On February 4, in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump announced that the United States “will take over the Gaza Strip,” “level the site,” have all Palestinians removed, and enable people “from all over the world [to] be there” to enjoy what he appears to envision as an international resort area.
While many observers are dismissing Trump’s statement as a bizarre and spontaneous scheme on which he will likely not follow through, the announcement appeared to be the result of at least some degree of planning, as he read from prepared notes from a proposal assembled well ahead of Netanyahu’s visit.
While this may be among the most extreme anti-Palestinian initiatives to have ever come out of Washington, it is the logical extension of decades of bipartisan U.S. policy in support of Israel’s occupation and colonization of the West Bank, as well as recognition of Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights, a recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s exclusive capital, and support for Israel’s decades-long siege of and successive devastating wars on the Gaza Strip. In denying Palestinians equal rights, either through a viable two-state solution or a binational state with guaranteed rights for all, the United States has contributed to the emergence of violent extremists on both sides, and has given the far more powerful Israelis license to escalate their imposition of a kind of apartheid system.
Trump has rationalized expelling Palestinians in order to rebuild Gaza on the terms of the United States and Israel by noting that much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble, and can no longer sustain the population. While he referred to the Palestinians’ plight as a result of “bad luck,” it is in fact the result of deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure by U.S.-backed Israeli forces. A growing international legal consensus has described this ongoing siege as genocide, made possible through bipartisan support for unconditional military aid, five U.S. vetoes of otherwise-unanimous U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire, and attacks on human rights groups and international legal institutions that have sought accountability for the actions of the Israeli government.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared earlier this week on X that the United States would “Make Gaza Beautiful Again.” While members of Congress from both parties expressed skepticism, others were supportive. U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, said the proposal was a “good idea,” and asked a reporter, “Do you want to be part of it?” U.S. Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, also appeared to be open to the idea, calling it “provocative” but saying that it is “part of the conversation.”
Arab states, including such Trump-backed autocratic regimes as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, roundly rejected Trump’s plan, which would require them to absorb a new round of Palestinian refugees. Germany, Russia, China, Spain, Turkey, Brazil, and other nations, as well as various United Nations agencies, condemned the proposal as illegal. The proposal was reportedly influenced by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who said publicly last year that “Gaza’s waterfront property . . . could be very valuable” and that “from Israel’s perspective, [he] would do [his] best to move the people out and then clean it up.”
The Israeli Intelligence Ministry had already prepared a plan in October 2023 to physically remove all Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt’s Sinai desert, as ministers in Netanyahu’s government have repeatedly called for the expulsion of Palestinians in Gaza and colonization of the region. That same fall, the Biden Administration proposed to the Egyptians that they accept an exodus of Palestinians into the territory. Although the State Department later claimed the administration’s proposal was only meant as a short-term measure, the Egyptians doubted that Israel would allow the refugees back, in light of Israel’s historic refusal to honor the right of return of previous waves of Palestinian refugees.
Now such plans are coming to fruition. Netanyahu has ordered the Israeli army to prepare plans to organize the removal of Palestinians from Gaza. Although Jordan and Egypt, whom Trump suggested could take the bulk of refugees, have made it clear that they will not accept Palestinians forced out of Palestine, they cannot stop Israel, with the backing of the United States, from expelling them.
Compounding the horror of Trump’s proposal is that, while many Palestinian families have lived in Gaza for centuries, the majority of current residents are themselves refugees or descendants of refugees forced out of other parts of Palestine between 1947 and 1950. When asked about what would happen if the Palestinians wanted to return to Gaza, Trump—after describing how he planned to turn the territory into a new Riviera—dismissed the question by saying, “Why would they want to return? That place has been hell.”
That no one in the Democratic Party leadership in Congress or elsewhere has called for Netanyahu’s arrest in keeping with the International Criminal Court, or even objected to his being invited, has likely emboldened Trump and Netanyahu to announce their support for this ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip.With the majority of Congressional Democrats continuing their support for unconditional military aid to Israel despite its slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and the threatened expulsion of two million more, these two rightwing leaders appear to believe there is little stopping them.
The one cause for hope is that the U.S. government’s now open, on-record support for such a flagrant settler-colonial project—as opposed to its prior platitudes about a two-state solution it never had any intention of forcing Israel to accept—might enable the emergence of a stronger movement in support of human rights and international law in Israel and Palestine. Supporting unconditional military aid to a government committed to ethnic cleansing may prove even more difficult for members of Congress to justify than providing such assistance to a government in its terror bombing of crowded urban areas and then restricting relief supplies.
What is at stake here is not just a new threat to the rights of the Palestinians, but a threat to the entire international legal order. With Trump’s plans to colonize Gaza, Congressional Democrats may finally be forced to choose which side they are on.