Australia and the World Past and Present

Even by Trumpian standards it was weird.

Trump says that he wants the US to take over Gaza and turn it into the Riviera of the Middle East.

He said that he doesn’t just want to run Gaza, but he wants the US to own it as well.

He envisions the already destroyed buildings being leveled and some kind of Shangri La rising from the dust and broken concrete.

It raises questions around who is going to do (and benefit from) the rebuilding in Gaza. US companies? Will they find some economic gain in rebuilding of Gaza? Or will it be companies headquartered in various Middle Eastern states? This seems much more likely.

It seems that Trump would love to see the enclave made into some kind of resort town, perhaps in a similar vein to those found in his home state of Florida.

When asked who would live there, he remarked ‘the people of the world’ and then added ‘Palestinians also’.

In a matter of minutes it seems that the decades-old concept of a two-state solution as a means to resolve the Israel-Gaza conflict lay in tatters on the floor.

Theoretically, there would still be the West Bank that could be the basis of a Palestinian state, but the roughly two million Palestinians living in Gaza wouldn’t be too keen on removing Gaza from a future homeland.

Trump had just come out of meeting with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

As off the wall as this proposal is, some in Israel would welcome it.

Attacks on Israel from within Gaza have been a security headache for Israel for decades.

Although Israel receives military support for other countries (particularly the US), it by and large doe it’s own fighting and this means that the Israeli state needs to focus very heavily on defense and all that requires. The country has mandatory military service, something which most developed democracies don’t require.

So what would happen to Palestinians living in Gaza under Trump’s plan?

Well, they would go elsewhere.

How?

Would the US put boots on the ground? They would have to if they wanted the area cleared. This would involve conflict and it would involve US casualties. And why would an American public support the commitment of US soldiers to a conflict that appears peripheral to US interests? Casualties for resort building?

Israel has been fighting Hamas in Gaza for over a year with the most thorough military campaign they could muster and they still haven’t been able to entirely eliminate Hamas.

There is no reason to believe that the US could do better.

Trump would see Palestinians in Gaza go to Egypt or Jordan.

Apparently he hadn’t discussed his plan with these countries. Both countries have said that this is out of the question. No surprise there.

Egypt doesn’t want to host over a million refugees on it’s land. Egypt knows that if it did, the likelihood of them ever going anywhere else is basically nil.

The same goes for Jordan which already has many Palestinian refugees.

Most observers consider that the forced removal of Palestinians would constitute ethnic cleansing under international law.

Some of the hard-right in Israel have advocated for the removal of Palestinians from Gaza and for the settlement of the territory by Israelis. They view the current situation as an unacceptable security threat.

One of the strangest things about Trump’s proposal is that it goes against the stream of his isolationist approach to foreign affairs.

He has been reluctant to get involved in foreign conflicts. This has been approach in word and deed. At least in his first term.

At the beginning of his second term he has raised the prospect of taking over Greenland and taking back the Panama Canal. To date that has been nothing more than talk.

Up to now Trump hasn’t been much interested in building an American Empire. It has been America First, not America Everywhere.

No, it is hard to see this latest Trump proposal going very far. It has created a flurry a media activity and maybe that was the point.