Says he is asking Jordan and Egypt to take as many as 1.5 million Gazans in what would be an historic act of the crime of ethnic cleansing, reports Joe Lauria.
King Abdullah II of Jordan, left, and President Donald J. Trump, in 2017 at the White House. (White House/Shealah Craighead)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
U.S. President Donald Trump said he has asked King Abdullah II of Jordan to help “clean out” more than a million people from Gaza.
“You’re talking about a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said he told Abdullah in a phone conversation. “Over the centuries it’s had many, many conflicts. And I don’t know, something has to be done.”
The president said he would speak with Egyptian leader Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Sunday to ask the same thing.
“I said to [Abdullah], ‘I’d love you take on more,’ because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess,” Trump told reporters on board Air Force One on Saturday. “I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people.”
Egypt has repeatedly told Israel since the latter’s genocide began in October 2023 that it would not take Palestinians from Gaza. A majority of Jordan’s population are already descendants of Palestinians displaced by Israel beginning in 1948. Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said Jordan’s opposition to such a plan was “firm and unwavering,” Reuters reported.
US President Trump to the King of Jordan: Move a million and a half Palestinians from the ruins in Gaza to Jordan and Egypt : “It’s about moving a million and a half people, and we’ll…
— Mossad Commentary (@MOSSADil) January 26, 2025
The Jordanian readout of the call with Trump said that Abdullah “stressed the pivotal role of the U.S. in pushing all sides to work towards achieving peace, security, and stability for all in the region.”
Just five days into his second term as president, Trump left no doubt about what his intentions are for Gaza.
He tried to present what he was saying as humanitarian concern, but only the most ill-informed person about Gaza would not see that he is talking about committing the crime of forcibly relocating a population.
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.
A Demolition Site
Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on Oct. 9, 2023, just two days into the genocide. (Naaman Omar apaimages/Wikimedia Commons)
“It’s literally a demolition site,” Trump said of Gaza, which essentially has undergone an Israeli urban renewal plan with the people still living in the buildings.
“Almost everything is demolished and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” Trump said.
Building housing “at a different location” means they will never return to Gaza.
On Monday, speaking like the New York real estate mogul that he is, Trump referred to Gaza as “a phenomenal location.”
“That place has to be rebuilt in a different way,” he said.
“You know, Gaza is interesting, it’s a phenomenal location, on the sea,” he went on with a slight smile. “The best weather, you know, everything is good. It’s like some beautiful things could be done, but it’s very interesting.”
These comments are in line with the most extreme sentiments of Israeli leaders who want Gaza cleansed of Arabs and repopulated with Israelis.
“Autocrats do not care about human life: they think in the aggregate and see people as assets to exploit,” said New York University historian Ruth Ben-Chiat on X. “A clean out, in autocratic terms, often means mass death and deportation.”
Autocrats do not care about human life: they think in the aggregate and see people as assets to exploit. A clean out, in autocratic terms, often means mass death and deportation. https://t.co/Iv1KbTsHzE
— Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat) January 26, 2025
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister called Trump’s plan a “wonderful idea.” He said “only outside-the-box thinking over new solutions will bring … peace and security,” the Financial Times reported.
Francesca Albanese, the U.N.’s special rapporteur for the Occupied Territories, said, “Ethnic cleansing is anything but an ‘out-of the box’ thinking … No matter how one packages it … It is illegal, immoral and irresponsible.”
Ethnic cleansing is anything but an “out-of the box” thinking, no matter how one packages it. It is illegal, immoral and irresponsible. https://t.co/GhuHNOEo49
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) January 26, 2025
On Monday, Trump also said he was “not confident” the ceasefire would hold. On Saturday he released delivery of 2,000 lb. bunker buster bombs that Israel has used on civilian areas.
The Biden administration had delayed delivery as an attempt to show “concern” for civilians during the election run.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former 25-year U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.
TRUMP … the liberal Netanyahu!
“Bring ‘em, to America. With all due respect, “the pivotal role of the U.S. in pushing all sides to work towards achieving peace, security, and stability for all in the region,” blows!!! Basically, the Leader of the “free” world, executes diplomacy by arm-twisting. Nobody, need twist my rubber arm to hand-deliver, if, I could, a framed, “Piece Plan,” by Mr. Fish to Mr. President. “So, you might not know exactly how [we] feel; but, it’s like [we’re] stuck inside a painting that’s hanging in the Louvre. My throat starts to tickle and my nose itches. But I know that I can’t move.” Bob Dylan.
