FINAL SOLUTION TO GET BEACH FRONT PROPERTY
By AFP
January 26, 2025
US President Donald Trump speaks with the press, alongside White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (R), on board Air Force One
- Copyright AFP Mandel NGAN
Mandel Ngan with Danny Kemp in Washington
US President Donald Trump floated a plan Saturday to “just clean out” Gaza, and said he wants Egypt and Jordan to take Palestinians from the territory in a bid to create Middle East peace.
Describing Gaza as a “demolition site” after the Israel-Hamas war, Trump said he had spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about the issue and expected to talk to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday.
“I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
“You’re talking about probably a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing. You know, over the centuries it’s had many, many conflicts that site. And I don’t know, something has to happen.”
The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced, often multiple times, by the war that began with Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Trump said moving Gaza’s inhabitants could be “temporarily or could be long term.”
“It’s literally a demolition site right now, almost everything is demolished and people are dying there,” added Trump.
“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.”
A fragile truce and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas — which was signed on the last day of former US president Joe Biden’s administration but which Trump has claimed credit for — has entered its second week.
– Bomb shipment released –
Trump’s new administration has promised “unwavering support” for Israel, without yet laying out details of its Middle East policy.
Trump confirmed on Saturday that he had ordered the Pentagon to release a shipment of 2,000-lb bombs for Israel which was blocked by his predecessor Biden.
“We released them. We released them today,” Trump said. “They paid for them and they’ve been waiting for them for a long time.”
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has left much of the Palestinian territory in ruins, with infrastructure destroyed, and the United Nations estimates reconstruction will take many years.
In October during his presidential campaign, former real estate developer Trump said that war-torn Gaza could be “better than Monaco” if it was “rebuilt the right way.”
Trump’s son-in-law and former White House employee Jared Kushner suggested in February that Israel empty Gaza of civilians to unlock the potential of its “waterfront property.”
For Palestinians, any attempt to move them from Gaza would evoke dark historical memories of what the Arab world calls the “Nakba” or catastrophe — the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation 75 years ago.
Israel has denied having any plans to force Gazans to move.
But some extreme-right members of the Israeli government have publicly supported the idea of Gazans leaving the Palestinian territory en masse.
US President Donald Trump floated a plan Saturday to “just clean out” Gaza, and said he wants Egypt and Jordan to take Palestinians from the territory in a bid to create Middle East peace.
Describing Gaza as a “demolition site” after the Israel-Hamas war, Trump said he had spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about the issue and expected to talk to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday.
“I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
“You’re talking about probably a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing. You know, over the centuries it’s had many, many conflicts that site. And I don’t know, something has to happen.”
The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced, often multiple times, by the war that began with Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Trump said moving Gaza’s inhabitants could be “temporarily or could be long term.”
“It’s literally a demolition site right now, almost everything is demolished and people are dying there,” added Trump.
“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.”
A fragile truce and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas — which was signed on the last day of former US president Joe Biden’s administration but which Trump has claimed credit for — has entered its second week.
– Bomb shipment released –
Trump’s new administration has promised “unwavering support” for Israel, without yet laying out details of its Middle East policy.
Trump confirmed on Saturday that he had ordered the Pentagon to release a shipment of 2,000-lb bombs for Israel which was blocked by his predecessor Biden.
“We released them. We released them today,” Trump said. “They paid for them and they’ve been waiting for them for a long time.”
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has left much of the Palestinian territory in ruins, with infrastructure destroyed, and the United Nations estimates reconstruction will take many years.
In October during his presidential campaign, former real estate developer Trump said that war-torn Gaza could be “better than Monaco” if it was “rebuilt the right way.”
Trump’s son-in-law and former White House employee Jared Kushner suggested in February that Israel empty Gaza of civilians to unlock the potential of its “waterfront property.”
For Palestinians, any attempt to move them from Gaza would evoke dark historical memories of what the Arab world calls the “Nakba” or catastrophe — the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation 75 years ago.
Israel has denied having any plans to force Gazans to move.
But some extreme-right members of the Israeli government have publicly supported the idea of Gazans leaving the Palestinian territory en masse.
