Many Gaza questions are unanswered, such as cost, US military involvement, and where the Palestinians will go. But the resort will be stunning.
In a video announcement with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump says “The US will take over the Gaza strip and we will do a job with it too. And we will own it.“
Here’s another video worth watching: President Trump says the Gaza Strip will become the “Riviera of the Middle East” just minutes after saying the U.S. would “take over” the Strip.
Riviera of the Middle East is not very inspiring. I propose Gaza-Lago.
And like you, I am inspired by AI renditions of what’s to come. Meanwhile, questions from skeptics abound.
The Wall Street Journal comments Proposal stuns Middle East experts and his own allies, leaving many questions unanswered.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip,” Trump said during a press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. “I do see a long-term ownership position, and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East, and maybe the entire Middle East.”
The proposal, if implemented, would deeply involve the U.S. in a development project that Trump officials said earlier in the day could take 10 to 15 years. He left unaddressed how the U.S. would persuade Palestinians to voluntarily surrender their land and whether Israel would ultimately exercise sovereignty in the territory.
Trump didn’t rule out sending U.S. forces to hold Gaza, a deployment that could launch the kind of long-term American military occupation in the Middle East that Trump has long decried.
It wasn’t immediately clear how Trump’s plan could be implemented.
The Arab world is likely to reject Trump’s proposal, though initial responses were muted because it was the middle of the night there when the news conference happened.
Itamar Ben Gvir, a far-right politician who dropped out of Netanyahu’s government over efforts to end the war, posted on X: “Donald, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Congressional Republicans and Democrats immediately expressed skepticism at the idea of the U.S. taking over Gaza.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), a staunch Trump ally, called the proposal interesting but problematic, and said his constituents wouldn’t like the idea. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D., Ariz.), a former Marine, said Trump was outlining an invasion of Gaza.
Middle East experts were left stunned.
Khaled Elgindy, a former senior adviser to the Palestinian Authority in negotiations with Israelis, called Trump’s proposal “truly bizarre and incoherent.”
“None of it makes any sense. Is he looking to develop Gaza as some kind of massive beachfront property? Is he talking about a U.S. occupation of Gaza? Will the U.S. force out two million Palestinians as part of the plan?” asked Elgindy, now at Georgetown.
White House officials argued Tuesday that mass relocation from Gaza was the only viable option and that they could persuade Egypt and Jordan to accept displaced Palestinians. Trump has invited Jordan’s King Abdullah and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi to the White House for talks later this month.
“At some point, we have to look realistically. How do you rebuild Gaza?” said White House national-security adviser Mike Waltz. “What does that look like? What’s the timeline? These people are sitting with literally thousands of unexploded ordnance, in piles of rubble.”
U.S. officials have yet to outline how they will remove Palestinians from Gaza if they don’t leave voluntarily. Moving forward with the plan could also undercut Trump and Netanyahu’s larger goal of reaching a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Many Questions, Some Answers
- White House national-security adviser Mike Waltz. “What does that look like? What’s the timeline? These people are sitting with literally thousands of unexploded ordnance, in piles of rubble.”
- Is he looking to develop Gaza as some kind of massive beachfront property? Is he talking about a U.S. occupation of Gaza? Will the U.S. force out two million Palestinians as part of the plan?” asked Elgindy, now at Georgetown.
My lead image addresses both of those questions. Some people are skeptical but not me. Here’s another image of the beautiful Gaza-Lago resort.
The entire sea-front will consist of developments like this.
Returning to the Real World
Moments ago I commented Trump says “US Will Take Over the Gaza Strip and Relocate All Palestinians”
Mish’s Five Observations
- Trump said he would deploy US troops to the territory “if it’s necessary.” Well, it would be necessary.
- Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan all disagree. They do not want Palestinians and the associated violence.
- The US does not want Palestinian refugees. Nor does Israel. Nor does the EU.
- The Palestinians do not want to be forcibly be removed and no country wants them anyway.
- There is no funding for Trump’s proposed military operation or cleanup operation.
Tut-tut you might be saying. I agree because I am newly inspired by visions of Gaza-Lago.
Kitesailing with bombs
25th Amendment material, beyond reasonable doubt. Turn the world into a gated kleptocrat resort. I’m not saying the Gazans made sense, but nevertheless.
Al this talk about resorts, purchases of Greenland Canada can someone tell me where this mutts are going to get the money.
There is no better resort than one built on the bones of the prior inhabitants! It’s like a concentration camp made into an amusement park!
