{"id":51318,"date":"2025-02-06T11:57:12","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T19:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=51318"},"modified":"2025-02-06T11:57:12","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T19:57:12","slug":"gaza-as-the-new-riviera-but-not-for-palestinians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/06\/gaza-as-the-new-riviera-but-not-for-palestinians\/","title":{"rendered":"Gaza as the New Riviera \u2013 But Not for Palestinians"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n

Now it’s take and take and takeover, takeover<\/em>
\nIt’s all take and never give<\/em>
\nAll these trumped up towers<\/em>
\nThey’re just golden showers<\/em>
\nWhere are people supposed to live?
\n<\/em>Don Henley, \u201cGimme What You Got<\/a>\u201d (1989)<\/p>\n

Yesterday, President Trump said the U.S. would take over<\/a> the redevelopment of the devastated Gaza Strip (destroyed mostly by bombs, shells, and bullets made in the USA), turning it into a \u201cnew Riviera,\u201d not for the Palestinians, obviously, but for Israelis.<\/p>\n

To borrow from Don Henley, Where are the Palestinians supposed to live? Not in Gaza, where their presence would interfere with Zionism as well as Israeli desires to control profits from offshore gas fields. Roughly 1.8 million Palestinians are simply supposed to leave the Gaza \u201chellhole\u201d (Trump\u2019s descriptor), after which a lot of men with briefcases (and bulldozers) will move in to turn Gaza into a paradise on earth, free of Palestinian \u201csavages\u201d (a word I\u2019ve seen employed often online, and obviously one that echoes how the white man saw Native Americans, whose land was ruthlessly stolen from them as well).<\/p>\n

So, where will be the Palestinian \u201creservation\u201d? Trump has floated Egypt and Jordan, but both countries have expressed no enthusiasm for this scheme. Greenland, maybe?<\/p>\n

Trump has the virtue of saying the quiet part out loud. There will be no Palestinian state, no two-state solution. There will be one state, Greater Israel, with Palestinians either killed or ethnically cleansed from their lands. This was the policy of the Biden administration, even if that administration gave lip service to a two-state solution. Trump just states it plainly, like a mafia don intoning: \u201cIt\u2019s nothing personal \u2013 it\u2019s strictly business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Congress, which is owned by AIPAC, may grouse a bit about Trump\u2019s terminology, but look for most members to rubber-stamp this plan, if one can call it that.<\/p>\n

I suppose Trump\u2019s admirers might say he\u2019s cut the Gordian knot here \u2013 that peace in the region will only be attained when Israel is completely dominant and Palestinians are simply gone for good \u2013 but something tells me the fantastical new Riviera in Gaza is another manifestation of \u201ctrumped up towers.\u201d<\/p>\n

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), professor of history, and a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an organization of critical veteran military and national security professionals. His personal substack is Bracing Views<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author\u2019s permission. Now it’s take and take and takeover, takeover It’s all take and never give All these trumped up towers They’re just golden showers Where are people supposed to live? Don Henley, \u201cGimme What You Got\u201d (1989) Yesterday, President Trump said the U.S. would take over the redevelopment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[758],"class_list":["post-51318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"Trump's Fantastical \"Takeover\" Vision"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51318"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51335,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51318\/revisions\/51335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51318"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=51318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}