Blackmail Is Trump’s Latest Stunning Solution To Gaza
Photo Credit: AP
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.