The ask, “Mr. President, Make It Whole!!!” For example, “A Plan to Save, Palestine.” Give the Palestinians, what they want, Statehood. End the Occupation!! Tear down those f/fences. In sum, “Hands Off.”
The owl asks, “WHO, other than Trump, oughta give the Palestinians the option to “live” in the Divided $tates of Corporate America, if, it be his/her desire?” The bird tweets, “we” have been led to believe “the land of the free; &, the home of the brave,” is “The Melting Pot.” A land of opportunity where many, many, many homeless, roam; &, @ any give time of the day, ordered to “Fall in Line;” (Like in Palestine); OR, everything gets scooped up! Literally, in my City, women, men, children, living on the sidewalk, are given 4 minutes to pack up their sidewalk encampment & move on. Any pushback, “Waste Management” moves in w/one giant scoop, relocating the unwanted.”
No doubt, President Trump, sans his “City’s WM’ Vest,” has “fallen in line.” Ralph Nader calls it, *“Energy Levels by GOP Produce Victories Over Democrats,” i.e., “Over thirty years ago, Republican historian and political analyst, Kevin Phillips, remarked that the “Republicans go for the jugular while the Democrats go for the capillaries.” DJTrump, a Billionaire, Real Estate developer, a Golfer, a Corporatist, fka #45, has been vilified, scrutinized, demonized, hated & beloved, nka #47; AND, he’s back, w/a vengeance & a fury, on high f/speed, w/orders to, “Go, Fi$h!” Consequently, President Trump, “the elephant in the room,” baits his hook, trolling the universe.
President Trump & Company, f/know, “the heart, is the marketplace,” i.e., 1) “I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” 2)….. “not confident” the ceasefire would hold.” 3)… “a lot of those things were ordered, paid for by Israel,” JRBiden “forgot” to send.
Obviously, Biden’s lack of oxygen, impaired his physical & mental abilities to “Drive Results” or doing anything, outside of money laundering, hanging medals, promoting “freedom” from accountability, larping along, i.e., Pardonning his whole fam damily + his toxic Republican & Democrat homies. 15 minutes later, Biden, pale, stiff, medicated, corpse like, shuffled into the front row. Biden’s stone cold eyes glazed over DJTrump’s swearing-in ceremony, burying BIDEN-HARRIS, for f/ever!!!
It’s true, it’s better to know the devil you know than the devil you don’t. “Truth does not change, only our awareness of it.”
TY, Joe Lauria, CN, et al. Ciao.
* 11.27.24 hxxps://nader.org/2024/11/28/greater-energy-levels-by-gop-produce-victories-over-democrats/
Look ,all Trump knows is “grift”. He wants to build casinos and hotels on that beach.
This clown is not that difficult to figure out folks.
If I read on more time, “Well I voted for Trump, but I didn’t okay genocide . . . .!”, or some other BS, I’m gonna. puke.
Everybody sitting around wondering what happened simply needs to go back to 2010 when the lame ass SCOTUS reversed the Citizens United ruling.
This is what considering money as free speech looks like. Maybe great for the billionaires but it is not good for anything else. Wake the hell up!
Two things just happened: the U.S, sent 2000 lb bombs to Israel and someone managed to get a huge number of Palestinians out into the streets of Gaza.
Would the flabby knock-kneed grifter consider taking some into his neighborhood? If he is seriously concerned with cleaning out the whole thing he would start with Nuttyahu and his Cabinet.
Trump seems to have a HUGE problem with simple math. Original population of Gaza 2.3 million. The Lancet estimates at least over 100,000 Palestinians have been killed since the outset. So Trump wants to move 1.5 million. What are his plans for the other 700,000?
In Ukraine he asserts 1 million Russians have been killed as well as 700,000 Ukrainians. And Putin is supposed to take this man seriously. Quite apart from stating Russia “ helped” the US win WW2.
As a Canadian his numbers concerning trade imbalance are absolutely bogus. He calls trade surpluses “ subsidies “.
They are not. If you take out oil and gas we deliver to the US we actually have a negative imbalance. And it’s not 100 billion in our favour it’s 40 billion. Is that our fault that the US needs more oil than it produces. No wonder he wants us to be the 51st. state. No thank you very much . Trudeau is a clown no question. But Trump? He’d be fine except for his blind spot being a Zionist shill. I pray that he doesn’t further mess up his talks with Putin.
