Says he is asking Jordan and Egypt to take as many as 1.5 million Gazans in what would be an historic act of the crime of ethnic cleansing, reports Joe Lauria.
King Abdullah II of Jordan, left, and President Donald J. Trump, in 2017 at the White House. (White House/Shealah Craighead)
By Joe Lauria Special to Consortium News
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“You’re talking about a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said he told Abdullah in a phone conversation. “Over the centuries it’s had many, many conflicts. And I don’t know, something has to be done.”
The president said he would speak with Egyptian leader Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Sunday to ask the same thing.
“I said to [Abdullah], ‘I’d love you take on more,’ because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess,” Trump told reporters on board Air Force One on Saturday. “I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people.”
Egypt has repeatedly told Israel since the latter’s genocide began in October 2023 that it would not take Palestinians from Gaza. A majority of Jordan’s population are already descendants of Palestinians displaced by Israel beginning in 1948. Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said Jordan’s opposition to such a plan was “firm and unwavering,” Reuters reported.
The Jordanian readout of the call with Trump said that Abdullah “stressed the pivotal role of the U.S. in pushing all sides to work towards achieving peace, security, and stability for all in the region.”
Just five days into his second term as president, Trump left no doubt about what his intentions are for Gaza.
He tried to present what he was saying as humanitarian concern, but only the most ill-informed person about Gaza would not see that he is talking about committing the crime of forcibly relocating a population.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention “prohibits the forced transfer of protected people out of or into occupied territory” and customary international law considers involuntary population transfers to be illegal.
A Demolition Site
Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on Oct. 9, 2023, just two days into the genocide. (Naaman Omar apaimages/Wikimedia Commons)
“It’s literally a demolition site,” Trump said of Gaza, which essentially has undergone an Israeli urban renewal plan with the people still living in the buildings.
“Almost everything is demolished and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” Trump said.
Building housing “at a different location” means they will never return to Gaza.
On Monday, speaking like the New York real estate mogul that he is, Trump referred to Gaza as “a phenomenal location.”
“That place has to be rebuilt in a different way,” he said.
“You know, Gaza is interesting, it’s a phenomenal location, on the sea,” he went on with a slight smile . “The best weather, you know, everything is good. It’s like some beautiful things could be done, but it’s very interesting.”
These comments are in line with the most extreme sentiments of Israeli leaders who want Gaza cleansed of Arabs and repopulated with Israelis.
“Autocrats do not care about human life: they think in the aggregate and see people as assets to exploit,” said New York University historian Ruth Ben-Chiat on X. “A clean out, in autocratic terms, often means mass death and deportation.”
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister called Trump’s plan a “wonderful idea.” He said “only outside-the-box thinking over new solutions will bring … peace and security,” the Financial Times reported.
Francesca Albanese, the U.N.’s special rapporteur for the Occupied Territories, said, “Ethnic cleansing is anything but an ‘out-of the box’ thinking … No matter how one packages it … It is illegal, immoral and irresponsible.”
On Monday, Trump also said he was “not confident” the ceasefire would hold. On Saturday he released delivery of 2,000 lb. bunker buster bombs that Israel has used on civilian areas.
The Biden administration had delayed delivery as an attempt to show “concern” for civilians during the election run.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former 25-year U.N. correspondent for T he Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe , and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey , with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton , foreword by Julian Assange.
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