Do We Now Own Gaza？
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Summary
Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu hold a press conference. What does this mean for the future of peace between Israel and the Palestinians? Is this a good or bad thing? And what does it mean for peace in the long-term?
Transcript
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connected. Hello, everyone. I hope you are well. Well, we seem to be cursed with living in
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interesting times. We are definitely cursed with living in ambiguous times in the sense that I
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don't really know what to make of Donald Trump's dual press conference with Bibi Netanyahu.
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Even after the question and answer session, where Trump used typically some colorful language to
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describe what happened. The takeaway seems to be that we now own Gaza. We own it. We're going to
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level it. And then we're going to build it back beautiful, better than ever. He actually said to
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a journalist that it's going to be like the Riviera. And I saw some Republicans like Nancy
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Mace tweeting out that, yeah, it's going to be like Mar-a-Lago in the Middle East. Sounds great.
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The other thing that seems to be happening here is that Palestinians are going to be ethnically
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cleansed from their native land and pushed off into Egypt or Jordan or maybe whoever would take
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them. I don't think they're going to be treated as refugees in the United States because that would
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generate some backlash among conservatives. And so throughout the press conference, there seemed to
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be this sort of shell game going on in terms of whom exactly are you referring to. When Trump says,
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you know, we can't do anything now. It's terrible. It's a rubble. We're going to build it back better.
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There seemed to be the implication that the Palestinians would now be given a great new place,
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you know, at the Trump Tower and casino and all of that. But I don't think that's what he means
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because he's also talking about, again, what's definitionally ethnic cleansing that is moving
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people out of their land out of there. So who's going to enjoy this new Gaza? It seems to be Israelis,
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although, again, that wasn't said directly. Owning it. Who owns Gaza now? I don't know quite what this
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means. I mean, the United States owns some foreign territory. The United States, the federal government
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obviously owns states within the continuous U.S., although that's not really how we think of it.
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Does he want to own Gaza like he might want to own Greenland or own Canada? What does this actually
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mean? Is he meaning that we're going to morally own it? I think regardless of his intentions, I think
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that's what's going to happen. The troops that are going to go in there and wipe out the remnants of
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Hamas are going to be U.S. troops. The troops are going to occupy Gaza in effect. Now, a future
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ownership stake? I don't think so. I think what will ultimately happen with this is that Israel will be
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given this territory at some point and the greater Israel project, including an annexation of Gaza is
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underway. Now, let me just say a few things about this. First off, I don't think moving Palestinians to
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another territory as refugees is really the worst thing that could happen to them at this point.
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I get it. This is the definition of ethnic cleansing. This isn't genocide exactly. That word has also
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been used. This is clearly an example of ethnic cleansing. That being said, is this not the
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least bad of all solutions? I could certainly imagine worse solutions. To be honest, I could
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imagine worse solutions under a liberal government that is a democratic regime that wants to have it
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both ways in the sense that you just create the worst of all possible worlds. Democrats are far more
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likely to talk about not just Palestinian human rights and safety, but Palestinian nationhood.
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Republicans, no, they don't talk that way. Democrats are much more likely to subsidize and defend
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humanitarian aid coming in there to Gaza. At the same time, they're never going to really stop giving
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Netanyahu and company more bombs and weapons to destroy the Gazans and create this rubble,
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prehistoric situation that we have now. So they want to have it both ways. And it turns into this awful
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situation where they're vaguely promising Palestinian nationhood one day, and in effect, encouraging them
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to stay there, helping them survive while they're in Gaza, while they're at the end of the day, beholden
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to Israel, and at the end of the day, providing Israel weapons. I do think that's a sort of worst of
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all possible worlds. It's at the very least, totally incoherent. So I want to be fair here. It's easy to
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jump on Donald Trump for outright supporting ethnic cleansing, and that's what it should be called,
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etc. But I do want to be fair. If I were a Palestinian, at some point, you've just got to grasp
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that you have lost, that you're getting your ass kicked, that no one's coming to save you,
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and that surviving somewhere else is better. Now, plenty of them would disagree with this and want
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to fight harder, to die fighting Israel, etc. That's their prerogative. But at some point, you sort
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of have to cut your losses. So I think Trump should be criticized for this. People should call it for what
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it is. But to think of it as the worst thing in the world. No, it's not the worst thing in the world.
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Some other aspects of this, the ownership aspect, this does seem to be that US troops will have boots
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on the ground. Now, to be fair, maybe that's better. If I were a Palestinian, I would rather
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see an American troop with the US flag lording over me than I would an Israeli troop. American troops are
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much more likely to follow the law and much more likely to treat them with some level of decency.
