If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property of the capitalists. --Joe Ettor (IWW labor organizer)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IASdERt3-m0
Friday, February 14, 2025
Potential Trump Real Estate Swindle & Hustle in the Middle East: It Appears Unlikely to Ever be Realized.
3). “Israel/ OPT: President Trump’s claim that US will take over Gaza and forcibly deport Palestinians appalling and unlawful”, Feb 5, 2025, Anon, Amnesty International, at
Introduction: Among Trump's key and political supporters and allies are the Israelis, and their American adherents, among U.S. Zionists and Israel Firsters. So the knee-jerk hardline Pro Israel policies and hostility towards the Palestinians, Hamas, and the Iranians are standard positions for Trump and his minions. In his relatively simplistic understanding of the world, the clearing out of Gaza is not much different than intimidating and removing recalcitrant rent-control protected tenants from a New York City apartment building; as part of a typical profit-driven real estate operation. In a similar combination of incompetence combined with cruel and harsh tactics Trump unsuccessfully tried to bully a bunch of rent-control protected tenants in NYC in the 1980s:
“In the early 1980s, Trump planned to evict rent-controlled and rent-stabilized tenants from 100 Central Park South (now known as Trump Parc East) and build a larger tower on this site and that of the adjacent Barbizon Plaza Hotel. He hired a management firm that specialized in emptying buildings, and they began eviction proceedings. After claiming reduced services, a lack of repairs, and overall harassment, the tenants decided to fight back, and in the end 80 percent of them remained, leading to this revelation by the Donald: 'What I’ve learned is that the better the location and the lower the rent, the harder people fight. If I were a tenant, I’d probably be a leader too.' (Emphasis in original)
“A 1985 article in New York Magazine titled 'The Cold War on Central Park South' by Tony Schwart–the noted ghostwriter of Trump’s 1987 memoir 'The Art of the Deal'– details how Trump housed homeless people in vacant units so that they could harass the tenants. As recently recounted in the New Yorker, Schwartz described him as a “fugue of failure, a farce of fumbling and bumbling,” and Trump loved it, even going so far as to hang the cover story up on his wall. 'I was shocked,' Schwartz told New Yorker author Jane Mayer, 'Trump didn’t fit any model of human being I’d ever met. He was obsessed with publicity, and he didn’t care what you wrote.'
“It all started in 1981, when for a mere $13 million, Donald Trump bought 100 Central Park South and the Barbizon Plaza Hotel. He called it 'one of the finest pieces of real estate in New York,' making clear his plans to build in their place a large tower fronting both Central Park South and 58th Street. It was easy to stop renting rooms at the hotel, but getting the tenants out of the 80 residential units was another story. Instead of offering hefty buyouts, which most certainly would have appealed to the rent-controlled tenants on low, fixed incomes, Trump hired Citadel Management to commence eviction proceedings, which, after three-and-a-half years, were still ongoing.” (Emphasis added) (See, “In the 1980s a Group of Feisty Tenants Blocked Evictions by Donald Trump”, Jul 27, 2016, Dana Schulz, 6SqFt, at < https://www.6sqft.com/in-the-1980s-a-group-of-feisty-tenants-blocked-evictions-by-donald-trump/ >)
Of course in the current situation the destruction of the desired real estate was handled by the Israelis, with the weaponry supplied by the U.S. military while commanded by Joe Biden and his minions. The eviction of the residents will be managed the same way with the Israeli muscle perhaps being augmented, or even largely replaced, by U.S. troops sent to Israel / Gaza by Emperor Donald. Of course the powers that Trump can command are limited, mercenaries and paid troops have their limits, and the U.S., along with the rest of the West, is well into the phase during which public support for military adventures is very limited, and generally must be bought, bribed, and coerced.
Item 1)., “Trump Plan for Gaza ….”, Item 2)., “The Drama, Delusion, and Dangers ….”, and Item 3)., “Israel/ OPT: ….” all discuss the various violations of International Law in the many ongoing events in Gaza and the increase that will take place in these outrageous actions if the Trump Gaza Resort Redevelopment Plan is undertaken. The U.S. military would be getting into a much more difficult situation than most people understand if Trump leads the U.S. into this brazen move to subsidize the worst elements of Israeli Society, while he dips his beak into the profits.
Item 4)., “For Jordan, Trump’s Latest ….”, Item 5)., “Gaza Is Not for Sale ….”, and Item 6). “ 'We're Rolling Out Nakba 2023, ….”, all discuss various parts of the background situation of the struggle for Gaza. Trump apparently does not begin to understand the complexities and other problems involved. Netanyahu, whose first priority is to persuade the U.S. to attack Iran (an adventure that the U.S. military is very much opposed to), could not believe his ears when he heard this crazy scheme. The internal situation in the U.S. is already dangerous and dire, with the oligarchs openly looting and destroying the already weak structures of government. Another expensive crack-brained boondoggle is exactly what the U.S. does not need.
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Trump Plan for Gaza “Worse Than Ethnic Cleansing,” Says UN Human Rights Expert
Unlawful deportation or transfer of a population constitutes both a war crime and a crime against humanity.
Published
Displaced Palestinians cross the Netzarim Corridor as they make their way to the northern parts of the Gaza Strip on February 9, 2025.
