Trump Wants More War for Gaza Ploy

Volume 30, Number 40 —Saturday, February 8, 2025


Trump Wants More War for Gaza Ploy


In a bizarre statement the U.S. president said construction workers “would slowly and carefully” begin rebuilding Gaza without the need for U.S. troops. He said Israel will restart the fighting, reports Joe Lauria.

IDF troops in the Gaza Strip, Nov. 2, 2023. (IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News




Despite a worldwide outcry from friends and foes that his plan amounts to a war crime, and despite efforts by his own officials (who did not know he would announce the plan) to reframe his intentions, U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday insisted he held the key to Middle East peace while everyone else is wrong.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump issued a 106-word, one paragraph statement at 6:32 am Eastern Standard Time Thursday that bears close scrutiny.

He wrote:


“The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting. The Palestinians, people like Chuck Schumer, would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region. They would actually have a chance to be happy, safe, and free. The U.S., working with great development teams from all over the World, would slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth. No soldiers by the U.S. would be needed! Stability for the region would reign!!!”

Trump Is For More War

Trump starts off by saying that his master plan will begin “at the conclusion of fighting.” As he later says in the statement that no U.S. troops will be deployed to Gaza, one can conclude that he presumes Israel will finish the fighting with victory over Hamas.

This means Trump does not support a permanent ceasefire and is greenlighting a resumption of the war by Israel. It would explain why he released more 2,000-pound bombs to the IDF.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear at the White House press conference Tuesday with Trump at his side that Israel would resume the war with Hamas.

The problem is that after 15 months of pounding Gaza, Israel was unable to defeat Hamas. But Trump says that will have to happen to remove armed opposition to the ethnic cleansing he needs to implement his plan.



Can Israel ‘Turn Over’ Gaza?

In his post Trump says once the fighting is over in a presumed Israeli victory, the “Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel.” Netanyahu called Trump’s plan “the first good idea that I’ve heard” about Gaza.

From an Israeli perspective, U.S. control of Gaza is better than being responsible for it themselves.

Trump is going to clear the rubble with mixed-in corpses, remove unexploded ordinances, and build a Mediterranean resort to rival Monte Carlo — and somebody else (the Gulf, which rejects the plan) is going to pay for it all. Israelis will easily go to and fro over the Israel-U.S. border with no hassle whatsoever and will be able to buy property there.

Why wouldn’t Israel “turn it over” to the United States? Gaza has been a political football for 4,000 years, passing from one empire to the next. What is one more transfer of rulers?

Gaza is an ancient land that was ruled over by the Pharaonic, Assyrian, Hellenic, Roman, Islamic, Ottoman, British, and if Trump gets his way, American empires. After the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel, created by ethnically cleansing Palestinians from historic Palestine, Egypt assumed administration of the Gaza Strip.

Egypt ruled over as many as 190,000 Palestinian refugees that had been driven there by Israel. Moshe Dayan warned in 1956 that one day (Oct. 7, 2023) these Gazan refugees would attack Israel since they had watched Israelis steal their and their forefathers’ land. (Today’s refugee population in Gaza is 1.6 million.)

In 1967, Israel seized Gaza (and the West Bank) and the Strip was occupied by the IDF and Israeli colonizers.

Though Ariel Sharon eventually dismantled these settlements in 2005 (over the furious objections of the settlers), the U.N. continued to define Gaza as “occupied territory” under Israel’s blockade and now under the current military occupation.

The Geneva Convention does not allow a military occupier to own the territory it is occupying and gives it no legal right to “turn it over” to anyone else.

In the case of Gaza and the West Bank Israel has been obligated by the U.N. Security Council to return these occupied territories, not give them to another country. Resolution 242 of 1967 calls for the “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”

Refugees in Gaza, 1956. (National Library of Israel/Wikimedia Commons)

Trump Wants Them Out First

Trump is saying in his social media post that before Israel “turns over” Gaza to the U.S., the two million or so Palestinians living there “would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region.”

Leaving aside the inexplicable reference to Chuck Schumer, Trump then concludes his statement with this:


“The U.S., working with great development teams from all over the World, would slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth. No soldiers by the U.S. would be needed!”

In Trump’s imagination, by this time Israel has defeated Hamas, about two million Palestinians have already been moved out to modern, new homes in some still to be determined location and the reconstruction of Gaza can begin.

The master Manhattan developer is ready to share top billing for Trump City Gaza with “great development teams from all over the World.”

Even though Trump thinks Hamas has been defeated by now, workers would still have to “slowly and carefully” begin to erect “one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth,” slowly and carefully looking over their shoulders as they rivet beams into place just in case there’s still some armed opposition lurking around the construction sites. But don’t worry, “No soldiers by the U.S. would be needed!”

One really doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on X @unjoe.