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I mean, look, I get it. I'm not naive about dirty wars in the Middle East, etc. However, I'm just saying
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of the horrible option and even more horrible option, I would choose American boots on the ground.
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So from the Palestinian standpoint, again, it's not the worst thing in the world.
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From the US standpoint, it might be. First off, again, I find it difficult to believe
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that America is going to own Gaza. Gaza is a very small sliver of territory on the seaside
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of the Mediterranean that has been effectively surrounded by Israel. It's been an open air
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concentration camp. A lot of people say that. They say because it's true. We're going to own
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this territory. There are gas rights and natural resources, I guess. It's still very tiny. And you're
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in this very weird situation where you're surrounded by the Israeli state, who's, of course, an ally
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and a client of the US empire. Just odd. But the other thing about it is that you are putting American
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troops in a situation where they are in all likelihood going to face terrorist actions, hostile
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fire, etc., etc. It is very easy to foresee that there is going to be some terrible incident with Hamas or
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someone else in which a dozen US troops get blown up. And then we blame Iran and whatever. It's not just an
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attack on Israel. It's an attack on the US. After all, we own it.
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So I think this is an extremely precarious situation. And I don't fully know if Donald Trump
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recognized what he's getting into. And is this a guy, he seems to be operating on this logic of
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real estate and luxury real estate. We're going to own it. It's going to be the Riviera of the Middle
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East. Amazing vacation resort. Okay. But the idea that this land wouldn't be given to Israel at some
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point also strikes me as extremely implausible. So in effect, we're doing the fighting and dying.
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We're taking on the risk. We're taking on the risk. We are engaging in the billions of dollars of
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cleanup and leveling and rebuilding that will take place just to give it to Israel. I mean,
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I'm sorry, but at some point, that's rather outrageous. Isn't it the rule when you go into
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an antique store? You break it, you buy it. I mean, I understand how it's in some ways,
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it would be sort of bizarre to expect Israel to now treat the Palestinians or the people who live
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there with any sort of decency after what's been done. Nevertheless, isn't this their problem?
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Isn't there something to be said for America first and whatever? We're going to spend a decade
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rebuilding this place and investing billions of dollars only to hand it over to Israel and their
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greater Israel project from the river to the sea? Very strange. And on top of that, there's the issue
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of this leading directly to war, confrontation with Iran. You know, Hamas militant attacks U.S.
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personnel. We figure out pretty easily or we simply lie about it that Iran sponsored these people,
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provided them the weapons, etc. Next thing you know, you're directly in war with Iran. Is that the
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end game here? It's certainly worth considering. But I would say this, and I've actually been fair to
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Trump during this stream. Ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians to Jordan or Egypt, assuming that's
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possible, is not the worst outcome. It just simply isn't. Secondly, American troops on the ground in
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Gaza, even from a Palestinian standpoint, that's not actually the worst outcome. And Trump is bumbling
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and fumbling, but maybe he's sort of disrupting this horrible status quo of the liberals, where they
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want to protect the Palestinians, talk about their nationhood, and also just allow them to be killed
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en masse. I mean, is not some sort of disruption in this situation better, or at least a change
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worth saying. But I would say this just in closing. So I was just on a space and I was talking about
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this to someone that this idea came to my head. So Freudian psychoanalysis. Just wait for it and I'll
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get there. Freudian psychoanalysis is a theory based on the notion that what was once unspoken,
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unconscious, becomes conscious, becomes conscious, it is put into words. So let's say you are a patient
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of a psychoanalyst and you've got major daddy issues. Something happened in your childhood that
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you have not really dealt with or even confronted. And so you're having dreams and you can't get to
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sleep and you're looking to partners who are the worst possible ones for you due to this trauma.
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Well, psychoanalysis, the promise of it is that you finally get to the original trauma. You finally,
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what is unspoken and unspeakable and kind of traumatizing and destroying, you actually put it
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into words and you deal with it. You can manage it. Maybe you could overcome it even. At the very
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least, it's better once things are sort of clear. So what I was thinking about, so I'm in my mid-40s.
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I can definitely remember the Iraq War and the run-up to the Iraq War. At that time, if you said,
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if your criticism of the Iraq War was that, ah, this is a big waste of time and treasure and money,
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we might get killed, it might create chaos, that was sort of the acceptable liberal critique,
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maybe even libertarian or paleoconservative critique of the Iraq War. Now, if you said,
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I don't support the Iraq War because it's a war for oil, that's kind of on the borderline of what's
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acceptable. You might get a lot of pushback, even from critics of the war. If you said,
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I don't support the Iraq War because it's a war for Israel, then you were treated as a crank.