Donald Trump’s outrageous plan to remove the Palestinian people from Gaza, assume U.S. ownership of the Gaza Strip and make it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” reveals his intent to commit a war crime and a crime against humanity.
What Trump proposed during a February 4 news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House is “unlawful, immoral and irresponsible,” Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, said at a February 5 press conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. “This is worse than ethnic cleansing. It’s forced displacement … which is an international crime.”
War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
The unlawful deportation or transfer of a population constitutes a war crime under the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention classifies unlawful deportation or transfer as a grave breach, which is considered a war crime by the U.S. War Crimes Act. Article 49 of Geneva says that individual or mass forcible transfers and deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of any other country, whether occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on July 19, 2024, that Gaza is occupied territory and that the occupation violates international law.
Moreover, forcible transfer or deportation committed as “part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack” is a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute. Israel, with U.S. complicity, has been committing a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian people in Gaza since October 7, 2023. “Deportation or forcible transfer of population” is defined as the displacement of people by expulsion or other coercive acts from the area where they are lawfully present.
On January 26, 2024, the ICJ found that Israel is plausibly committing a genocide in Gaza and ordered it to prevent the commission of genocidal acts. “Forcible displacement and dispossession in the context of a genocide,” Albanese noted, “will strengthen the complicity in the crimes that Israel has been committing over the past 15 months and before.”
Trump’s plan would elevate U.S. aiding and abetting of Israel’s genocide to a new level.
Trump’s plan would elevate U.S. aiding and abetting of Israel’s genocide to a new level.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Trump declared at the press conference with Netanyahu. “We’ll own it … get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area … do something different, just can’t go back, if you go back, it’s gonna end up the same way it has for 100 years.”
Albanese replied that “no one has the right to say how Gaza will be rebuilt, other than the Palestinians.”
The Palestinians’ Legal Right of Return
“I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza,” Trump said. “Why would they want to return? The place has been hell.”
It is Israel’s genocidal campaign that has made Gaza a “hell.” Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed nearly 62,000 Palestinian people and rendered 85 percent of the population homeless, using U.S. bombs. Nevertheless, when the ceasefire began, the Palestinians began returning, because it is their homeland. Palestinian refugees have a legal right to return to their lands.
“Anyone who saw the video clips on social media exhibiting the joy Palestinians felt upon returning home to northern Gaza despite its total devastation — and putting up tents on top of the rubble of their destroyed homes — will understand the meaning of Palestinians’ attachment to their homeland,” Palestinian American Michel Moushabeck wrote at Truthout. “It would be naïve for anyone, including President Trump, to believe that Palestinians will voluntarily leave their homeland and resettle elsewhere.”
In 1947-1948, Israel carried out the Nakba (or “catastrophe”), the violent campaign of ethnic cleansing that forced 750,000 Palestinians from their land in order to create Israel. Mass atrocities and dozens of massacres killed roughly 15,000 Palestinians. The Nakba caused the forced displacement of 85 percent of the Palestinian population. “We shouldn’t call them Palestinian refugees,” Albanese said. “We should call them Nakba survivors, deprived of a homeland.”
The UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194 in 1948, which guarantees the right of return for Palestinian refugees. It says that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”
Roughly two-thirds of the Palestinians in Gaza are refugees whose families were forced from their homes or fled in fear during and after the establishment of Israel in 1948. But for 76 years, Israel has categorically denied them their right to return, in spite of Resolution 194.
Albanese said that Israel “will not kill the right of return because the right of return is established under international law that predates the creation of the state of Israel.”
Israel is intentionally repeating the Nakba of 76 years ago. “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” Israeli security cabinet member and Minister of Agriculture Avi Dichter declared on November 12, 2023. “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it will end.”
The Palestinians’ Right to Self-Determination
The Palestinian people have the lawful right to self-determination. The ICJ ruled that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza violates international law, which prohibits the acquisition of territory by threat or use of force and enshrines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. “The sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying Power, through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful,” the court wrote.
On February 4, Trump issued an executive order permanently defunding UNRWA, the agency that has provided food, education and health care to Palestinian refugees since 1949. UNRWA is the only organization in Gaza able to attend to the urgent needs of the Palestinians who have endured Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war. Defunding UNRWA will invariably intensify the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Only the General Assembly can decide the future of UNRWA, Albanese noted.
Netanyahu has long been gunning for UNRWA. In 2018, he said that “UNRWA is an organisation that perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem and the narrative of the right-of-return, as it were, in order to eliminate the State of Israel” and it needed “to pass from the world.” The process of defunding UNRWA by the U.S. and other countries began during the Biden administration.
Before Netanyahu’s visit, Trump stated his intention to send Israel $1 billion in additional weapons, including $700 million for 1,000-pound bombs and $300 million for armored bulldozers. Trump also lifted the Biden administration’s suspension of deliveries of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel.
Palestinians Appeal to the International Community
A number of countries oppose Trump’s plan, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, France, Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Russia, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Brazil and Turkey.
Instead of welcoming Netanyahu to the White House, Trump should have sent him to The Hague to face the charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity that are pending against him in the International Criminal Court. However, Trump, who has faced a complaint brought by Palestinians in the ICC, has a history of attempting to undermine the ICC. During his first term, Trump imposed sanctions on the ICC’s chief prosecutor and another high ICC official for investigating alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Afghanistan by U.S. military forces, the CIA and the Taliban.