This sounds like Trump’s treatment for Covid … remember IV injection of Bleach !
Anybody in a sane mind would not propose such outlandish idea.
He never suggested IV injections of bleach. That’s been debunked for years.
Correct. He was suggesting disinfectant… something normal like formula 409 or rubbing alcohol. Bleach is for bubble head blondes!
We just let him spew stuff like this to distract people from what I’m REALLY doing… and it works. If it should happen to fail, all we have to do is yell “trans people are using the wrong bathroom”. and all thought is replaced with disgust plus a bit of lust and shame.
I LOVE THE UNEDUCATED!
Gaza had the funds to develop its economy. It chose to spend on warbsnd destruction, regrettably.
While we are ethnically cleansing, maybe the Jews can be returned to their original homeland in Europe. With both groups gone, peace and capitalism will rein!
Judaism started in the Middle East, NOT Europe. It’s Biblical! [lol] D’oh.
Red Sea Pedestrians always have the right of way!
I love this stuff. It is called thinking outside the box, and it should be welcomed by us all in the name of progress. Who knows where it will all wind up, but the status quo obviously doesn’t work any more, so kudos to Trump for getting up on his horse and leading the charge to who knows where…….
it’s not “thinking”. it’s a brain fart. Remember Hamas? it’s still there. this isn’t building a hotel in New Jersey.
Are you sure? Have you checked today? They may have all bugged out last night.
Who knows where? I know where… and you aren’t going to like it. Funny thing is, you’ll pretend you do when we get there so you don’t look stupid, but you’ll look stupid anyway.
You’re probably not aware of it, but, you look stupid right now. Never change!
I don’t pretend to know the full scale of the M.E. issues, particularly about Israel and Palestine. However, I do agree that this whole 100+ years wars is beyond stupid and things need to change. How? No idea exactly. I’m just an average citizen looking at an article wondering how you change the hearts and minds of millions of people. I will say one thing that bothers me about the US on foreign soil there, if our leaders wanted to help rebuilding homes and businesses, great. But we have to be reasonable about costs, especially since we’ve gone on a mission to scrap wasteful federal spending. But if we’re there to build out resorts, no. Just no. It smacks of predatory real estate tactics and that’s not cool with people who have morals and attempting to instill them into the next generation. I get they’ve got some grand ideas about attracting wealth to come spend it there, but that’s speculative, and that isn’t cool to the 95% who scrap to get by.
There’s something is happening right now I can’t believe ,a YouTube character is allowed to run the show.
Welcome to the glorious future, otherwise known as the Golden Age!
7 Presidents in my lifetime could not offer a viable solution. It’s about to be 8 from the looks of it but Trump’s proposal, as officious as it is right out the gate is the only one that states the obvious up front; somebody gotta go.
There is no way these people can live next to each other in peace from what I have read due to neither side regarding the other as actual people. From a distance, following international laws sounds like a good idea. Up close, it’s the graveyard where international laws are laid to rest and buried in rubble.
The Arabs, Europeans, US student protesters or anyone else that doesn’t like the idea are the same people that didn’t like seeing these people being decimated with no mercy. I also don’t like it but I’m not going over there to state my case with conviction either. And neither will they. Otherwise they would have done it already.
So with 7 failures, isn’t it time to consider a different approach?
Trump should have prefaced his statement on this issue with Monty Python’s
“And now for something completely different!”
Exactly. We’re going to be slapping all participants with a large salmon. It won’t help the political situation any, but it’ll be highly amusing.
The nice thing about this proposal is that it’s so pants-on-your-head stupid, the moron masses will support it out of sheer stupid solidarity.
“Nightmare on the Riviera” is more like it. Nothing like mass deportations of millions of people, ethnic cleansing, genocidal war, and bulldozing of homes, schools, and hospitals to remind one of those heady spring days in 1943, when a certain ruling class said “You know what? That’s prime real estate in downtown Warsaw! Let’s clear out those annoying crowds and redevelop it! …Get to it, SS Gruppenführer Stroop!”
With all the good that Trump is doing in the name of “America First”, how EASY it is to forget that “Israel First” is the main program — until, of course, Trump’s boss, Bibi Netanyahu, shows up to his White House to make sure things are on track.
you were intelligent for the first few sentences, but then your true colors came out just another conspiracist (which has the word racist in it)
Bibi’s not the boss anymore… I am.
Car bomb valet?
You don’t need a valet if you have a Cybertruck!
Change is coming but nobody is going to like it…..and I am not mentioning Palestinians.