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You were a right-wing anti-Semite. You were a Marxist. You were a crazy person, conspiracy theorist,
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et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The fact is, Netanyahu wanted the Iraq War. Netanyahu established
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the intellectual foundations for the Iraq War. The Iraq War fits into a Lakutist plan for the Middle
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East. It was, on some level, and certainly not entirely, a war for Israel. That was 20 years ago.
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You couldn't say these things out loud. Maybe now you see where I'm going with this.
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When Donald Trump wants to remove Palestinians from Gaza, ship them off to another Middle Eastern
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country, put American forces on the ground in order to rebuild the Holy Land that will soon be
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integrated into the Greater Israel Project. I don't know, maybe it's time for the Third Temple
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or something. I don't know. It's been 2,000 years. Why not? Well, when a situation like that is so
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clear, you almost have to put it into words. You can't beat around the Bush or try to claim that
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it's something else. This is not a war for democracy. George W. Bush actually believed in
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democracy. He believed his own bullshit. He was high in his own supply. He, after all,
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allowed the Gazans to vote. That's why Hamas won in 2005 or 6, I believe. That was one stone in this
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path that led us to where we are today. He actually believed his own bullshit. George W. Bush, say what
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you will about him. At this point, in terms of our relationship with Israel and Gaza, you cannot claim
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that this is anything other than a war for Israel. It is a war for the Jewish Holy Land. Period. End of
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statement. It's actually nothing else. And some leftist who claims that it's all about mineral rights,
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that's ridiculous. It's obviously about this. And I think there's this way in which Donald Trump
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makes things that were formally implicit or unconscious, explicit and conscious. He moves
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from soft power, things that were sort of assumed that were consensual, and he moves to just outright
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hard power. I think that's what we're seeing even with the destruction of USAID or deconstruction of
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USAID. Lots of criticism of USAID are certainly warranted. But it was, if anything, a sort of soft power
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effort at maybe funding some revolutionaries here, maybe sponsoring musical theater in Ireland over
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there. But it was all about consensus and soft power, influence, all these kinds of things that
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liberals are rather good at and certainly think about a lot more than conservatives do.
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But with Trump, why are we wasting a cent of taxpayer dollars on that? Let's just threaten them
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with tariffs. Let's just ship a few more billion dollars in bombs to Israel. Let's do that to Ukraine as
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well. And let's demand rare earth minerals from Ukraine as a deal, a transaction for our supporting
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Ukraine. There's no more soft power. It's all hard power. It's all do this or else. And maybe if you're
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nice, we can make a deal. But there's no more consensus. There's no more idealism around the American
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project in the American empire. Now, in many ways, I think this is, in an ironic way, I think it's
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almost a good thing. We're not lying anymore. We're not persuading anyone. We're simply beating them
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over the head with a stick. Which is, at the very least, honest. Let's just be honest about it.
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Palestinians, get out of here. Holy land, that's yours, Israel. There's something more honest about
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that as opposed to the cloying, lying nature of liberals. This is perhaps the biggest backhanded
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compliment anyone could ever give, but it actually is a compliment. And so I think that's where we are.
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Now, what does this mean for the American empire? I do think that moving from soft power to hard power
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is a sign of decline. A lot of conservatives probably think, oh, this is the new golden age.
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Everything's going to get so much better. It's going to be so wonderful with Trump. We're not
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going to get ripped off by the rest of the world. Whether we got ripped off by the rest of the world
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in the Bretton Woods system or the unipolar moments or the Cold War remains to be seen. I certainly
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wouldn't describe it that way. But we're moving from some sort of soft power consensus to a hard power,
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do this or else, and maybe we'll make a deal. I think that is a sign of decline. The Cold War
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institutions like USAID are being dismantled. Any sort of rules-based order consensus is being dismantled.
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But the empire is not being dismantled. The empire is just something else. The empire is no longer
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invisible. Now it's visible. It was soft. Now it's hard. I do think that making recourse to these
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types of tactics with Trump, whether Trump recognizes this or not, whatever his motivations
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might be, it does spell a sort of end stage of the American empire, of the American century,
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the long American century. Towards that, I have mixed feelings. The American century was a pretty
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good century. We did a lot of good things. The world is better, but all things come to an end.
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Just some thoughts. Hope you enjoy them. Talk to you later.