On February 6, Trump signed an executive order slapping economic and travel sanctions on ICC employees who participate in investigations of citizens of the U.S. and its allies, including Israel.
In its decision finding Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory unlawful, the ICJ ordered states to “abstain from diplomatic relations with Israel, and economic or trade dealings or investments that may entrench Israel’s unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory or assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel there.”
Albanese said she was “shocked at the defiance toward international law, not just by Israel, but by most countries in the international community,” including Denmark, a country renowned for its generous provision of public goods for its citizens as a social democracy. During her press conference, she urged the Danish government to reveal all its ties with Israel, including diplomatic, political, military and strategic research. She said it should “suspend anything that the ICJ found is detrimental to the rights of the Palestinians.”
“If Trump is so concerned that Gaza is an uninhabitable wasteland, he should instead contribute generously to the $50 billion to $80 billion it will cost Palestinians to rebuild,” Ben Saul, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald. “He should pressure Israel to compensate Gazans for its many violations of humanitarian law during the war. He should stop shipping US weapons and munitions to Israel.”
On February 5, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and other Palestinian human rights organizations issued a statement calling on the international community to:
Call on the United States to retract its plan to forcibly displace Palestinians in Gaza, and reject any attempts by Israel to formally annex the West Bank;
Ensure that Palestinians exercise their right of return to what is left of their homes in Gaza in safety, protection, and dignity, and ensure the provision of shelter, food and medical care to displaced Palestinians in the OPT,
Ensure the immediate and unimpeded provision of all material, logistical, financial, and social support required by Palestinians in Gaza;
Publicly condemn the use of sanctions to undermine the ICC, and the dismantling of UNRWA;
For European States to take actions to implement the EU Blocking Statute to shield against US sanctions on the International Criminal Court;
Fully cooperate with the International Criminal Court, enforce the arrest warrants to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant; and expand the charges to include settlements and genocide;
Compel Israel to rescind its legislation banning UNRWA, and urge the U.S. to reinstate the funding to the UNRWA;
Intervene in the UNRWA Advisory Opinion before the International Court of Justice; and intervene in the South Africa v Israel genocide case;
Address the root causes of the genocide, by dismantling Israel’s Zionist settler-colonial apartheid regime and ending the illegal occupation;
Impose sanctions, including a two-way military embargo, encompassing all arms, banking, financial, economic, trade and diplomatic sanctions on Israel; including ending all gas deals with Israel, using pipelines located in Palestine’s territorial waters off Gaza;
Call on social movements, activist groups and persons of conscience in solidarity with Palestine to use all means available to campaign against and disrupt President Trump’s colonial genocidal plans.
The Palestinian people adamantly oppose Trump’s illegal plan. “Palestine belongs to its Indigenous people; it does not belong to those who have stolen the land, forcibly displacing its inhabitants and are now intent on ethnically cleansing those who remained,” Moushabeck wrote.
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The Drama, Delusion, and Dangers of Trump's Gaza Plan
US President Donald Trump displayed his usual combination of disruption and delusion with his bombshell proposal on February 4 for the United States to take over and develop the Gaza Strip after displacing its Palestinian residents to destinations unknown. The proposal has little chance of being implemented, does not seem to have emerged from a serious policy review within the Trump administration, and overturns all the assumed foundations of the last half century of Arab-Israeli peacemaking. But it is fully consistent with recent and historical American policies on Palestine-Israel, and significantly clarifies several points of global interest, including US foreign policy values, the current weakened condition of Palestinians and Arabs, the influence of Zionism/Israel in the United States and around the world, and the ongoing trajectory of Western imperial and colonial legacies that refuse to die.
The most significant and troubling aspect of the Trump proposal is that it clarifies how the United States and Israel now work as a formal team that uses immense military power to run amok across the Middle East and perhaps further afield. The Trump proposal, apparently whimsical, spontaneous, and unstudied, offers no serious details about what will happen to Gaza and its indigenous Palestinian population, so we should not waste time analyzing mythical ideas or eventualities.
The big development is how the American-Israeli alliance now formalizes with a bang the heretofore sporadic destruction of the body of international humanitarian and human rights laws and protections that were created after WWII to prevent a recurrence of crimes like the Nazi Holocaust against European Jews. Israel has long ignored these legal and moral safeguards in its actions in Palestine and the Middle East, attacking, occupying, and annexing Arab territories at will and disrupting and destroying the lives of millions of people.
The United States and most western powers routinely looked on and expressed ‘concern’ about Israel’s settlement or annexation of occupied Palestinian lands or slaughter of civilians. Only the United States formally and consistently provided most of the financial, military, and diplomatic support that allowed Israel to pursue its colonial policies since 1967, as the Joe Biden administration did in enabling the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The United States now has shifted from merely being complicit in the genocide to initiating and being a full participant in this latest “crime against humanity” plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
This now makes the United States and Zionism/Israel the biggest threat to global peace, security, and stability in two related realms. The first is the danger of attacking, occupying, or ethnically cleansing populations that resist American-Israeli plans. The second is the corrosive impact of US government support of Israeli manipulations of Western human and citizenship rights to prevent criticism of Israel. This slowly whittles down rights of free speech, equal rights, due process of law, access to quality university education, and other such arenas that must submit to Zionist/Israeli demands which should be placed above basic constitutional rights in the United States, United Kingdom, and other Western countries.
