Trump’s colonisation of Gaza is doomed, deranged and dangerous for Americans

The president’s proposal would pitch his troops directly against Hamas and make America the focus of extremist hatred. Is that what he really wants, asks World Affairs Editor Sam Kiley

Donald Trump referred to the Palestinian population of Gaza and the horrors they’ve endured there as bad “luck” no less than four times, as if the history of the enclave could be put down to an unfortunate error of town planning.

“I also strongly believe that the Gaza Strip, which has been a symbol of death and destruction for so many decades and so bad for the people anywhere near it, and especially those who live there and frankly who’s been really very unlucky. It’s been very unlucky. It’s been an unlucky place for a long time,” he told a joint press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.

He went on to say that he thought it would be a good idea if the US took over the Gaza Strip – that its “1.8 million” residents be moved to countries with “humanitarian hearts”, ending this run of “death and destruction and frankly bad luck”.

This is, of course, deeply unethical and – if realised – tantamount to committing crimes against humanity in the form of ethnic cleansing. Yet Trump, who wants to always put America First, appears to believe his views should be considered as a priority.

The 47th president has a refreshing disregard for history. For him there is no context to stifle “can do” ideas. ”The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too. We’ll own it,” Trump said.

US history in the Middle East and the Islamic world over the last 30 years has seen failure repeat itself: first as tragedy, then farce and ultimately horror.

In 1992, George Bush Snr sent US troops as part of a United Nations-endorsed mission to put an end to the vicious and deliberate starvation of Somalis by Somali warlords. It was a mission of noble intent – and it worked.

The famine in Somalia was ended, but – crucially – the US shied away from advice to actually arrest the clan leaders behind the atrocities until they’d got the measure of the foreign armies.

So, when America went after General Mohamed Farrah Aidid, they failed on the mission recreated in the movie Black Hawk Down – and left a year later, much chastened.

In 2001, after 9/11, the US and its Nato allies attacked the Taliban in Afghanistan, ridding the country of the extremist government that had given safe haven to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Then, ignoring history and the advice of experts, the US led a long-term mission to try to change the country into a modern democracy. Twenty years later, after much killing, death, mayhem and ignominy, the US and its allies fled Kabul, leaving the Taliban in charge.

In 2003, the US – ably supported in constructing a farrago of lies by the UK – claimed that Saddam Hussein had supported al-Qaeda and needed to be driven from power by force. Experts in the region pointed out that this was absurd and that toppling Saddam would unleash ethnic rivalries that no occupying power could control.

Decades of chaos, the birth of Isis – causing a vast loss of life – and international terror have been the harvest of that much-predicted idiocy.

The US occupying Gaza won’t work. It would put American troops in harm’s way and pitch them against Hamas, which so far has not attacked US targets in its campaign against Israel.

History tells us that the full-scale conflict in 1948 – when the State of Israel declared independence and more than half of Palestine’s population were displaced – brought instability to Lebanon and Jordan. Palestinians didn’t want to stay in those countries, they wanted to go home.

Gaza’s population is largely made up of the refugees from the same period. The Hamas fantasy of annihilating Israel entirely is partly fed by that dream of a “right to return”.

The Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023 – when 1,200 people were killed and some 250 taken hostage – have led to the killing of more than 47,000 Palestinians (according to Palestinian health officials) and inspired further hatred towards Israel. Putting Americans in charge of a colony on Palestinian land will simply focus that hatred upon Americans, as well.

The Hamas-led atrocities of 2023 did not happen in isloation. Like Isis, the assault was carefully calibrated to create the maximum response from Israel and to therefore smash efforts to normalise relations between Israel and the rest of the Middle East, including Iran.

Trump thinks there might be “one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, 12” nations who will take in 1.8 million Gazans around the Middle East. No one else is that cynical, or wrong.