How much weirder can this get? So far foreign policy experts, particularly those who are expert on the Middle East, are banging their heads on their desks and asking that exact same thing. Trump, in his usual hyper-simplistic way of formulating solutions to everything, has come up with a plan: 1. Get all the people on the Gaza strip relocated; 2. Do not allow them back; 3. Turn Gaza into the “Riviera Of The Middle East.” He’s serious as a heart attack about all this, evidently not the least bit cognizant of the fact that what he’s talking about, in essence, is invading a sovereign foreign nation. How is he going to do that without the military? And if he brings in the military, then Americans are going to get killed, right? New York Times:
President Trump said on Monday that he could cut aid to Jordan and Egypt if they refused his demand to permanently take in most Palestinians from Gaza, substantially increasing the pressure on key allies in the region to back his audacious proposal to relocate the entire population of the territory in order to redevelop it.
“If they don’t agree, I would conceivably withhold aid,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office a day ahead of a meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan.
Both Jordan and Egypt have rejected any suggestion that Palestinians be relocated to their countries.
Mr. Trump doubled down on the idea of forced displacement of roughly two million Palestinians, a move that some scholars have said would amount to a war crime and ethnic cleansing. In an interview with Fox News broadcast on Monday, Mr. Trump said he did not envision Palestinians who left Gaza to make way for the redevelopment plan ever returning.
War crime, ethnic cleansing, invasion of sovereign territory, kidnapping, modern day Trail Of Tears, the beat goes on. And the only person who can’t grasp the enormity of what’s being said is the orange doofus in the Oval Office. To him these are simple moves on a Monopoly board: you just get rid of the people, let Trump put up a lot of hotels, and what could go wrong?
The president said from the White House that if Hamas did not release all the remaining Israeli hostages by midday on Saturday, the cease-fire agreement with Israel should be canceled.
“All hell is going to break out,” Mr. Trump said, while acknowledging that the choice over ending the cease-fire ultimately fell to Israel.
So is Trump now speaking on behalf of Israel? This is getting more out of control by the minute.
“What Mr. Trump has done is put the future of the Kingdom of Jordan on the line,” said Khalil Jahshan, the executive director of the Arab Center Washington D.C. “The strongest political movement in Jordan does not accept the idea that Jordan is Palestine.”
A forced relocation of a few million people is never a good idea. It didn’t work out well for Andrew Jackson when he did it to the Cherokees and this proposition of Trump’s is going to be many times worse than what the Trail Of Tears was.
Here is what people who actually know something about this issue are saying:
- Jordan and Egypt have said no. Trump may think he can blackmail them but that’s usually not a good negotiating tool;
- There is no way Trump can get the U.S. military involved without Americans losing lives;
- Escalating the conflict in the Middle East to include a forced relocation, ethnic cleansing of Gaza is a catastrophically bad idea;
- The main question now is “Who is going to talk Trump out of it?” Probably Marco Rubio. He’s a bit out of his depth but nowhere near what Pete Hegseth is.
- If Trump seeks to blackmail Jordan and Egypt, then what he is doing is forcing yet another global realignment.
- Which would be a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe.
I say we find Little Marco and see what he has to say. He’s probably hiding under the bed if he’s got any sense. Trump has put him — and America — in a horrific position. But somebody rational has to deal with this and right now Rubio is the obvious choice.
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How is Trump going to blackmail Egypt and Jordan over “aid” that the Muskrat is probably going to cut anyway in the name of “government efficiency?” I think that the leaders (both their heads of state/government and their legislative bodies) will recognize that Trump can’t be held to keep ANY promises that don’t benefit *him* so, even if they were to agree to take in the millions of Palestinians displaced by Trump’s arrogant actions, they’d find their aid cut anyways. (“Withholding” and “cutting” are two completely different concepts. They are related but the results are different. He could easily cut their aid by 99% which *technically* is not “withholding” the aid; they’re still getting aid, just not the level they were promised or expecting.)
He says he wants to buy Gaza and redevelop it, but from whom would he buy it? Of the two million Palestinians who lived there before the war, let’s say one out of five of those two million owned apartments and their average equity in their homes was $200,000. By my calculation that would mean the US would have to put up $80 trillion to buy them out. Not going to happen anytime soon, especially with the Eloninator running the Treasury.
If trump tries to annex the strip by force he’ll put American lives at stake, not only going in, but also during the re-building, because out of those displaced masses will come thousands of new Hamas recruits who have sworn on their mothers’ graves to destroy those who stole their land and ruined their lives. trump won’t be building luxury hotels and casinos, he’ll be building expensive drone targets.
He’s assuming Jordan and Egypt would be crippled without our aid. Jordan sure as hell wouldn’t be. Yes, they buy a lot of their weaponry from us but nothing they can’t get (including parts) from other countries that are also allies of ours. For now at least. Egypt can of course turn to the Saudis and Jared’s pals if need be. Yeah, Rubio is in over his head but then maybe that’s the point. I wrote yesterday about how former RNC Chair and now never Trump pundit Michael Steele says Trump picked Rubio to punk him. In effect give “Little Marco” a “swirly” in his fake gold toilet knowing the time would come when Rubio would be forced to NOT back him 100 percent. And then face the Sessions treatment until forced into a humiliating early retirement. Only it will be worse for Rubio who will never win a GOP primary if he tries to get his old Senate seat back. As with Sessions Trump will have trashed him so badly he’d lose. Better still from Trump’s perspective is Rubio is younger than Sessions was, and unlike Sessions who saw being AG as the capstone of his career Rubio had (and has) Presidential ambitions.
I’m also not sure how regular Israelis feel about Trump taking over a swath of THEIR country even if it means driving out Palestinians. If he’s not careful Trumpty could provoke the fall of Netanyahu and the Likud Party for the time being.
Maybe it’s the poet in me…but this seems to rhyme with Hitler staring his annexation program, invading Poland, Austria, etc. Frankenstein’s monster is raging through the village. How long has it been? A few weeks? Damn!
Palestinians are brown skinned, so they aren’t actually people to him. He may grant human status to.rich Arabs, but the average guy just doesn’t matter. And yes, this is all.a board game to.him.