BREAKING: Trump Mulling ‘Long Term’ Mass Displacement of Palestinians After Approving 2,000-Pound Bombs for Israel
He also lifted sanctions on violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank, as his son-in-law doubles his stake in a firm that reportedly “stands to gain from expanding Israeli settlements”
Having just instructed the Pentagon to release the Biden administration’s hold on the delivery of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, U.S. President Donald Trump is now openly talking about facilitating a mass displacement of Palestinians out of Gaza, which he says could be “long term”.
During a “20-minute question-and-answer session with reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday,” the Associated Press quotes Trump as saying:
“It’s literally a demolition site right now... So, I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different location...”
“I’d like Egypt to take people... You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over.’...”
“I’d love for [Jordan] to take on more...”
“It could be temporary or long term...”
Asked days earlier whether he thought he could maintain the so-called “ceasefire” through all three phases, Trump replied that he’s “not confident,“ then immediately pivoted to talking about how Gaza is “like a massive demolition site” that must “be rebuilt in a different way.”
“You know, Gaza’s interesting. It's a phenomenal location,” he said. “On the sea, the best weather.... some beautiful things could be done with it… it’s very interesting… Some fantastic things could be done with Gaza."
‘Waterfront Property’
Trump’s comments echo remarks made by his son-in-law and former senior advisor Jared Kushner during an interview at Harvard University last February, where Kushner discussed how “very valuable” Gaza’s “waterfront property” could be and suggested that Israel should “move the [Palestinian] people out” while it “cleans up” the strip.
The Guardian reported at the time that this could be “a hint of the kind of Middle East policy that could be pursued in the event that Trump returns to the White House.”
From the same March 19, 2024 article:
“Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Kushner told his interviewer (...) Kushner also lamented “all the money” that had gone into the territory’s tunnel network and munitions instead of education and innovation.
“It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up,” Kushner said. “But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterward.” (…)
Kushner also said he thinks Israel should move civilians from Gaza to the Negev desert in southern Israel.
He said that if he were in charge of Israel his number one priority would be getting civilians out of the southern city of Rafah, and that “with diplomacy” it could be possible to get them into Egypt.
“But in addition to that, I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there,” he said. “I think that’s a better option, so you can go in and finish the job.”
He reiterated the point a little later, saying: “I do think right now opening up the Negev, creating a secure area there, moving the civilians out, and then going in and finishing the job would be the right move.”
(…)
Asked by [the interviewer] about fears on the part of Arabs in the region that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, would not allow Palestinians who flee Gaza to return, Kushner paused and then said: “Maybe.”
He went on to say: “I am not sure there is much left of Gaza at this point. If you think about even the construct, Gaza was not really a historical precedent [sic]. It was the result of a war. You had tribes in different places and then Gaza became a thing. Egypt used to run it and then over time different governments came in.”
Responding to a question about whether the Palestinians should have their own state, Kushner described the proposal as “a super bad idea” that “would essentially be rewarding an act of terror”.
Ethnic Cleansing
As recently noted by Decensored News, this kind of mass displacement of Palestinians out of Gaza is not a novel idea. It’s been widely discussed at all levels of Israeli society, including among settler leaders such as Daniella Weiss, who has flatly stated that “Arabs will not stay” in Gaza and will be replaced by “Jews.”
Her organization, Nachala — which she says gets funding and support from very “prominent” and “wealthy Jews” in the US — is just one of a number of groups in Israel that have been using October 7 as a pretext to push for Israeli settlements in Gaza.
“No Arab — I'm speaking about more than 2 million Arabs — they will not stay there,” she told CNN last year. “We, Jews, will be in Gaza.”
“A recent promotional video even boasts that Gaza will become the next Riviera,” CNN’s Clarissa Ward noted in the same segement:
Below is more footage from the “Conference for the Victory of Israel” shown at the end of the CNN clip above.
It was organized by Weiss and reportedly attended by 11 cabinet ministers and 15 members of the Knesset. Speakers included Itamar Ben-Gvir (national security minister) and Bezalel Smotrich (finance minister).
