Those were the words of Chris Murphy, Democratic senator from Connecticut, on hearing of Donald Trump's plan to annex the Gaza strip and forcibly expel all its Palestinian inhabitants. And he's not wrong.
Much of the world is righteously outraged about Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. That is an obvious affront to world peace and the post-Cold War order of Europe as well as international law and he shouldn't be allowed to prevail, but at least it makes a certain minimal amount of political sense (if you're Putin at any rate). But Trump's Gaza proposal is on an entirely new level of chutzpah and probably what you should expect if you take a real-estate hustler with delusions of grandeur and make him president of the USA – it's not as if the US had a historic claim on the place, a bond with its people, or anything, for Trump it's just an obvious chance to make money. What is this, the 19th century? It would take someone like Trump to look at the Gaza strip and see it as “the Riviera of the Middle East”, once all those pesky Palestinians have been removed and some posh hotels and casinos have been built so Trump's oligarch buddies will have a new place to go with their luxury yachts.
The Gaza strip hasn't ever in recent memory been anything like a Riviera but it was at least somewhat livable before the Israelis used mostly US-supplied bombs to reduce it to a vast expanse of ruins, rubble, and unexploded ordnance (which Trump is, kindly, offering to have removed along with its 2 million inhabitants, at the expense of “rich neighbouring countries”). We should hasten to add that this was, of course, notionally in retaliation for the Hamas atrocities of 7 October 2023, but whether Israel's campaign of destruction was a commensurate reply or wildly overshot the mark can be reasonably debated. What cannot be debated is that whatever has been going on then and since does not give Trump, of all people, the right to waltz in and declare the area a US dominion. Oh, the Palestinians of Gaza will all prefer to go and live elsewhere? Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan are going to take them in? You bet. If there was any love lost between those peoples and the Palestinians they could have done that ages ago. Remember that there are loads of Palestinians living in Jordan already but it's not as if the people of Jordan were asking to accommodate even more of them (they would presumably be more than enthusiastic to see the ones who are already the third or fourth generation of refugee camp inhabitants go elsewhere).
Finally, what about “America first” and not getting involved in offshore wars? After all, it's not as if the Palestinians were any more eager to be pushed around by US soldiers than by Israeli soldiers, and as far as they're concerned they're not going anywhere. Gaza is their home, even if it is, at present, a sea of rubble. So they're not going to want to leave voluntarily. But then again a war isn't a war if it is a “special military operation”, or for that matter a humanitarian development mission to turn a sadly-neglected piece of prime sea-side real estate into something fit for affluent Western tourists to amuse themselves in. But is it worth the life of a single GI to make Trump and his friends richer?
It should tell us something that nobody seems like Trump's idea except some ultra-right-wing Israeli politicians who have had similar plans for quite some time (probably not the “Riviera of the Middle East” bit but certainly getting rid of all the Palestinians to make room for Israeli settlers interested in beach-front properties rather than the arid hills of the West Bank). Even Netanjahu probably had to fight to keep a straight face during their joint press conference. And it's only two weeks since the guy has been inaugurated. First Panama, Greenland, and Canada, now Gaza? What's next? These are going to be a very interesting four years.
The picture shows the Gaza strip from as close as I ever personally got to it, in Kibbutz Nirim during our trip to Israel in October, 2022. It's hard to believe that that was only two years ago.