Unreal Estate
“He proposed not only that the roughly 2 million Palestinians in Gaza leave their homeland—because, he said, it’s “a hellhole” and always will be—but that the United States take it over, ‘own it’ (he dropped that phrase a few times), and develop it into ‘the Riviera of the Middle East.'” Fred Kaplan: This Trump Plan for Gaza Is One of the Craziest Things I’ve Ever Heard. (We’re only 16 days into Trump 2.0. Just wait…)
+ “To Benjamin Netanyahu’s delight, Trump proposes the wholesale ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the creation of a new ‘Riviera.'”David Remnick in The New Yorker: The Madness of Donald Trump. “Miller cautioned that, although Trump may back away from his proposal of ethnic cleansing and Riviera creation, such a performance sends a particularly dangerous message: “It is a nod to Putin that he can keep the territory he’s taken in Ukraine, and to Xi, who might now have more confidence about establishing a blockade of Taiwan in preparation for an invasion. It all reflects the mind-set of an unserious man.”
+ Yair Rosenberg in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Nobody Wants Gaz-a-Lago. “Trump’s Gaz-a-Lago plan has just one minor defect: It is a nonstarter with pretty much all of the parties required to make it work … But as flawed as Trump’s proposed solution is, it does identify a real problem. The U.S., Arab states, the European Union, the United Nations, and countless human-rights organizations all claim to care about Gaza. In the decades since Israel withdrew its troops and settlements from the territory, however, the international community has participated in a perverse cycle: It shovels money and aid into Gaza; watches that money get appropriated by Hamas to bankroll its messianic war against Israel’s existence; relegates the military response to Hamas to ever more hawkish Israeli governments, elected by voters pushed to the right by rocket attacks; rebuilds Gaza with more soon-to-be-compromised aid after yet another ruinous conflict between Israel and Hamas; then proclaims itself shocked and appalled when the cycle repeats.”
+ It’s important to note that even the craziest comments during the craziest press conference are not nearly crazy enough to dent support from the enablers. US House Speaker Johnson praises Trump’s ‘bold’ Gaza proposal.
+ Meanwhile… After uproar, White House says Trump only seeking to remove Gazans ‘temporarily.’
+ Arab Americans for Trump, “a group that played a key role in Donald Trump’s voter outreach to the Arab American community alongside his allies is rebranding itself after the president said that the U.S. would ‘take over’ the Gaza Strip.” (Ya think?)