My followers will eat infinite shit sandwiches with a smile, if only so the non-believers have to smell their breath.
Certainly be a psychological change of focus from Guns to Butter.
Man of Peace strikes again.
Make Money not War, has a good ring to it.
Does the lead image actually say “TUMP”?
I can’t even make out a T. Great catch, Nate!
Epic fail!
We’ve redacted the letter R to save money to fund my contracts.
Why is there always money for arms but never any money to build? The Palestinians are young and unemployed. They need jobs. If you slot so much land for big labor intensive industrial parks and allow whatever is produced to be shipped to the USA tariff free, there would be investors as long as the country is safe.
China has millions of unoccupied homes and they keep building them. Gaza is so population dense you have to build up to the sky but you can employ China to build housing where they do not lose money for a change.
You can attract capital if you make Gaza a dividend free and capital gains tax free haven. For both housing and industrial development, the USA could just back the loans versus spending out of pocket.
There is also billions in oil and gas offshore. If the capital flood gates are open, maybe that could get developed more quickly.
Put cameras everywhere and a tough on crime judiciary system, and who knows? I mean, what is the alternative?
[LOL] When the Palestinians renounce violence against Israel and Jews, perhaps they will get a little more respect. Hell, Arabs in other countries don’t want anything to do with Palestinians because they are always fomenting trouble.
Why should Palestinians renounce violence when their land is being stolen right out from under them?
so, the Indigineous American should rise up and murder the US invaders, right? The pure blood Celts should murder the Saxon invaders. And the indigineous population of the middle east should rise up agaisnt the invaders from the Arabian Peninsula? There’s 22 Arab countries, only one of which is populated by indigineous people, the rest were conquered. There are many other expressly Muslim countries. the other countries in the world are solidly majority run by one religious group. and that’s ok, or at least accepted as the way of the world. But ONE Jewish nation? no, no, can’t have that. that’s where the world chooses to draw the line. need to go back to their homeland. which is idiotic because it’s indisputable they are indigineous to the ME, including Arab countries. Half of the inhabitants of Israel are descended from the nearly 1 million jews expelled from Arab countries, the other half are descendants of Jews exiled to Europe by the Romans.
there are literally Arab conquests ongoing today, and no one gives a crap (Sudan). But Israel, oh no, that’s land theft and must be stopped
Violence hasn’t helped the Palestinians. The only way they have managed to survive as a coherent entity is because of the decades of free welfare provided by the UNRWA. Now that the UNRWA has been banned in Israel and the USA has ceased funding it, I wonder who will provide unlimited free food and supplies to Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank?
Did the Jews in Israel renounce violence against the occupying Brits in 1940-1948? Palestinians have at least as much right to Palestine as Jews to Israel (more, in most cases). What you mean is Palestinians should stop fighting back.
Yes. They cannot win. EVER. And without free UN aid that I mentioned above, they are finally going to have to think about actually working for a living and to raise their large families. This usually pushes fighting to the back of people’s minds.
Capital isn’t the problem. There are lots in the ME just waiting for the moment but they will not invest if it is not safe. Now how does one make it safe?
How are you gonna have capitalism with a religion that bans lending?
It’s a good thing I showed up to save you all… you people are dumb.
These are all excellent suggestions so expect people to hate your ideas.
Why not just send them to fill the ghost cities in China. A win win.
Yes. Xi wouldn’t put up with their BS for long.
The Palestinians are young, unemployed, uneducated, and living in ruins salted with their dead relatives. They have no prospects for bettering themselves, and no escape. They are literally being bred by Israel to hate Israel. Revenge is all they have, and when they get big enough the whole cycle will start again.
Israel is kind of into it, to be honest.
Lebensraum?
You know what they say:
“Nobody likes change except a wet baby!”
Can somebody please check Jared Kushner’s head for a 666?
This has already been explored by more people than Trump. The money will come from the Saudis and the Gulf countries with the goal of building something like Dubai on the Gaza strip. I didn’t hear Trump talking about putting in a Trump resort when he talked but you can be sure that if it happens one will be there. From what I understand there are a lot of Arab money willing to invest there but there is one big problem. Having the current population there is not conducive to this dream hence the necessity of removing enough of them from Gaza and putting them somewhere else like Egypt and Jordan.
It’s a strange idea but continuing as before is no longer a viable path so why not. Of course it does make a field day for the sensationalist press. Considering that for many of them their source of funding has mysteriously disappeared, they need all the help they can to generate clicks.