Trump makes first big foreign policy blunder with 'clean out' remark: analyst
Matthew Chapman
January 27, 2025
Matthew Chapman
January 27, 2025
RAW STORY
President Donald Trump kicked a hornet's nest when he suggested "cleaning out" Gaza of Palestinians and resettling them in Jordan and Egypt to completely redevelop the land for new settlers, wrote foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius for The Washington Post — a move experts have said would amount to a massive ethnic cleansing project, and which Ignatius believes is a massive blunder for his foreign policy right out of the gate.
The idea of resettling Palestinians without granting a right of return to lands they were removed from during the founding of the modern Israeli state has a long and controversial history, with neighboring Arab countries fearful of the consequences for their own stability as well as the precedent it would set in international law.
When Trump told reporters Gaza is “literally a demolition site right now,” and he could work with Arab nations to "build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change," it may have "represented a personal impulse more than a planned policy," wrote Ignatius. "But the offhand public statement astonished moderate Arab leaders who had been looking forward to working with him. Relocation of Palestinians could destabilize moderate Arab governments across the region. Trump enjoys being a disruptor, but this was closer to tossing a grenade."
Not only is it a firestorm for foreign policy, it has also prompted immediate pushback from Trump's own Arab-American supporters in domestic politics, Ignatius noted, with Arab Americans for Trump chair Bishara Bahbah saying, “We categorically reject the president’s suggestion that the Palestinians in Gaza be moved — apparently forcefully — to either Egypt or Jordan. We don’t need wildish claims or statements relating to the fate of the Palestinians.”
"By lighting new fires in the region, Trump reduces his ability to dampen the flames already there. And as a president who prizes the appearance of independence, he risks appearing a captive of the most right-wing factions in Israel, who have been among the few advocates of forcibly relocating Palestinians from Gaza," wrote Ignatius. Moreover, "With his omnidirectional barrage, Trump is starting more battles than he will be able to finish. The first directive in war is usually to concentrate fire rather than scattering it — and achieve your objectives one by one."
Not all of Trump's foreign policy ideas are necessarily terrible, Ignatius concluded. But "he risks his good ideas by advancing a volley of bad ones, with an unfocused approach that increasingly looks like everything, everywhere, all at once."
President Donald Trump kicked a hornet's nest when he suggested "cleaning out" Gaza of Palestinians and resettling them in Jordan and Egypt to completely redevelop the land for new settlers, wrote foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius for The Washington Post — a move experts have said would amount to a massive ethnic cleansing project, and which Ignatius believes is a massive blunder for his foreign policy right out of the gate.
The idea of resettling Palestinians without granting a right of return to lands they were removed from during the founding of the modern Israeli state has a long and controversial history, with neighboring Arab countries fearful of the consequences for their own stability as well as the precedent it would set in international law.
When Trump told reporters Gaza is “literally a demolition site right now,” and he could work with Arab nations to "build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change," it may have "represented a personal impulse more than a planned policy," wrote Ignatius. "But the offhand public statement astonished moderate Arab leaders who had been looking forward to working with him. Relocation of Palestinians could destabilize moderate Arab governments across the region. Trump enjoys being a disruptor, but this was closer to tossing a grenade."
Not only is it a firestorm for foreign policy, it has also prompted immediate pushback from Trump's own Arab-American supporters in domestic politics, Ignatius noted, with Arab Americans for Trump chair Bishara Bahbah saying, “We categorically reject the president’s suggestion that the Palestinians in Gaza be moved — apparently forcefully — to either Egypt or Jordan. We don’t need wildish claims or statements relating to the fate of the Palestinians.”
"By lighting new fires in the region, Trump reduces his ability to dampen the flames already there. And as a president who prizes the appearance of independence, he risks appearing a captive of the most right-wing factions in Israel, who have been among the few advocates of forcibly relocating Palestinians from Gaza," wrote Ignatius. Moreover, "With his omnidirectional barrage, Trump is starting more battles than he will be able to finish. The first directive in war is usually to concentrate fire rather than scattering it — and achieve your objectives one by one."
Not all of Trump's foreign policy ideas are necessarily terrible, Ignatius concluded. But "he risks his good ideas by advancing a volley of bad ones, with an unfocused approach that increasingly looks like everything, everywhere, all at once."
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