Make no mistake: this is the advancement of an agenda to end the existence of the Palestinian people in their historic homeland, writes Caitlin Johnstone.
Trump in West Palm Beach, Florida, in 2023. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0)
By Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter
Listen to Tim Foley reading this article.
Well that didn’t take long. President Trump has said he wants to “clean out” Gaza and relocate its population to U.S. client states Egypt and Jordan, which would of course be a textbook case of ethnic cleansing.
It would also align perfectly with longstanding Israeli agendas to remove Palestinians from their homeland so that their territory can be seized and settled by Jews.
Speaking with the press on board Air Force One on Saturday, Trump said he talked to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about taking in large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza, and said he plans to speak with Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi about doing the same.
“I’d like Egypt to take people and I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump told reporters, saying the Gaza Strip is “a real mess” and “literally a demolition site”.
“You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said.
The president said that this new arrangement could be either temporary or long-term, but one would have to be extremely naive to believe that either Israel or Washington plan on emptying out Gaza of its inconvenient population, rebuilding it, and then bringing them all back to shiny new homes.
Israel has a very extensive history of grabbing land from Palestinians and then refusing to give it back, which is why there are so-called “refugee camps” for displaced Palestinians that are as old as the state of Israel itself.
“Just five days into his second term as president, Trump left no doubt about what his intentions are for Gaza,” Joe Lauria wrote for Consortium News on Trump’s comments, adding, “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.”
Trump supporters will no doubt defend his stated plans as a compassionate effort to rescue Palestinians from unfortunate circumstances, because Trump supporters are chowder-brained bootlickers who would defend literally anything their president did.
But make no mistake: this is the advancement of an agenda to end the existence of the Palestinian people in their historic homeland, and would fulfill the darkest desires of the most depraved political factions in Israel.
Mere days after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 2023, Israel’s Intelligence Ministry produced a document proposing the removal of Gaza’s population to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
At around the same time, an Israeli think tank called the Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy published a paper arguing that “There is at the moment a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip in coordination with the Egyptian government.”
Since that time both the Israeli government and the Israeli media have gotten much less shy about saying that ethnic cleansing is the plan for Gaza.
A few weeks ago multiple far-right Knesset members wrote a letter to Israeli defense minister Israel Katz demanding the “complete cleansing” of northern Gaza using siege warfare and attacks on civilians to drive the population out of the area.
In November of last year, former Israeli defense minister Moshe Yaalon stated unequivocally that Israel was indeed in the process of ethnically cleansing Gaza. In October, the Israeli outlet Haaretz published an editorial titled “If It Looks Like Ethnic Cleansing, It Probably Is”.
One narrative Israel and its apologists like to push is that this forced mass displacement would be “voluntary migration”, which is ridiculous nonsense.
Obviously if you make a place completely uninhabitable and refuse to rush massive amounts of aid to them so that they can live, you are forcing them to relocate as surely as if you’d forced them at gunpoint. Giving people the choice to relocate or starve is not giving them a choice at all.
Israel’s plan for Gaza once its ethnic cleansing agenda is complete is of course to begin building Jewish settlements there. Last year Israeli forces sparked a minor controversy by sneaking extremist settlement movement leader Daniella Weiss into northern Gaza so that she could scout the land for future use.
Back in April a Knesset member named Limor Son Har-Melech stated on Israeli television that there are secret plans within the Israeli government to settle Gaza after military operations are complete.
This past November numerous Israeli officials attended an event brazenly titled “Preparing to Resettle Gaza,” just in case you needed it spelled out even more clearly where all this appears to be headed.
Trump’s comments help illuminate what he meant when he gushed about all the wonderful things that could be done with Gaza when speaking to the press the other day.
“Gaza’s interesting, it’s a phenomenal location,” he said on Monday. “On the sea, the best weather. Everything’s good. Some beautiful things can be done with it. It’s very interesting. Some fantastic things can be done with it.”
It remains to be seen if Jordan and Egypt can be bribed or coerced into participating in the empire’s ethnic cleansing plans for Gaza, but either way the last word I would use to describe those plans is “fantastic.”
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com.au and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
It’s all heart-breakingly wrong. But the question is, “Who in the world is going to tell Israel to stop its “Greater Israel” project? Any names? I think we know by now that it will not be the US, regardless of what admin is in power. If the Palestinians have been wrong about anything, it has been in thinking or hoping that the US would live up to its ideals as the “world’s leading democracy” and supporter of the “rule of law.” Hopefully that facade can now be put aside.
In over 14 months, especially in the beginning with all of the outrage and revulsion, even then, public opinion could not dissuade the Biden admin from supporting Israel’s actions. All we got was vacuous hand-wringing and deflection. The only way this can change, I would say, is from the bottom up. Instead, we got four years of vacuous memes because Biden was the experienced adult that would lead America back to its true values before the Trump anomaly. And that is just what he did, full speed ahead back on the course of global hegemony to the brink of a nuclear confrontation. Not to mention the ME. Is this not who America is at present?
Saving the Palestinians means transforming the infrastructure of America’s neocon/Zionist foreign policy that has been driving it since WWII and for the last thirty years in particular. That is what it will take. What we are seeing at present is a deep state that operates through all three branches of government completely apart from the public or any semblance of democracy and regardless of what administration is in power whether it be Biden the avowed Zionist or Trump the avowed best friend of Israel.
As predicted: Genocide Joe replaced with another genocidal freak, same ol’ same ol’. Where are the pathetic excuses from the DT apologists now? Instead of bringing gifts and joy for everyone, the Orange Santa Claus brings more mass slaughter, ethnic cleansing and genocide- all funded and supplied by the US of A! But No healthcare for you peasants!
He packs his cabinet with hardcore racist Zionists and the apologists make excuses and offer “hope” that the Orange Saviour will make everything peachy keen with unicorns and rainbows. During the first DT regime, he bent over hard for Israel, more than even Obama, and recognized Golan, moved the US embassy to J-lem etc. There are streets and places named after the DT in Israel, the mass-murdering “settlers” in the West Bank celebrated his “re-election” and are ramping up the genocide against Palestinians in the West Bank now.
Meanwhile, the plans for the Annexation of the West Bank are in motion and the DT is all for it.
And the silly, ridiculous lies and promises to lower our grocery bills by 40% on day one? “There’s a sucker born every minute”
Unfortunately for Israel, Egypt refused to
‘Take in’ Gazans in late 2023 which is quite
Clearly what Israel hoped would happen.
(Remembering that Gaza City residents
Were given all of 24 hours to evacuate).
But The Donald is not wrong to call Gaza
a ‘demolition site’ because it clearly is.
That’s on the Israelis and the enabling
Biden admin (aka the feckless duo of
A. Blinken and J. Sullivan). Trump was
Able to sit out the carnage and come in
Now posing as a Savior. But the sad fact
Of the matter is, Gaza is literally uninhabitable.
And Israel looks like it’s (already) trying to
Violate the cease-fire. Something does have
To be done to help the Gazan people, but
They cannot exist in a destroyed environment.