The Trump plan’s heightened cruelty toward and contempt for Palestinians and their rights is significant for its dramatic and sudden scale, and for scrapping half a century of Washington’s purported commitment to a two-state resolution of the Palestine-Israel conflict. It is not new, however, in its attitude toward Palestinian national rights, for US policy since Israel’s creation in 1947-48 has supported Zionist aims over equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians, and consistently dehumanized Palestinians and denied them their human dignity, agency, and self-determination—as the Biden and Trump administrations both have confirmed.
The American (and British) legacy over the entire past century has allowed Israel to act with impunity across the entire Middle East, and to bend Western foreign policies to its liking, which we see dramatized nowadays. The extreme nature of these latest Trump proposals indicates that the United States has taken its role as the standard bearer of Western imperial legacies in the Middle East to a higher level of direct military occupation of Palestinian lands and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, while simultaneously ordering sovereign states like Jordan and Egypt to host expelled Palestinians from Gaza. This endangers the stability of those countries if they give in to American demands, given their people’s intense opposition to new US-Israeli oppressive initiatives. These regimes are heavily dependent on American military and economic support, which Trump could easily withhold to pressure them, in the process badly destabilizing them.
Another danger is that the US-Israel entente might wait until the hostages/prisoners exchanges in Gaza are completed in the coming months, to then encourage the Palestinians to leave Gaza by imposing new restrictions or bombing and starving them once more, as the Israeli Army has been doing over the past 16 months. This could happen while restrictions on imports into Gaza also make it impossible for Gazans to rebuild their society after Israel’s genocidal war.
The larger meaning of such possible moves is that the entente will now experiment with new ways to deny Arab states and peoples their sovereign rights, keeping them instead in a condition of permanent imperial vassals. Many smaller states around the world should be worried that this new variety of twenty-first century American-Israeli imperialism that is imposed by military and economic might could be used in other places around the world.
Most dimensions of the Trump proposal and its possible consequences remain to be clarified in the months ahead, although Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to calm down the ensuing international uproar by saying the displacement of Palestinians would be temporary. One troubling sign is that 7 out of 10 Israelis polled recently said they supported expelling the Palestinians from Gaza, meaning that this idea reflects much more than rightwing Zionist extremist sentiments. This, indeed, makes resistance to Trump’s dangerous proposal essential for preserving Palestinian human and national rights as well as regional stability in the Middle East.
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Israel/ OPT: President Trump’s claim that US will take over Gaza and forcibly deport Palestinians appalling and unlawful
Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
Reacting to President Donald Trump’s comments that the USA will “take over the Gaza Strip”, advocating again for the forcible transfer of around 2 million Palestinians from Gaza to neighbouring countries, Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard said:
“President Trump’s remarks calling for the forcible transfer of Palestinians from the occupied Gaza Strip must be unequivocally and widely condemned. His language is inflammatory, outrageous and shameful, and his proposal amounts to a flagrant violation of international law.
“Any plan to forcibly deport Palestinians outside the occupied territory against their will is a war crime, and when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on the civilian population, it would constitute a crime against humanity.
“Any plan to forcibly deport Palestinians outside the occupied territory against their will is a war crime, and when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on the civilian population, it would constitute a crime against humanity” – Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard
“President Trump’s comments dangerously dehumanize Palestinians, who for the last 16-months have been victims of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and for decades have been living under illegal occupation and apartheid. Most of Gaza’s Palestinians are descendants and survivors of the 1948 Nakba, they have already been repeatedly uprooted and dispossessed by Israel and denied their right of return yet have continued to struggle to remain on their lands and defend their human rights.
“Israel’s genocide in Gaza, including through unlawful killings, injuries and the deliberate infliction of conditions of life that are calculated to bring about their physical destruction, has been accompanied by an alarming rise in unlawful killings in the occupied West Bank, state-backed settler violence, mass land confiscation and arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture and other ill-treatment of Palestinians across the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel.
“President Trump’s comments dangerously dehumanize Palestinians, who for the last 16-months have been victims of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and for decades have been living under illegal occupation and apartheid” – Agnès Callamard
“President Trump repeatedly referenced the destruction, killing and unlivable conditions in Gaza calling it a ‘demolition site’ while seated next to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, yet he completely failed to mention the Israeli government’s responsibility for causing this devastation. Nor did he acknowledge the US government’s role in providing arms that have repeatedly been used to carry out deadly, unlawful attacks in Gaza.
“In the face of President Trump’s dangerous threats, it’s more important than ever for the rest of the international community to categorically reject these proposals and expedite diplomatic efforts, in line with international law, to end Israel’s unlawful occupation, dismantle apartheid and uphold human rights for Palestinians and Israelis. History has abundantly demonstrated that sidelining international law for political expediency is a recipe for the perpetuation of violations.
“Amnesty International also warns against the misuse of desperately needed humanitarian aid and reconstruction as a bargaining chip or as a means to coerce Palestinians in Gaza into leaving. No state is entitled to treat a protected population living under occupation as pawns in a geopolitical chess game.”
