Trump Proposes US Annex Gaza Strip and Turn it into the Riviera of the Middle East
Kick the Palestinians out!
Well, the year after the “Year of Chaos” is more than living up to the old year’s title. Just as Trump was already credited with steamrolling through government to flatten liberal and out-of-control agencies left and right (and break who knows what during the flattening because steamrollers are not agile), he seems to have, the very next day, managed to stun nearly everyone in his cabinet.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed that the United States take a “long-term ownership position” over Gaza, moving its residents to a “good, fresh, beautiful piece of land” in another country and developing the war-torn territory under U.S. control, offering a vision of mass displacement likely to inflame sentiments in the Arab world.
And inflamed they became today.
You’ve already heard his announcement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu smiling on from his side. Of that much I’m sure because the 24 hours since then has been flooded with news headlines around the world. Not only was this the first time the Palestinians heard this, along with the rest of the world, it appeared to be the first time Netanyahu was hearing it. It was also the first time the Pentagon heard about it, given that no one contacted by the press there claimed any prior knowledge, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, said only that all options are on the table, the kind of unprepared response one gives when they are caught flat-footed. I guess the Pentagon is ready if needed because Trump did indicate he wouldn’t take military options off the table. So, we’re ready … or not ….
Trump’s stand-by friend and golfing partner, Rand Paul was stunned and responded, shortly after hearing the news, “I thought we were going to put America first.” Apparently, Paul doesn’t realize that annexing Gaza does put America first—first in Gaza, which gives it prime tourist real-estate with natural gas rights in the Middle East and great locations for ME military bases … if we can just get those millions of Palestinians out of the path.
Paul said in a Wednesday X post that he is not on board with Trump’s plan. The Kentucky senator responded to Secretary of State Marco Rubio writing that Trump wants to “Make Gaza Beautiful Again.”
“Gaza MUST BE FREE from Hamas. As [President Trump] shared today, the United States stands ready to lead and Make Gaza Beautiful Again. Our pursuit is one of lasting peace in the region for all people,” Rubio wrote.
The Libertarian-leaning Paul argued the future of Gaza is the business of Palestinians and Israelis, not Americans.
“The pursuit for peace should be that of the Israelis and the Palestinians. I thought we voted for America First,” he wrote. “We have no business contemplating yet another occupation to doom our treasure and spill our soldiers blood.”
There Rand Paul goes being practical again. Apparently he needs another round of golf and maybe needs to get struck on the head with a golf ball in order to step back in line. (But I’m going to stop there with the comedy and save this space for the serious stuff. I already wrote the comedy on my alter ego’s site, The Trumpette Gazette, this morning to get it out of my system. If humor about Trump doesn’t cause you apoplectic indigestion, you might try it out. If it does, spare yourself by remembering that I wrote mostly humor against Biden in The Malarky Musket for the last four years, but he isn’t president anymore. I am, as I’ve always said, an equal-opportunity critic, so now we get four years of it being Trump’s turn.)
Even new Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who precipitated Paul’s response with his own announcement, got the news for the first time as he was traveling:
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was traveling in Guatemala, heard the idea for the first time as he watched Trump’s news conference with Netanyahu on television….
Rubio, who Trump said had been patched in by telephone to his meetings with the Israelis “listening to every single word that we say,” wrote on social media afterward: “The United States stands ready to lead and Make Gaza Beautiful Again. Our pursuit is one of lasting peace in the region for all people.”
So, this was clearly ad-hoc policy from the seat of Trump’s trousers. One would think a president might discuss something this earth-changing to the Middle East first with his Secretary of State and a handful of other smart people and not just spring massive multi-decade policy changes on the Secretary of State via television.
The daggers shot from Trump’s special adviser, Susie Wiles’, wiley eyes from behind Trump as he spoke certainly indicated she was hearing the idea for the first time, but Netanyahu’s smile glimmered in advance with the possibility he had been briefed a few hours before and was excited for this part.
One Republican senior aid, asked by CNN if he had ever heard anything about this, answered, “Not a word of this was ever mentioned by the president.”
Another middle-east advisor to the president described himself as “stunned” after the meeting.
Backward research indicates Trump had kicked the notion around informally for months, and that talk about it seemed to have originated from his son-in-law and fellow real-estate developer, Jarod Kushner, who gave hints of the idea last summer; but there was no formal discussion of the matter. It was more of just an idea being kicked around over Arnold Palmers and Pepsis.
“The president has said he’s been socialing this idea for quite some time. He’s been thinking about this,” his press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday.
Still, she acknowledged the idea hadn’t been formalized into written form until Trump voiced it Tuesday.
“The plan was written in the president’s remarks last night as he revealed it to the world,” she said.
Ah well, I’m sure some of the best Middle East plans were written on the back of a napkin at a social just before they were announced to the full world. The rest of the days news was consumed with the global response, which you can probably well imagine. The idea is creative, I’ll say that much for it. Definitely creative.
Trump is nothing if not interesting and always finding a way to make himself the center point of the news pinwheel on a daily basis. First Greenland, then Panama, renaming the Gulf of (what was it called?), now annexing the Gaza Strip and turning it into a better version of the Vegas Strip, sure to be dotted with the Trump hotels/casinos. The empire is expanding like a hot-air balloon—a little wobbly at first, but colorful! You can read about it in The Gazette … but only if you like political lampooning of your favorite guy; if not, give yourself a break. That’s why I save most of the roast to serve there and try to keep the spread here a little more of a balanced diet.
(Also, one final pitch for readers to voice their opinion of my starting a new site to deal with the Trump prophets and other end-times stuff in the news, even if you’re against the idea. I just want a true measure from as many readers as possible of their true interest level. You can find the survey near the bottom of “AMERICAN EMPIRE (Part Two): Holy War.”)