US President Donald Trump (R) and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu take questions during a press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 4, 2025. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP)
Trump’s Feral Fantasies
By Genocide Watch
In a press conference on February 4, at the end of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States, President Trump shocked the world by proposing that all Palestinians should be expelled from Gaza. Palestinians would be relocated to Egypt and Jordan.
In a real estate developer’s approach to foreign policy, Trump imagined that the U.S. would take control of the territory, clear it of rubble, and build “the Riviera of the Middle East.” As an afterthought, Trump supposed that some Palestinians might move back to Gaza after it is rebuilt.
Only far-right Israeli parties, and maybe Netanyahu, support the imperialism underlying Trump’s proposal. Trump had earlier revealed the dark shadows beneath his thinking by using the genocidal language of “cleansing” Gaza of Palestinians. The deadly euphemism “ethnic cleansing” was first used by Milošević in Bosnia to cover up forced deportation and Serbian genocide. “Cleansing” Gaza is a telltale indicator of Stages 4 and 8 in the genocidal process, dehumanization and persecution of a targeted population.
In Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, Israeli Defence Forces refuse to distinguish civilians from enemy combatants. The IDF’s rules of engagement tolerate twenty civilian deaths for the death of every Hamas combatant. It is the deadliest civilian to combatant ratio in any war since 1945. The result has been carpet bombing of entire apartment buildings, hospitals, and refugee camps. Over seventy percent of Gaza dwellings have been reduced to rubble. Between 46,000 and 64,000 Palestinians have been killed, over half of them women, children, and the elderly.
Israel has blocked eighty percent of food and medicine for civilians. Israel claims it has allowed in plenty of food, but Hamas stole it. The ICC has charged Netanyahu and Gallant with the war crime of starvation.
Genocide Watch has concluded that Israel’s intentional destruction, in part, of the Palestinian ethnic group constitutes genocide. Israel has also committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Now President Trump proposes that the U.S. should annex Gaza. Palestinians will be forcibly deported. Then the U.S. will build a new “Riviera”. Or will it be built by the Trump Organization?
Trump’s proposals to buy Greenland, “take back” the Panama Canal, and incorporate Canada as the 51st American state, are the fantasies of a nineteenth century imperialist. No wonder Trump’s hero is President William McKinley, the sponsor of the Spanish-American War that annexed Puerto Rico, Guam, and Hawaii, and made the Philippines an American colony.
Forced deportation is an international war crime and crime against humanity. It is not the opposite of genocide. It nearly always accompanies genocide.
Annexation of the homeland of a displaced people is open imperialism. Trump’s proposal to annex Gaza is not just further proof that Donald Trump may be a pathological narcissist . It is proof that Donald Trump is a threat to international peace and security.