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For Jordan, Trump’s Latest Pronouncements Threaten an Existential Disaster
With US President Donald Trump pushing Jordan to permanently resettle Palestinians from Gaza, the Hashemite Kingdom once again faces a crisis that is nothing short of existential—this time at the behest of its largest ally, the United States. In his first weeks back in office, Trump sent shockwaves across the Middle East and beyond with his suggestion that Palestinians in Gaza should be resettled in Jordan and Egypt. Trump’s remarks were especially alarming in Jordan, where the regime has long made clear that any forced relocation of Palestinians to the kingdom or anywhere else was a red line not to be crossed under any circumstances.
Trump reportedly first broached the idea with Jordan’s King Abdullah II during a January 25 phone call, stating about the conversation, “I said to him I’d love you to take on more because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it’s a mess, it’s a real mess. I’d like him to take people.” He added that he also wanted Egypt to take in Palestinians from Gaza. Rather jarringly, the American president added that “you’re talking about a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing.” Trump has since proposed the idea several more times, claiming that Egypt and Jordan “will do it.”
The actual population of Gaza is closer to 2.3 million people, 90 percent of whom are already internally displaced and living in desperate circumstances after 15 months of Israeli bombardment, even as Trump appeared to advocate a mass expulsion. Trump’s shocking proposal is sure to be the king’s main topic of discussion during his February 11 visit to the White House.
Jordan Says No
Along with Egypt, Jordan immediately and emphatically rejected the proposal, with Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi describing Jordan’s position as longstanding and “firm and unwavering.” Jordan rejects the forced relocation of Palestinians as morally wrong and indefensible. But the kingdom also is in no condition to add hundreds of thousands of refugees under any circumstances, given its struggling economy and what many see as an already fragile demographic imbalance between those of Palestinian origin and East Bankers. An influx of Palestinian refugees would dramatically increase economic strains and could cause political instability.
For Jordanians, “resettlement” of Palestinians to Jordan would amount to ethnic cleansing, which they fear would begin in Gaza and possibly extend to forcing Palestinians out of the West Bank. The idea also uncomfortably adds to the fear of Jordan becoming a Watan Badil an “alternative homeland” for Palestinians, which is now being actively promoted not only by far-right Israeli politicians, but also by the kingdom’s largest and most powerful ally.
Jordanian officials swiftly condemned the “resettlement” scheme. Speaker of Parliament Ahmed Safadi affirmed his and the chamber’s rejection of any plan for Palestinian displacement, stating “no to displacement, no to an alternative homeland, Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, and Jordan belongs to the Jordanians.” Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi, speaking on behalf of the government of Prime Minister Jaafar Hasan, reaffirmed Jordan’s commitment to a two-state solution and to strong relations with the United States. Meeting at the headquarters of the Arab League on February 1, diplomats from Bahrain, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates backed the Jordanian and Egyptian stances, flatly rejecting any Palestinian resettlement scheme. On February 5, the King himself spoke out, condemning “any attempts to annex land and displace the Palestinians.”
The idea of “Resettlement” adds to the fear of Jordan becoming an “alternative homeland” for Palestinians.
Jordanian society, including members of opposition movements, also vehemently rejects Trump’s proposal. As one opposition activist told this author, “There is a unanimous refusal of this project from all: people and regime, political parties, groups and currents across all ideologies and leanings. This is the single issue that unifies all Jordanians, from all descents, political leanings, and even their positions within or outside the regime.” While the unanimity is clear, opposition voices have consistently criticized Jordan’s close ties to Western allies like the United States which they believe have made Jordan vulnerable to exactly this sort of American pressure.
Jordan is an aid-dependent country with a weak economy and a state that has been pummeled by multiple regional crises, from the Iraq war to the Syrian civil war to the Gaza war. Jordan’s location has made it home to multiple waves of refugees to the kingdom throughout Jordanian history—from Palestinians since 1948, to Iraqis fleeing the various Gulf wars, to Syrians after 2011. For instance, Jordan hosts more than 650,000 registered Syrian refugees, but government officials have argued that another 750,000 unregistered Syrian nationals are also in the country.
Many Jordanians trace their roots to earlier waves of Palestinian refugees, especially in the wake of the Arab-Israeli wars from 1948 onward. But millions of Jordanians also have roots firmly east of the River Jordan, and pride themselves on their deep family and tribal roots in the kingdom. For many Jordanians, this societal diversity—of Palestinians and East Jordanians, Muslims and Christians, and Arabs and Circassians—is precisely the mix that makes Jordan the country that it is today. At the same time, identity politics has long been the Achilles heel of Jordanian society and politics. Some Jordanians see diversity not as part of a broader and inclusive national community, but rather as the fissures and fault lines of identity politics running through the kingdom, rendering any attempt at demographic change politically dangerous.
Trump Doubles Down
Just days after Jordan’s government firmly rejected the idea of taking in Gazans, Trump repeated his earlier comments, setting off more alarm bells. When asked by reporters on January 30 about Jordan’s and Egypt’s firm “no,” Trump simply said, “They’re going to do it. We do a lot for them, and they’re going to do it.”
Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich, one of the most far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, welcomed Trump’s remarks, as they directly support the longstanding aim of many on the Israeli far right to depopulate Gaza of Palestinians and repopulate it with Israeli settlers. That is precisely the nightmare that many Jordanians, as well as the government, fear. Jordanian officials have for decades asserted that Jordan is Jordan, and Palestine is Palestine.
Smotrich and others—including Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a top White House advisor in the president’s first term—have casually spoken of Gaza as though it is simply highly valuable waterfront property, there to be developed by Americans and others and perhaps resettled if only Palestinians were not in the way. On February 5, Trump himself doubled down on the idea by proposing that the United States should take over Gaza and displace Palestinians there in order to transform the Strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Jordanians reject such a cavalier view of the Palestinian people and their land, and see in these designs a dire threat to the lives and dreams of the Palestinian people—and to Jordan itself.
Challenging US-Jordan Relations…Again
As Jordan has consistently condemned Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, the kingdom has remained a close ally of the United States. While Jordanian-Israeli relations have been cold at best, the kingdom’s relations with the United States have usually been warm—the exception being during Trump’s first term in office. This time around, and within days of re-entering the White House, Trump clearly challenged the core understandings within the long-term and strategic American-Jordanian relationship.
Throughout the years, the diplomatic relationship remained cordial and significant cooperation in economic, political, and security affairs continued. In 2022, Jordan and the United States signed a Memorandum of Understanding that included a US pledge to provide $1.45 billion in annual aid over seven years to the Hashemite Kingdom. At least 3,000 US troops have operated in Jordan, with the kingdom serving as an important base for the global coalition against the so-called Islamic State. Jordan has a free trade agreement with the United States and enjoys special status as a “major non-NATO ally.” In July 2024, NATO opened its first Middle East liaison office in Amman. Jordan’s leaders see each of these elements as key to the country’s security. Yet these extensive US linkages also have many critics within Jordanian political circles, and therefore in some ways represent political liabilities on the domestic front.
Trump’s alarming proposal reminded many Jordanian officials of strained bilateral relations during the first Trump administration
During the recent Gaza war, Jordan’s protest movements mobilized to oppose the Israeli bombing and the devastating civilian death toll—some 47,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel as of late 2024. The Jordanian monarchy and government were also harshly critical of Israel’s actions. But opposition activists pressured the regime to do more—calling for ending a controversial gas deal with Israel, for abrogating the peace treaty with Israel and cutting off relations, for ousting US military personnel, and for preventing military supplies for Israel from transiting through Jordan.
In this context of severe regional crises and a mobilized domestic opposition, in September 2024 the kingdom held its latest round of parliamentary elections. Not surprisingly, the Gaza war and Jordanian policies toward both Israel and the United States were major issues in the campaign. While pro-regime centrist and conservative parties and candidates won most of the 138 elected seats, the kingdom’s largest Islamist party, the Islamic Action Front, secured 31 seats, giving the Islamist opposition a significant voice in parliament.
In recent months, more major regional developments have occurred, including the signing of a fragile ceasefire in Gaza and the sudden collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in the face of a final and successful assault by rebel forces. While Jordan welcomed what appeared to be the end (at least for now) of both nearby wars, the Hashemite regime also worried about Israeli intentions in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as the sudden rise of the Islamist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham rebel group to power in Syria. It was amid these many domestic and regional pressures that the Trump administration tossed its latest verbal bombshell about resettling Gazans in Jordan.
Trump’s alarming proposal reminded many Jordanian officials of strained bilateral relations during the first Trump administration. During those years, Jordan’s leadership felt that the American president did not value Jordan as his predecessors had, and that the United States had marginalized and sidelined the kingdom as Trump aligned more closely with the interests of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
The first Trump administration cut US funding for UNRWA, the main aid agency supporting Palestinian refugees, including in Jordan, leaving the kingdom scrambling to assemble a coalition of donors to make up for the shortfall. The first Trump administration even seemed to float a longstanding failed idea that would see parts of the West Bank form a confederation with Jordan—something Amman has always rejected.
President Joe Biden initially restored UNRWA funding and, drawing upon his longtime close relationship with King Abdullah, restored Jordan’s prestigious place in US policy in the Middle East. Yet that did not help Jordan influence the Biden administration to pressure Israel to end the Gaza war. (In early 2024, the Biden administration itself froze funding to UNRWA.) Now, with Biden out and Trump back in, many of the Trump-era crises have returned or worsened, with Trump adding more to the list. In addition to his calls for forced relocation of Gazans, Trump announced a freeze on all foreign aid for at least 90 days, abruptly cutting off many USAID projects in Jordan for education, economic reform, small business growth, and biodiversity and conservation—as well as suspending security assistance. (Trump’s aid freeze has exempted military aid to Israel and Egypt, but not to Jordan.)
The United States and Jordan remain allies. But so far, the new White House team has shown little understanding of Jordan’s domestic and regional pressures. The kingdom appears to have few options other than attempting to change the mind of a famously mercurial US president in order to head off a dangerous initiative that could have devastating consequences for Jordan.
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Trump Plan for Gaza “Worse Than Ethnic Cleansing,” Says UN Human Rights Expert
Unlawful deportation or transfer of a population constitutes both a war crime and a crime against humanity.
Published
Displaced Palestinians cross the Netzarim Corridor as they make their way to the northern parts of the Gaza Strip on February 9, 2025.