Please Professors Sachs and Merscheimer arrange some re-education for this historically illiterate bull in a china shop.
He puts your views about Netanyahu on Truth Social then makes these confounding declarations off the cuff. Surely he can’t be this misguided? Can he?
How can human trash like this one be president of anything…
does this offer some hope ?
hxxps://akipress.com/news:815987:Israel_to_allow_Gaza_residents_to_return_north_starting_from_January_27_-_Qatari_diplomat/
Hope for what? That the Israelis would allow the Palestinians to rebuild their homes and live there again? Not likely, given what we’ve seen so far. Actually, the sight of tens (or hundreds) of thousands of defenseless Palestinians walking around unprotected on the streets of northern Gaza fills me with apprehension.
mr. black
That is understandale . I want this to stop .Hope despair are bed partners.
I “spout” as if I may see some light at this in the distance .
I can sense futility based on ceasefires history .
i can empathize the “out of frying pan into fire ” with this analogy .
imagine , vicarioulsy . falling through the ice , somehow you escape the freezing water , now standibg on hard ground as scared and hopeless now in the freezing cold ,soaking wet .
some temporary relief only to realixe it seems as bad or worse .
Now you hope for warmth , all alone , wondering if the help that comes offers a blanket or dry clothes , praying they will help and not push you back in .
i don’t know wht to say but know what I would do . We have hope in common and uderstand my saying this is but a rag .
forgive me
It is probably a good thing that the newly (re-)incumbent POTUS does not appear to be aware of one previous equivalent of the same “Madagascar Plan” type of strategy that he is contemplating in Jordan and Egypt (at least unless or until the most extremist factions of Kahanists attempt to have Israel subsume major portions of those countries as well in accordance with the Oded Yinon Plan). In that case, Israel attempted to implement a comparable act of mass ethnic cleansing in collusion with Paraguay under the dictatorship of the brutal Alfredo Stroessner (María Teresa Hernández, “Paraguay’s Disappeared: A Dictator’s Shadow is a Roadblock for Justice, But a Few Keep Up the Fight,” The Associated Press, Jan. 26, 2025, and Eitay Mack, “With Its New Embassy in Jerusalem, Bibi Will Ignore Paraguay’s Nazi Past,” +972 Magazine, May 27, 2018). Were Trump aware of this, he might try to pull a reverse Rutherford B. Hayes (John Otis, “The Place Where Rutherford B. Hayes Is A Really Big Deal,” National Public Radio (NPR), Oct. 30, 2014), and resurrect “gunboat diplomacy” of the Roosevelt Corollary variety to foist an ethnically-cleansed Palestinian population back on to Paraguayans, rhetorically purporting that they are not fulfilling their end of an ill-considered bargain:
“Unclassified minutes of a secret Israeli cabinet meeting held 51 years ago reveal that Israel planned a massive transfer of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to the tiny Latin American country of Paraguay [as a side note, not coincidentally the location of the 1970 attack on the Israeli embassy in Asunción – see John Tofik Karam, “Anti-Semitism from the Standpoint of its Arab Victims in a South American Border Zone,” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 6, no. 2 (2011): 141-167].
[…]
At the time the accord was ratified, Paraguayan tyrant Alfredo Stroessner was 15 years into what would become the longest dictatorship in Latin American history and was better known for sheltering top Nazi officers than for welcoming refugees. Notorious SS doctor Josef Mengele was among the Third Reich élite who fled to Paraguay after World War II. Stroessner’s interest in the Palestinian immigrants was likely connected to his nation’s urgent need for agricultural workers who could help pull his cash-strapped and resource-poor nation into subsistence.
Details of the scheme confirm long-held Palestinian claims that Israel, from its inception, wanted only to rid itself of the native Arabs living on land under its rule.”
Source:
Noga Tarnopolsky, “Unclassified Docs Show Israel’s Secret Plan to Ship 60K Palestinians to Latin America,” The Daily Beast, Aug. 13, 2020
Here’s the thing, even if the Jewish supremacists succeed in their heinous and repulsive ethnic cleansing of 1.5 million Palestinians, there still won’t be peace.
The paranoid land-grabbing arrogant creepy sadistic Jewish supremacists will merely begin to make violence on Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, Syria and anywhere else it deems a target. They have designs on creating Greater Israel at virtually whatever the cost.
Relative peace will only come to the Middle East when the Jewish supremacists are kicked back to Eastern Europe, Brooklyn, Philly, and Russia.
