US hegemony in an age of growing imperialist competition.
But Trump prefers a much more “go it alone” strategy—and sees US allies as sponging off US largesse and wants them to pay their own way.
Trump famously referred to Egyptian ruler Abdel Fatah el-Sisi as his “favourite dictator” in 2019.
But he wants to bludgeon the Arab states into accepting the ethnic cleansing plan. An Egyptian diplomat told the Middle East Eye media outlet that the regime is preparing for the possibility that the US will suspend the £1.04 billion it gives yearly.
Trump wants to continue the project he started in his last presidency with the Abraham Accords to “normalise relations” between Arab states and Israel. US secretary of state Marco Rubio said Trump’s plan will “Make Gaza Beautiful Again” and restore “lasting peace” in the region.
But the ethnic cleansing of Gaza would unleash a crisis and have the opposite effect.
Saudi Arabia, a crucial US ally and regional imperialist power in the oil-rich Gulf, condemned Trump’s plan and said it will not negotiate with Israel unless an independent state of Palestine was created.
And, more importantly, Trump’s plan could ignite resistance to dictatorship and imperialism across the region.
The Palestinians themselves, wider revolt in the region and resistance in the imperialist states such as the US and Britain are crucial to resisting the Trump plan.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas leader, responded to Trump saying Gazans “would not allow these plans to pass”. Trump was developing a “recipe for creating chaos and tension in the region”.
In Britain, it’s vital to ramp up the resistance and mobilise huge numbers into the streets for the national demonstration on 15 February.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop The War and the other organisers have released a statement. It says, “For more than a year, Israel and its supporters have denied that the true aim of the genocidal assault on Gaza.”
This has been “the destruction of the Palestinian population, and denial of all of their rights including the right to self determination”.
“Backed and supported by the US for its own imperial interests, that objective is now explicit.
“We must act urgently to stop this monstrous plan. This Saturday 8 February we are asking all our supporters to be out mobilising for the 15 February demonstration to the US Embassy.”
Palestine campaigners need “to send a clear message to the British government and to Trump—freedom for Palestine, no to ethnic cleansing, stop arming Israel”, the statement read.
