During a press conference with PM Netanyahu on Tuesday evening, President Trump said the United States “will take over” the Gaza Strip. Around the world, observers were shocked. But the statement didn’t come out of the blue.
“The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too,” Trump said during the conference. “We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings.”
ABC News: “President Trump, Israeli PM Netanyahu hold press conference”
Asked to elaborate on his “takeover” comment and whether he was willing to send US troops to fill a security vacuum in Gaza, Trump did not rule it out. “We’re going to take over [Gaza] we’re going to develop it.” Even though Trump willing to bury the refugee agency UNRWA, he added: “I do see a long-term ownership position, and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East, and maybe the entire Middle East.”
Trump, a real estate tycoon himself, said he had studied the matter “closely, over a lot of months.” Gaza, he suggested, could become a “Riviera of the Middle East.”
In effect, the idea goes back to his son-in-law, a secret plan of an Israeli ministry, and a long-term effort at ethnic cleansing.
Kushner’s dream of “Gaza Riviera”
In March 2024, amid the ongoing genocidal atrocities, Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, said that the Gaza waterfront property could be very valuable, suggesting Israel should remove civilians as it “cleans up” the Strip. As Trump’s senior foreign policy adviser, Kushner had been tasked with preparing a peace plan for the Middle East. So, his comments unleashed a tsunami of international indignation.
Kushner had a direct stake in the outcome of the Gaza War. After his time at the White House, he founded a private equity firm deriving most of its funds from Saudi government’s sovereign wealth fund. He invested the millions into Israeli high-tech, which plays a central role in the military and security equipment used in the occupied territories, including the Gaza War.
Kushner characterized the Gaza atrocities as “a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.” In his first term, Trump reversed decades of U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East almost overnight. Now, after the Trump press conference, it seems that the ultra-conservative, oligarchic administration that seems to lean on Christian Zionism is intent to go far further – despite the likely costly and lethal consequences.
There was little new in the issue of removing Palestinians and taking over their land. These ethnic expulsions began years before the establishment of Israel in 1948. Clouded by misrepresentations ever since, they entered a new level after the Israeli ground assault in late 2023.
Gaza’s Population Transfer
Barely a week after October 7, Israel’s intelligence ministry, which oversees policies related to the intelligence organizations Mossad and Shin Bet, prepared a secret memorandum. In fall of 2023, the ministry was headed by Gila Gamliel, a veteran of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, who had been criticized for taking bribes, fraud and violation of trust; although investigations had been halted in the absence of sufficient evidence.
Minister Gila Gamliel at conference – “Wake-Up Call From Gaza- Put an End to The Two State solution”
The memorandum sought to persuade the United States and other countries to support Israel goals, enumerated thus:
- Overthrow of Hamas’ rule.
- Evacuation of the population outside of the combat zone for the benefit of the citizens of the Gaza Strip.
- It is necessary to plan for and channel international aid to reach the area in accordance with the chosen policy.
- In every policy, it is necessary to carry out a deep process of implementing an ideological change (de-Nazification).
- The selected policy will support the state’s political goal regarding the future of the Gaza Strip and the final picture of the war.
Oddly, the ministry associated its efforts to achieve ideological change in Gaza with a process of “de-Nazification.” Though fully misaligned with the realities of Gaza, the terminology reflected the Likud’s longstanding efforts to use the Holocaust in ideological efforts to identify Hamas with al-Qaeda and both with the German Nazis.
The ominous Option C
The secret document outlined three possible options:
A: The population remaining in Gaza and the import of Palestinian Authority (PA) rule.
B: The population remaining in Gaza along with the emergence of a local Arab authority.
C: The evacuation of the civilian population from Gaza to Sinai.
Of these three, the memo recommended C: the forcible transfer of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents to Egypt’s Sinai as the preferred course of action. It encouraged Israel’s government to lead a public campaign in the West to promote the transfer plan. This would be done by presenting the expulsion of Gaza’s population as a “humanitarian necessity.”
“Trump Tower,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024
The challenge was to enlist Washington to exert pressure on Egypt, along with other countries in Europe and the Middle East, to absorb the Palestinian residents of Gaza. During the war, Israel should “evacuate the civilian population” to the northern Sinai “and [prevent] the return of the population to activities/residences near the border with Israel.”
The classified memo was distributed exclusively to the Israeli military elite. But it soon leaked sparking a global firestorm over the “advocacy for ethnic cleansing.” Meanwhile, the ministry was advised by an Israeli thinktank seeking to cash on the ethnic cleansing.
Investing in the Cleansed Gaza Beachfronts
Only days after October 7, the Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy called for the forced transfer of Gaza’s population to the Sinai. It also saw ethnic cleansing as a commercial opportunity.
The hawkish right-wing think tank was headed by Meir Ben-Shabbat, Netanyahu’s close associate and an ex-head of Israel’s national security council, who had played a role in Gaza wars since 2008 and in the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords. To Netanyahu’s hawks, these accords were the first step in ejecting Palestine from the Middle East talks.
Released in Hebrew on Misgav’s website, the report was written by Amir Weitman, an investment manager. Leading the Likud’s libertarian faction, Weitmann was close to intelligence minister Gamliel. His asset management company had a largely U.S.-trained, American-Jewish and Israeli team aligned with U.S. multinationals and Silicon Valley.
Weitman claimed his plan aligned “well with the economic and geopolitical interests of the State of Israel, Egypt, the USA and Saudi Arabia,” despite the stated opposition of all these Arab countries, Western European capitals and Saudi Arabia. Riyadh had little incentive to inflame regional destabilization, which would penalize Saudi Vision 2030, its huge modernization and diversification program.
“Return to Gaza”
Weitman’s idea was eventually to turn Gaza to Israel’s far-right Jewish settlers. So, in January 2024, the far-right Israeli settler organization hosted the “Return to Gaza Conference.” Attended by Israeli cabinet ministers and members of its parliament, it presented a map showing plans for the re-establishment of 15 Israeli settlements and the addition of 6 new ones. Netanyahu cabinet’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was seen dancing at the conference.
Al Jazeera English: “‘Return to Gaza’ conference: Govt ministers say Israel should build in Gaza”
President Trump’s statements left apprehensive the White House correspondents, the Palestinians and Gaza, the regional leaders and foreign capitals. Did Trump commit the U.S. military to long-term occupation in Gaza, while tacitly condoning Israel’s effective incorporation of the West Bank? Were the administration and its Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, a real estate tycoon himself, sensing an oligarchic opportunity in the “demolition site,” as they called Gaza? Was Trump relying on imperial presidency to impose Netanyahu’s Jewish one-state solution on the Middle East?
Panama to Greenland and now in Gaza, the Trump administration is dragging the ailing U.S. economy ever closer toward an economic and geopolitical edge.
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