As protesters chanted “Palestine is Not for Sale” outside, President Donald Trump stood with indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, the first foreign head of state to visit the White House this term, and 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.
That 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 claimed. “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.
As Riyad Mansour, the leader of the Palestinian delegation to the United Nations, said, Palestinians’ wishes to rebuild Gaza themselves should be respected but if anyone was looking for a “happy place,” he added, “let them go back, you know, to their original homes inside Israel. There are nice places there, and they will be happy to return to these places.” Of course the legally mandated right of return is an unspeakable concept for Israel or the United States.
Trump had previously suggested 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 statements, since reiterated, call 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 and real estate mogul, also said “we are going to develop it” and that he wanted Gaza to become the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former advisor, first proposed the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza in March 2024, gloating that its beachfront property could be very valuable.
But this is more than an absurd Trump development scheme. However ill-thought out, it is a proposal to continue the genocide and finish the Nakba. Trump’s secretary of state Marco Rubio said absurdly said Trump’s plan will “Make Gaza Beautiful Again” and restore “lasting peace” in the region. This is the same Marco Rubio who has railed that “Israel cannot be expected to co-exist with these savages. They have to be eradicated.”
Crisis and Divisions
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.
Trump’s comments caused confusion and divisions in Congress, beyond the usual tortured and surprised support of Trump by Republicans, and criticism from several Democrats who had backed genocide in Gaza throughout Biden’s term. Going further, Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman said Trump’s “provocative” idea to take over the Gaza Strip was “part of the conversation,” and that he was OK with US troops on the ground to support it. The use of US troops was criticized by the Republican Senator Rand Paul, a right-wing libertarian from Kentucky.
Although Trump had talked of finding an “area to resettle people permanently,” his Press Secretary Leavitt attempted to walk that back, repeating Trump’s idea of “relocation,” but claiming it would be “temporary.” However, On Airforce One, going to the Superbowl on Sunday, he told reporters “I think that it’s a big mistake to allow people — the Palestinians, or the people living in Gaza — to go back yet another time.” In an interview with Fox released Monday, Trump is asked if Palestinians would be allowed to return to Gaza under his plan, and Trump replies “No, they wouldn’t” and talks of making a “deal” with Jordan and Egypt.
The Israeli far right fantasised about ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Gaza and allowing settlers to grab the land.
Israel’s fascistic finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who has called for the removal of Palestinians and end of the cease-fire, thanked Trump, vowed that those who “lost their land” will never regain it, and tweeted “Together, we will make the world great again” flanked by Israeli and American flags. Israeli settlers plastered Tel-Aviv with posters fawning, “Thank you Mr President.”
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. Gallant had dismissed talk of absolute victory as “gibberish”and believes, like many Israeli generals, it is easier to keep the Gaza strip as an isolated open air prison camp for Palestinians kicked out of their homes elsewhere, while the oppression continues.
The US had previously opposed Israel “transferring” Palestinians to Arab states such as Egypt, fearing it would destabilize those regimes. State Department employees still in the region’s US embassies have, unsuccessfully, tried to convince Trump transfer is not in the long term interest of the US.
But Netanyahu sacked Gallant on the day that Trump won the US presidential election in November. And 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.”
The next day, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered his army to prepare “exit options” for the “voluntary departure” of residents from Gaza, and stated “I welcome the bold initiative of U.S. president Trump, which could allow a large portion of Gaza’s population to relocate to various destinations worldwide.”
Imperialism
As the US Palestinian Youth Movement stated, “It is US imperialism and its alliance with Zionism that has turned Gaza into what Trump calls a “demolition site,” with Trump’s stated goals being a continuation of the US imperialist project.”
Israel has been a visious watchdog for Western Imperialism since its foundation, but the relationship has not alwayse been easy. Trump’s remarks will deepen the crisis of US imperialism in the region.
The Arab regimes, which align with US imperialism, have publicly 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 “favorite 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 $1.3 billion it gives yearly. And Trump has suggested using U.S. aid to Jordan as a similar threat. He is meeting with King Abdullah Tuesday.
Trump wants to continue the project he started in his last presidency with the Abraham Accords to “normalize relations” between Arab states and Israel.
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.
Resistance
More importantly, Trump’s plan could ignite resistance to dictatorship and imperialism across the region. As former negotiator Daniel Levy said on Democracy Now!, “perhaps Israel’s greatest Achilles’ heel would be if it actually falls for the idea that America is all-powerful.”
The Palestinians themselves, wider revolt in the region and resistance in the imperialist states (especially here in the US) 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.”
As Trump stood with Netanyahu and made his Gaza statement, hundreds of demonstrators raged outside, symbolically calling for the arrest of war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, and demanding the US stop supplying weapons to Israel.
The wave of protests in solidarity with Gaza seen in the US, and around the world, must be continued and expanded. This includes ongoing campaigns for BDS, attending and publicizing existing local rallies and marches, and working to bring coalitions of opposition together.
McCarthyite tactics under the Biden administration, including violence and suspensions of students and firing faculty for publicly opposing genocide, helped wind down the Gaza encampments on campuses. Trump is building on this with attempts to deport foreign students involved. But the anger is still there, and demonstrations continue. As the initial discombobulation with Trump’s “shock and awe” first days wears off, we are seeing pockets of resistance emerging. The Palestinian Youth Movement, in a statement on Trump’s election, called for a mass movement and bringing together the “various targets of the Trump administration” around a shared vision. Palestine will continue to be a focus of this resistance, and Trump’s recent statements could reignite larger mobilizations.
Both major parties in the US are wedded to US imperialism, and see the role Israel can play in supporting that. But the demonstrations here have made a difference, with a majority of the US now sympathetic to the Palestinians and against what Israel is doing – and a growing minority (including many Jewish Americans) clearly and firmly opposed to the Zionist project. Continued agitation, combined with revolt in the region, can make the links to the Zionist entity more trouble than it is worth to the ruling class.
Palestine campaigners everywhere need to send a clear message Trump and the Democrats, freedom for Palestine, no to ethnic cleansing, stop arming Israel.
Adapted and updated by Marx21 US from a 2/5 article in Socialist Worker by Arthur Townend.
Marx21 US 