In other words, another ethnic cleansing?
Funny way to define it. They have no claim to the land. They’ve caused nothing but problems.
Keeping the vast majority of Jewish supremacists in an area where they don’t belong will only prolong war and misery for the Arab and Muslim people throughout the entire region.
Helen Thomas was right.
The solution of one state in all of historic Palestine, with one person, one vote, Jew and Arab, may seem unattainable now, but so too is expelling Jews from historic Palestine unattainable, and it would also be illegal.
While many present inhabitants of Israel (and its occupied territories in Gaza and the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria) are Jews of Ashkenazi descent whose traceable known ancestors have their roots in North-Central and Eastern Europe, a certain portion of Israeli Jews are Musta’arabim whose ancestors always resided in the MENA region in general and the Southern Levant in particular, having little to no historical connection with Europe and its overseas colonies, while a significant amount of others are the descendants of Sephardic Jewish refugees who fled persecution in the Iberian Peninsula (present-day Spain and Portugal) during the Reconquista and were granted shelter by the Ottoman Empire, thereby having roots in the MENA region that trace back to the 1400s and 1500s.
Even early Zionist settlers from Europe who arrived in Ottoman-controlled Palestine and the Southern Levant between the era of the Tanzimat reforms and the period of the First World War tended neither to propagate nor experience intra-communal violence with the preexisting and predominantly Arab populations, be they Muslims, Christians, Druze, or otherwise, with isolated exceptions (despite some nascent extremism from the likes of Israel Shochat on the one hand, and Muhammad Rashid Rida on the other). It was arguably only the triple whammy of the Balfour Declaration (1917), the failure of the Feisal-Weizmann Agreement (1919), and the outcome of the San Remo Conference (1920) that triggered the violent conflict between Arabs and the Yishuv in Mandatory Palestine (and thereafter the Arab-Israeli conflict) from the 1920s onward.
CN.com, I understand and accept your point…but I also agree with Drew’s first sentence. As long as Jewish supremacists and Zionists (including Christian Zionists) believe themselves to be above other human beings….as ordained by their God…there will never be peace… until they achieve complete world domination.
The solution calls for Jews and Zionists to willingly accept and proclaim their desire to live among other humans as equals, first and foremost….with no elite perpetual birth rights or possessions per some ancient club charter.
Genocide Joe, or Orange Genocide. That’s your choice. Even here on CN there are commenters who apologize, make pathetic excuses, and believe in fairy tales about the Adelson/Musk/DT regime. Despite the cheap PR stunts and endless bullshit, the two factions are exactly the same. I miss George Carlin because he used unambiguous Plain English to accurately describe things, we can imagine what he would say about Genocide Joe and Orange Genocide DT
I am not sure that Hamas would be willing to go along with such a plan.
Besides, once Trump acquires Greenland, everything will be fine…
I have a suggestion for President Trump to address where the now homeless Gazan Palestinians can be moved to: let’s get rid of all the hundreds of thousands of illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank and have the homeless and displaced Palestinians of Gaza move into all the units of modern housing created thereby. An enlarged West Bank could be the contiguous Palestinian state that has been the aim all along, right?
Who could say no to this deal of a century?
That is some more appropriate “out of the box” thinking. Let the Palestinians have their original homes and land back that they legally own. At least along the 1965 agreements, if not before. Perhaps the Israeli interlopers can go stay in majorly Arab countries and learn to live peacably and respectably alongside fellow human beings much more tolerable than themselves. Not likely they would be welcomed either, but what would that shoe feel like on the other foot?
“…Perhaps the Israeli interlopers can go stay in majorly Arab countries …”
perhaps the israelis could go settle in maralago. or germany. Or poland. …
my sentiments exactly and or let them stay within Israel itself (plenty of room – close to a million Jews have fled to Europe and the USA) until Gaza is rebuilt. Would love to hear the reasoning (excuse) behind why this is NOT feasible.
If anyone should be expelled, it would be the illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. That would free up instantly available housing for a large portion of homeless Gazan Palestinians, and eliminate the fracturing of Palestinian West Bank territory.
Yes, but that’s not gonna happen unfortnately.
just don’t listen to the conniving conman. (Sorry, conman and felon.)
The definition of genocide includes the forced removal of a people from their homeland. Trump is advocating genocide.
Zionists are obviously machines controlled by AI. There is NO human feeling or intelligence in Trump or his Zionist sidekicks.