Donald Trump’s outrageous plan to remove the Palestinian people from Gaza, assume U.S. ownership of the Gaza Strip and make it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” reveals his intent to commit a war crime and a crime against humanity.
What Trump proposed during a February 4 news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House is “unlawful, immoral and irresponsible,” Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, said at a February 5 press conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. “This is worse than ethnic cleansing. It’s forced displacement … which is an international crime.”
War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
The unlawful deportation or transfer of a population constitutes a war crime under the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention classifies unlawful deportation or transfer as a grave breach, which is considered a war crime by the U.S. War Crimes Act. Article 49 of Geneva says that individual or mass forcible transfers and deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of any other country, whether occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on July 19, 2024, that Gaza is occupied territory and that the occupation violates international law.
Moreover, forcible transfer or deportation committed as “part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack” is a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute. Israel, with U.S. complicity, has been committing a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian people in Gaza since October 7, 2023. “Deportation or forcible transfer of population” is defined as the displacement of people by expulsion or other coercive acts from the area where they are lawfully present.
On January 26, 2024, the ICJ found that Israel is plausibly committing a genocide in Gaza and ordered it to prevent the commission of genocidal acts. “Forcible displacement and dispossession in the context of a genocide,” Albanese noted, “will strengthen the complicity in the crimes that Israel has been committing over the past 15 months and before.”
Trump’s plan would elevate U.S. aiding and abetting of Israel’s genocide to a new level.
Trump’s plan would elevate U.S. aiding and abetting of Israel’s genocide to a new level.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Trump declared at the press conference with Netanyahu. “We’ll own it … get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area … do something different, just can’t go back, if you go back, it’s gonna end up the same way it has for 100 years.”
Albanese replied that “no one has the right to say how Gaza will be rebuilt, other than the Palestinians.”
The Palestinians’ Legal Right of Return
“I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza,” Trump said. “Why would they want to return? The place has been hell.”
It is Israel’s genocidal campaign that has made Gaza a “hell.” Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed nearly 62,000 Palestinian people and rendered 85 percent of the population homeless, using U.S. bombs. Nevertheless, when the ceasefire began, the Palestinians began returning, because it is their homeland. Palestinian refugees have a legal right to return to their lands.
“Anyone who saw the video clips on social media exhibiting the joy Palestinians felt upon returning home to northern Gaza despite its total devastation — and putting up tents on top of the rubble of their destroyed homes — will understand the meaning of Palestinians’ attachment to their homeland,” Palestinian American Michel Moushabeck wrote at Truthout. “It would be naïve for anyone, including President Trump, to believe that Palestinians will voluntarily leave their homeland and resettle elsewhere.”
In 1947-1948, Israel carried out the Nakba (or “catastrophe”), the violent campaign of ethnic cleansing that forced 750,000 Palestinians from their land in order to create Israel. Mass atrocities and dozens of massacres killed roughly 15,000 Palestinians. The Nakba caused the forced displacement of 85 percent of the Palestinian population. “We shouldn’t call them Palestinian refugees,” Albanese said. “We should call them Nakba survivors, deprived of a homeland.”
The UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194 in 1948, which guarantees the right of return for Palestinian refugees. It says that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”
Roughly two-thirds of the Palestinians in Gaza are refugees whose families were forced from their homes or fled in fear during and after the establishment of Israel in 1948. But for 76 years, Israel has categorically denied them their right to return, in spite of Resolution 194.
Albanese said that Israel “will not kill the right of return because the right of return is established under international law that predates the creation of the state of Israel.”
Israel is intentionally repeating the Nakba of 76 years ago. “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” Israeli security cabinet member and Minister of Agriculture Avi Dichter declared on November 12, 2023. “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it will end.”
The Palestinians’ Right to Self-Determination
The Palestinian people have the lawful right to self-determination. The ICJ ruled that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza violates international law, which prohibits the acquisition of territory by threat or use of force and enshrines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. “The sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying Power, through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful,” the court wrote.
On February 4, Trump issued an executive order permanently defunding UNRWA, the agency that has provided food, education and health care to Palestinian refugees since 1949. UNRWA is the only organization in Gaza able to attend to the urgent needs of the Palestinians who have endured Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war. Defunding UNRWA will invariably intensify the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Only the General Assembly can decide the future of UNRWA, Albanese noted.
Netanyahu has long been gunning for UNRWA. In 2018, he said that “UNRWA is an organisation that perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem and the narrative of the right-of-return, as it were, in order to eliminate the State of Israel” and it needed “to pass from the world.” The process of defunding UNRWA by the U.S. and other countries began during the Biden administration.
Before Netanyahu’s visit, Trump stated his intention to send Israel $1 billion in additional weapons, including $700 million for 1,000-pound bombs and $300 million for armored bulldozers. Trump also lifted the Biden administration’s suspension of deliveries of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel.
Palestinians Appeal to the International Community
A number of countries oppose Trump’s plan, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, France, Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Russia, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Brazil and Turkey.
Instead of welcoming Netanyahu to the White House, Trump should have sent him to The Hague to face the charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity that are pending against him in the International Criminal Court. However, Trump, who has faced a complaint brought by Palestinians in the ICC, has a history of attempting to undermine the ICC. During his first term, Trump imposed sanctions on the ICC’s chief prosecutor and another high ICC official for investigating alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Afghanistan by U.S. military forces, the CIA and the Taliban.