This is from Britain’s Channel 4 News:
“Those at last night’s conference… care little for Palestinian life,” Channel 4 News reported. “They think Palestinians should be deported from Gaza, to make way for Israeli settler… they want to… use this moment of crisis… to expel Palestinians...”
“You can call it ethnic cleansing, you can call it refugees, whatever you want,” Weiss told the BBC News last April. “You choose your definition.”
It doesn’t stop there. As we’ve previously noted:
In August of 2024, the Israeli publication Haaretz reported that the IDF had already “taken control of 26% of the Gaza Strip,” and that Israel’s so-called “war against Hamas” (genocide) has “turned into a springboard for Jewish settlement in Gaza.” They discussed “support within the army for settling Gaza” —“a phenomenon that can be seen on the ground”— including among senior officers, and noted that “the settlement endeavor also has significant support within Israel’s political leadership.”
Attacking The West Bank
On Monday, just days before his comments about wanting to “clean out” Gaza, Trump signed an executive order that terminated sanctions against dozens of Israeli groups and individuals accused of property destruction and violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
The sanctions had been in place since early 2024, and had cut the settlers off “from U.S. financial institutions and froze their assets in U.S. bank accounts,” per Politico.
The U.S. Treasury Department announced in a press release this week that they had officially executed Trump’s order and “unblocked” all relevant “property and interests.”
“Within hours” of Trump lifting the sanctions on Monday, “Israeli settlers attacked Jinasfut, a Palestinian village in the West Bank, injuring at least 21 Palestinians and setting fire to homes, cars, a nursery, and workshop,” per The Intercept.
The following day, “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a new military operation into the northern West Bank city of Jenin and an adjoined refugee camp where several Palestinian militant groups are based,” The Intercept says in the same article, adding:
The Israeli offensive, backed by drones and helicopters, killed at least 10 Palestinians — including a 16-year-old boy — and wounded 35 others, health officials said. The campaign is known as “Operation Iron Wall,” an apparent reference to the Zionist writings of Ze’ev Jabotinsky that argued for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to secure an Israeli state.
Annexation and Adelson
During a speech delivered to the Republican Jewish Coalition in September, Trump had vowed to “stand shoulder to shoulder” with Israel if elected, adding that he would “support Israel’s right to win its war on terror” and that “we will win fast. You have to win, and you have to win fast.”
He was introduced at the event by Miriam Adelson, an Israeli-born “mega-donor” who contributed over $100 million toward Trump’s reelection effort through her pro-Trump super PAC.
In a detailed profile of Adelson in New York Magazine last May, writer Elizabeth Weil specifically mentioned Israeli annexation of the West Bank as potentially being one of her top demands (bold added):
Many political-fundraising experts… believe Adelson will be Trump’s top patron in 2024, as she was in 2020. What will she expect in return? Beyond unconditional support for the Israel-Hamas war, one can assume she’ll press for the unfinished items of Trump’s Israel agenda from last term. Top of that list: Israel annexing the West Bank and the U.S. recognizing its sovereignty there.
Trump awarded Adelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned on Wednesday that “Israel, feeling emboldened by the military successes that it has had,” could decide that “this is the moment to do the annexation of the West Bank,” territory that he said he thinks Israel is more “fundamentally interested in” than Gaza.
“That would be a total violation of international law,” he added, and would “create a situation” in which “we would never have a real, stable peace in the Middle East.”
As for Kushner, he just reportedly “doubled his stake in an Israeli financial firm,” Phoenix Financial Ltd, which “stands to gain from turbocharging Israeli settlements in Palestine,” according to a recent exposé by The Lever.
The deal “gave Kushner nearly 10 percent ownership” in the company, they write, “making him the company’s largest shareholder.”
This story is also published at decensored.news. Image: Trump with Netanyahu in Israel May 23, 2017 (U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv / CC BY 2.0), and awarding Miriam Adelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018.
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Trump the hero of american zionism in his glory.
Palestinians have endured a lot , and they will not give in, the US and allies can wish for whatever they want, but Egypt and Jordan will have their own reasons for not taking in displaced Palestinians - or they would have done that 15 months ago. This is just talk and thoughts at the moment. I will panic when it actually starts happening. Change is happening. We are in the middle of something big.