That’s a… rather limited analysis of why other countries would be reluctant to take in hundreds of thousands of exiled and dispossessed Gazans if Israel kicks them out.
The main issue is not just that those hundreds of thousands of Gazans would include some Hamas militants and terrorists. No country wants to take in hundreds of thousands of exiled and dispossessed refugees, period.
The victim-blaming (“well, it’s your fault we don’t want you, because there are some terrorists mixed in with you!”) merely serves to let everybody else feel better about ignoring the refugees’ plight.
It’s hardly a hypothetical. You couldn’t pay Egypt to take back Gaza. The P.L.O. was a threat to the government of Jordan and was one of the players that sparked the Lebanese Civil War.
I was really hopeful that Babale was going to be right in the beginning of this thread and that everyone was panicking for no reason. But I dunno know man, there’s a lot of smoke now about removing 2 million people.
That it seemed like a brilliant idea to Trump and nobody on his staff could talk any sense into him is not a surprise.
If the idea somehow caught on, it would enrich his son in law (and himself) and of course Hotel Ivanka and Trump Golf Course would be center pieces. He will bring it up again. And again.
Meanwhile, my brother was driving on the Taconic Parkway in New York, and the “Donald J. Trump State Park” signs are still there in Putnam County, which is about as Trumpy as New York gets. He bought it for $2 million, did nothing with it and “donated” it to NYS for a $100 million write off. And like everything else Trump, it’s an abandoned dump.
Really? Trump has done absolutely nothing to make me believe he actually intends to do more than bloviate on the topic.
Much like with his “victories” in the trade war with Mexico and Canada, all he has accomplished is getting the king of Jordan to make a big show out of doing something he already planned to do.
Meanwhile, despite Hamas’ typical games over the last week, the hostages exchanges are back on and the ceasefire is holding; the next phase is being negotiated despite Trump’s insistence that if “all the hostages are released, and not in drips and drabs, by Saturday at 12 PM” the war should be back on, no one appears to be listening.
‘Trump is a bloviating boob’ hits different if you’re a pregnant teen rape victim in a Red state, a trans soldier, a Brown immigrant, a USAID (ex)employee…
I’m not sure I follow. Israel and Hamas have fought wars before, with lots of damage done to Gaza as a result, and Egypt along with other countries invested tons of money in the rebuilding effort afterwards.
If they previously spent tons of money rebuilding Gaza after a war, how does them choosing to do the same thing again show that Trump’s threat was taken seriously?
I think the idea is that the threat from Trump and Israel was serious enough to make them finally come to the table for a solution. The other option was annihilation, so they wisely took the other option. That’s the spin I am seeing anyway.
Mhmm, I’m sure Trump would love to spin it that way, but it makes no sense at all. If they were so terrified of Trump utterly annihilating Gaza, wouldn’t they offer a greater concession then exactly what they’ve done after every prior war?
Update: Obviously Gaza has slipped out of the news cycle with all the various craziness happening elsewhere. But since March 2nd the entry of all humanitarian aid and commercial supplies to Gaza has been blocked, and the electricity supply has been cut off.
Yeah, I have been watching this and pissed that it has been forced out of the news cycle. Part of me wondered if half the shit President Trump does is to distract from this and other travesties.
I doubt Trump has the self-awareness to use distraction as a tool. He is just so incredibly self centered that mere massacres of brown(ish) people half the world away do not concern him.
I had thought “Trump Gaza” - finally given a name by that bizarre video with Musk the other week had been mostly forgotten. He has mentioned doing stuff in Gaza since then. yet despite Vance being there to club visitors to the Oval Office, they keep saying “two-state solution” (maybe not to his face which would make him and Shamrock Socks mad)
So nothing is really “distracting” in a shiny new ball kind of way.
He keeps teasing Canada about being the 51st state and calling their new PM “Governor”. I assume he is joking (not that he has a sense of humor) and isn’t that crazy, yet I’m sure there is some non-zero Vegas odds action.
He keeps saying “free and open” elections regarding Greenland yet also keeps saying, out loud, “No matter what happens, we’re gonna take it”. Even Xi doesn’t quite say stuff like that out loud about Taiwan, so maybe either he’s waiting for the accolades with peace in Ukraine or Xi to make the first move so nobody notices Greenland suddenly has the 101st Airborne and some Naval ships suddenly there.
Look, it’s very simple. Israel, a long time ago, decided that Gaza was not going to be a part of Israel, for a host of reasons. While it is certainly physically possible for Israel to annex Gaza or to kick everyone inside out and then settle it, Israel has decided that it’s not going to do this.
Trump bloviating about how amazing Trump Gaza is going to be and having Musk’s 20 year old interns create an AI generated video doesn’t shift the equation one bit.
American support for such a venture might have an impact; but Netanyahu, reprehensible as he is, isn’t a complete and utter moron. He understands that Trump is a fickle motherfucker who can’t be trusted as far as he can be thrown (remember, Netanyahu and Trump fell out for years because Bibi called Biden to congratulate him on his election), he understands that while Trump might think otherwise he isn’t the only important opinion in America, and he understands that America is not the only relationship Israel has to maintain, and he also understands that this includes the other Arab countries.
So even in the most cynical realpolitik sense, and not even taking into consideration how Israelis would feel about doing it (or spending the lives of their children doing it) - it’s pretty obvious why Trump Gaza doesn’t get taken seriously by even the people who might be into something like that.
Remember, it’s not like Trump is offering to do anything to get Trump Gaza accomplished; he seems to think that he can command Netanyahu to do it, or something.
It’s exactly the same as the (two times now) when Trump announced “Hamas better release all the hostages by tomorrow at noon, or there will be hell to pay! From Israel, I mean, I’m gonna be in the Oval eating McDonald’s”. What did Israel do? Absolutely nothing - it continued operating under the structure of the existing deal with Hamas.