Allowing the Palestinians to remain in Gaza is a foolish choice that is mainly driven by the question as to what to do with 2 million destitute people that other Arabs want nothing to do with.
Offering to rebuild Gaza for the Palestinians makes no sense for Israel, for the Palestinians and for peace in the region.
Physically, Gaza is barely fit naturally and environmentally for desert plants and animals. It never was a proper place for hundreds of thousands, let alone millions of humans to settle.
There is hardly any water! Pre Oct 7, 2023 Gaza depended on water piped in from Israel and desalination plants. They had about 150 desal plants, none of which were regulated or monitored for water quality by anyone. Desalination plants are environmentally problematic and not a long-term solution.
Next, there are few to no natural resources to mine that would help build an economy on. Palestinians had ample opportunity to build a workable economy in Gaza. It wasn’t possible, which is why the territory required the UNRWA to drive in 500 trucks of food and supplies every single day pre-Oct 7th 2023. The only way Gaza was able to exist and host 2.3 million mostly destitute people with an average daily income of $13/day was via these constant welfare handouts.
And this is what everyone wants to recreate? Wave a magic wand, rebuild the territory and believe everything will be different this time? You are familiar with the saying that repeating the same over and over but expecting different results is the definition of insanity?
And even if Gaza could be made viable this time around (when it wasn’t before), IT IS A GEOGRAPHICALLY CONTAINERIZED AREA! Where would an ever-growing Palestinian population expand to? Israel certainly isn’t going to give up any land to connect the West Bank to Gaza. The Palestinians would have to strictly control their birth rate (unlikely at best) or attempt to take land from Israel (extremely unlikely to succeed).
In 1948, there were 750k “new “Palestinians” left in Israel territory after the partition that refused Israeli citizenship. From that beginning, their population is now over 11 million and most of them require handouts from their dedicated aid organization, UNRWA, to survive.
Again, this is what everyone wants to recreate?
Trump is correct. The Gazan Palestinians must be relocated elsewhere!
Couldn’t agree more. Relocate the Gazans who were expelled from Israel in 1948-1950 to their homes, lands and villages from whence they came. Refugee problem eliminated. Morality and international law upheld.
The people of Pacific Palisades want to rebuild their homes, along with the people of Altadena. Similar excuses can be made in order to prevent rebuilding those communities.
LA SHOULD be depopulated. Let it return to the desert land that it truly is.
They’re not going to stop hating Israel when you move them. If only there were some Final Solution to this problem… I’ll get stinky to start yammering about it to pave the way.
“It’s a strange idea but continuing as before is no longer a viable path so why not.”
EXACTLY, DOUG!
Hopefully, change is coming to Gaza just like it is to America!
No it won’t: if you noticed the backlash today from the ME countries. They have no collective intention of financing this idiots plans, where did he draw them up, on the back of a cigarette packet???
He always does stuff like this when he gets a coloring mat and crayons when we go to dinner. We can only let him have the sharpies when he’s supervised, otherwise he’ll sniff them until he’s completely psychotic and waddling around the west wing in his diaper making verbal executive orders.
For an addled old fart, the guy can be a handful.
I swore the first time I looked at that first AI created picture it said DUMP instead of TRUMP.
But upon closer look it appears to say IUMP.
You should definitely re-render it to say DUMP 🙂
Unfortunately, Mike, even if you are not Repub, by insulting the views of Democrats and Liberals alike, you have to agree that are partially responsible for putting this proto-dictator in office. This country would never have become libertarian. but by instead siding with the right, you may have done your part to put him in office, knowing full well what he is.
The weaponization of the DOJ and against the J6 grannies who walked between the velvet ropes and the censorship of social media sites by the Biden Administration were true fascism. Trump’s overreaches will be restrained by the courts. I am pissed about this Gaza shit, though.
Especially grandma buffalo guy and grandma Cleatus. All they did was prance around the United States Capitol with a confederate flag. Totally normal!
I’m not a dictator. I am your Benevolent World Emperor to-be!
Gaza-Lago – throw in 24-hour sports betting and this place could explode. I meant that figuratively, but upon reflection exploding could well occur. You cannot put nice things like Gaza-Lago in Gaza with Palestinians present.
For perspective:
Gaza is about the same size as Brooklyn, NY.
Israel is about the size of New Jersey.
It’s about twice the size (141 sq miles) of Brooklyn (75 sq miles of land).
Maybe drop them in LA? They should feel right at home there.
The new rendition of the Potemkin village?
Glad to see someone has a sense o humor