One of the silliest Orange Man Bad! screeching narratives – and its rich well of lunacy – is Trump went bankrupt six times! Firstly, no, he has never personally gone bankrupt: six of his business ventures have. Second, anyone who knows the least about business knows that up to 90 per cent of business startups fail. Donald Trump has owned some 500 different business. Six failures makes his success rate just under 99 per cent, which is impressive even for someone who started off with a tidy pile of seed money.
A large part of Trump’s success is that, like most of the great entrepreneurs, he isn’t afraid to risk something radically different. Sometimes the risk fails; other times it pays off spectacularly. After all, this is a guy who entered first politics in 2015 – and was sworn in as president just under 18 months later.
So, when Donald Trump suggests something as audacious as taking over Gaza, kicking out the Arab interlopers and redeveloping it into the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’, it’s worth paying attention.
Unveiling the radical blueprint alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House amid a fragile ceasefire agreement between the Jewish homeland and Hamas following 16 months of hostilities, Mr Trump said he was prepared to use US troops to realise his vision – if it proved necessary.
He said there was a need to “do something different” in order to break the cycle of violence and deliver peace in the Middle East, arguing that the “world’s people” could live in the small territory overlooking the Mediterranean once the project was completed.
Cue the unhinged screeching from the idiot chorus who staunchly advocate continuing what has bloodily failed for nearly a century.
The audacious plan – hailed as “history changing” by Mr Netanyahu – immediately raised questions from journalists over the future of the two state solution, what legal authority there was for the proposal, where the Palestinian people could be relocated and the extent of support from other Arab nations – including Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia – for the blueprint.
Mr Trump said Gaza “should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people that have really stood there and fought for it and lived there and died there and lived a miserable existence there.”
Face it: Israel was attacked by Arabs living in Palestine. Israel has defeated the attackers and conquered the territory that has never legally belonged to the Arabs who attacked Israel. Right of conquest is one of the oldest rules in international relations.
Under international law, sovereignty means that a government possesses full control over affairs within a geographical area or territorial limit. Deciding whether Gaza is sovereign is not an exact science but a matter of diplomatic process.
No, it’s quite plain: the ‘Palestinians’ have never been sovereign in Gaza. Israel has the strongest claim to sovereignty of anyone: it’s ancient Israeli territory; the last unequivocal sovereign power, the Ottomans, gave up control in 1923. Israel has been responsible for maintaining basic services since 1967, meaning it has had all the responsibilities of sovereignty and none of its benefits.
The so-called ‘government’ of the territory is a designated terrorist group, meaning they have no legitimate claim to sovereignty.
So, Israel can do what it pleases in Gaza, now. No matter how much the corrupt, anti-Semitic, UN bellows and stamps its feet.
The legal barrier to President Trump, a former real estate mogul, is the UN, whose charter prohibits the threat or use of force to transfer a population and calls for respect for the sovereignty of other states.
The UN Charter is a sick joke now, ignored at will by the UN itself. Where was the UN’s respect for the sovereignty of other states when it imposed regime change on Libya, for instance, or authorised the bombing of former Balkans states?
Quite frankly, the UN can go hang.
Trump is also throwing down the gauntlet to Arab states to make good on their pledges of support for the ‘Palestinian cause’.
Trump’s plan goes against decades of American policy to push for a two-state solution and a comprehensive peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
Because that’s worked a treat, obviously. And where are the ultra-wealthy Arab states?
“Instead we should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts – and there are many of them that want to do this – and build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza, ending the death of destruction and frankly bad luck.”
Mr Trump said the policy could be paid for by “neighbouring countries of great wealth” and that Palestinians could be relocated to other numerous sites – or simply one large site. But he stressed that “people would be able to live in comfort and peace and we’ll make sure that something really spectacular is done” […]
He appealed for Jordan and Egypt to help provide a home for the Palestinian people currently living in Gaza, saying that: “I have a feeling that the King in Jordan (Abdullah II) and that the … President, the General in Egypt (Abdel Fattah el-Sisi) will open their hearts and will give us the kind of land that we need to get this done.”
Over to you, Arabs. Why are you so averse to helping your ‘brother Arabs’ that you profess to care so much about? Why won’t you let them live among you in a culture congenial to their own?
Historic, audacious, ambitious, crazy, dangerous, jaw-dropping. However you want to describe it, Donald Trump has taken a gamble for the ages on Gaza, one which is likely to define his presidency and the future of the Middle East.
Forget tariffs, the Mexican border and every other headline Trump has created since he became president again, this announcement on Gaza is the one that will be remembered in decades to come.
Trump argues that he can transcend generations of failure, misery, hate and destruction in Gaza by thinking radically about a region defined by ancient hatreds, disputed land and conflicting aspirations.
Yet the notion of the US taking ownership of Gaza and rebuilding it into a “Riviera” of the Middle East after relocating some two millions Palestinians from Gaza is so out-of-the-box radical that it will take the rest of the world time to digest the implications.
That’s what they said about the Abraham Accords, too.