On February 6, Trump signed an executive order slapping economic and travel sanctions on ICC employees who participate in investigations of citizens of the U.S. and its allies, including Israel.
In its decision finding Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory unlawful, the ICJ ordered states to “abstain from diplomatic relations with Israel, and economic or trade dealings or investments that may entrench Israel’s unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory or assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel there.”
Albanese said she was “shocked at the defiance toward international law, not just by Israel, but by most countries in the international community,” including Denmark, a country renowned for its generous provision of public goods for its citizens as a social democracy. During her press conference, she urged the Danish government to reveal all its ties with Israel, including diplomatic, political, military and strategic research. She said it should “suspend anything that the ICJ found is detrimental to the rights of the Palestinians.”
“If Trump is so concerned that Gaza is an uninhabitable wasteland, he should instead contribute generously to the $50 billion to $80 billion it will cost Palestinians to rebuild,” Ben Saul, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald. “He should pressure Israel to compensate Gazans for its many violations of humanitarian law during the war. He should stop shipping US weapons and munitions to Israel.”
On February 5, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and other Palestinian human rights organizations issued a statement calling on the international community to:
Call on the United States to retract its plan to forcibly displace Palestinians in Gaza, and reject any attempts by Israel to formally annex the West Bank;
Ensure that Palestinians exercise their right of return to what is left of their homes in Gaza in safety, protection, and dignity, and ensure the provision of shelter, food and medical care to displaced Palestinians in the OPT,
Ensure the immediate and unimpeded provision of all material, logistical, financial, and social support required by Palestinians in Gaza;
Publicly condemn the use of sanctions to undermine the ICC, and the dismantling of UNRWA;
For European States to take actions to implement the EU Blocking Statute to shield against US sanctions on the International Criminal Court;
Fully cooperate with the International Criminal Court, enforce the arrest warrants to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant; and expand the charges to include settlements and genocide;
Compel Israel to rescind its legislation banning UNRWA, and urge the U.S. to reinstate the funding to the UNRWA;
Intervene in the UNRWA Advisory Opinion before the International Court of Justice; and intervene in the South Africa v Israel genocide case;
Address the root causes of the genocide, by dismantling Israel’s Zionist settler-colonial apartheid regime and ending the illegal occupation;
Impose sanctions, including a two-way military embargo, encompassing all arms, banking, financial, economic, trade and diplomatic sanctions on Israel; including ending all gas deals with Israel, using pipelines located in Palestine’s territorial waters off Gaza;
Call on social movements, activist groups and persons of conscience in solidarity with Palestine to use all means available to campaign against and disrupt President Trump’s colonial genocidal plans.
The Palestinian people adamantly oppose Trump’s illegal plan. “Palestine belongs to its Indigenous people; it does not belong to those who have stolen the land, forcibly displacing its inhabitants and are now intent on ethnically cleansing those who remained,” Moushabeck wrote.
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'We're rolling out Nakba 2023,' Israeli minister says on northern Gaza Strip evacuation
Likud Minister Avi Dichter says that 'war is impossible to wage when there are masses between the tanks and the soldiers.' While Netanyahu does not support resettling the Gaza Strip, he says will not give up security control over it 'under any circumstances'
Security Cabinet member Avi Dichter at the Knesset general assembly in May.Credit: Noam Moskowitz / Knesset spokesperson
Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter (Likud) was asked in a news interview on Saturday whether the images of northern Gaza Strip residents evacuating south on the IDF’s orders are comparable to images of the Nakba. He replied: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war – as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza – with masses between the tanks and the soldiers.”
When asked again whether this was the “Gaza Nakba”, Dichter – a member of the security cabinet and former Shin Bet director – said “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”
When later asked if this means Gaza City residents won’t be allowed to return, he replied: “I don’t know how it’ll end up happening since Gaza City is one-third of the Strip – half the land’s population but a third of the territory.”
The Gaza Strip’s settlements were evacuated by Israel in 2005 during a unilateral disengagement helmed by then-prime minister Ariel Sharon. Following coalition members’ declarations regarding reversing this move,
Open gallery view Palestinians in Gaza evacuating southwards, on Friday.Credit: Fatima Shbair/AP
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked on Friday if he supports Israeli resettlement in the Gaza Strip after the war. “No, I don’t think so,” he answered, “I said I want full security control. Gaza must be demilitarized. I don’t think (resettlement) is a realistic goal, I’m saying it plainly.”
Netanyahu, who spoke at a press conference alongside Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and minister Benny Gantz, added that he won’t give up control over security in Gaza “under any circumstances.”
In response to a question about the war’s aftermath and the possibility of the Palestinian Authority controlling the Strip, he said: "I repeat, we will have total security control, with the ability to enter whenever we want to eliminate any terrorists who re-emerge. I can say what won’t happen – there will be no Hamas."
"I can say what else will not happen – there will not be a civil authority there that educates its children to hate the State of Israel, to kill Israelis, to eliminate the State of Israel. There cannot be an authority there that pays the families of murderers. There cannot be an authority there whose leader has not yet condemned the terrible massacre more than 30 days after it occurred," added Netanyahu.
