No Trump Tower for Gaza
A re-telling of "The Emperor's New Clothes"
With a grinning ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu at his side, Donald Trump announced that Gaza would be cleansed of its Palestinian population. Ethnically cleansed. The United States, the empire of which he is now emperor, would take over Gaza and turn it into a new Riviera on the eastern Mediterranean coast. Would it have a Trump Tower? The real-estate-developer-made-president didn’t say. But clearly, he thinks the world is now his oyster.
Leading officials in Netanyahu’s ultra-right government fell over each other in praising Trump. Even some of Netanyahu’s opponents in the Zionist state expressed openness to Trump’s “plan.”
Big question: would the Palestinians leave?
Trump said the Palestinians would willingly leave Gaza to be dispersed to nearby Arab countries, something the Palestinians, along with Egypt and most Arab states, have said will not happen. Only the Jordanian king, summoned to Washington for an audience with Emperor Trump once the show with Bibi was over, waffled on the question. Instead of giving a clear answer, Abdullah II deferred to the Arab League, and mumbled that Jordan could accept 2,000 children in need of medical assistance. Over the past sixteen months of Zionist genocide, Jordan has taken the few injured and maimed children that Israel would allow to leave, usually after long delays. Most have been sent to a Doctors Without Borders hospital there.
Trump stuck to his “plan” in the face of domestic and international ridicule and condemnation, which he seems not to notice. Nor does he heed international agreements banning ethnic cleansing or displacement of peoples from their homelands, or any international law for that matter. After all, he has imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court for charging Netanyahu and his onetime war minister, Yoav Gallant, with genocide in Palestine.
In an article on February 7, the New York Times called Trump’s “plan,” “The latest example of how government officials on the right in both the United States and Israel now speak publicly about a shared goal: the takeover of Palestinian land.”
According to the Times, Itamar Rabinovich, former Israeli ambassador to Washington said, “It’s the most rightwing government we’ve ever had in Israel — and there never was a US administration that shared these views to this extent.”
The fig leaf “two state” proposal that had been supported by US imperialism for decades as the “solution” to the “Palestinian problem” (and to which Israel never agreed), has been relegated by Trump to the trash can.
Kicking a hornets’ nest
The orange-haired emperor definitely shook up the Arab countries. Hours after he spoke, Saudi Arabia denounced his proposal, saying that the kingdom would sign no peace accord with Israel without Palestinian statehood. The largest Arab monarchy has been moving to distance itself from the United States recently, improving its ties with Iran, Turkey, Russia, and China, looking for, among other things, alternative arms suppliers.
Egypt’s president, Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, meanwhile, gave Trump a flat “no,” when he got a summons to Washington. El-Sisi said he would not go to Washington so long as the “plan” for Palestinian removal was on the table. He also made clear that the Palestinians would not be resettled in Egypt. To emphasize his refusal, he sent a large armored force to the Sinai Peninsula near the Israeli border with orders to remain on high alert and be ready for war. Egypt is also said to have taken charge of creating a united front of Arab states against Palestinian removal, while Iran is doing the same with non-Arab Muslim states. Egypt will convene a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo on February 27, with Saudi Arabia hosting a preliminary summit of Arab leaders on February 20.
But an even more important factor in the equation can be seen in the videos of the prisoner exchange ceremonies in Gaza itself. The world has seen thousands of resistance fighters, uniformed, highly organized and well-armed — many of them with captured Israeli weapons, clearly in control. They are surrounded by a sea of enthusiastic civilians, even amid the rubble. The resistance, it seems, is stronger than ever. In sixteen months of carpet bombing of Gaza — with billions of dollars’ worth of the most advanced military equipment and munitions the US and its European satellites could supply — Israel could not defeat the resistance. There was no reason to think that by renewing the war, Israel would achieve any different result. In short, Israel’s defeat was there for everyone to see.
So, with no takers, Trump’s Palestinian removal/ethnic cleansing “plan” for Gaza is no plan at all. The emperor is naked. It was all merely bluster and hot air. There will not, it seems, be a new beachfront Trump Tower in the eastern Mediterranean.
Realities on the ground
Last week, al-Qassam Brigades spokesperson Abu Obeida announced that further prisoner releases would be postponed indefinitely. The reason he gave was the Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement, which al-Qassam later enumerated:
Dozens of Palestinian civilians in Gaza killed by Israeli sniper fire and air attacks since the beginning of the ceasefire.
Failure to allow in anything like the number of trucks with food, medical equipment and supplies, or other essentials specified in the agreement
Failure to allow in modular housing units and tents to shelter the population as specified
Failure to allow in the heavy machinery needed to begin cleanup of the rubble that now covers Gaza
Failure to allow in fuel deliveries as agreed
Failure to begin negotiations on Phase 2 of the agreement
Israel and its US patron quickly responded to Abu Obeida’s announcement with a battery of threats to resume the war. Trump repeated his threat that if the Israeli prisoners were not released on Saturday, February 15, as scheduled, “hell” would rain down on Gaza. But for the Palestinians it was “been there, done that.”
“We are the flood, we are the day-after! “ — Abu Obeida
Nor were Trump and Netanyahu the only ones making threats. Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, leader of Ansarullah in Yemen pledged that if Israel failed to carry out its agreements with Hamas or Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Yemeni armed forces would resume their attacks both on Israel itself and on shipping in the Red Sea. He added that the attacks would be an escalation from what they had done before. Prior to the ceasefires, Yemeni attacks on shipping forced the Israeli Red Sea port of Eilat to close, while drone and missile attacks hit Tel Aviv and central Israel.
The Netanyahu/Trump saber-rattling didn’t seem to impress anyone in Israel either outside of Netanyahu’s cabinet. Large protest demonstrations took place against resumption of the war, the Israelis knowing that, with Netanyahu’s record, it would likely be a death sentence for many if not all of the remaining Israeli prisoners in Gaza. There were “senior, sensitive officials” inside the Zionist government itself who affirmed that Israel was indeed not fulfilling its obligations under the ceasefire agreement, while Hamas was upholding it. One of these was Rami Igra, former head of Mossad's Prisoners and Missing Persons division. Mossad is Israel’s CIA. Igra added that Trump’s plan was “totally unrealistic” because Trump did not understand the situation at all. The Israelis, he said, were more likely to accept relocation than the Gazans, provided that Trump would supply them with a green cards!
Meanwhile, the negotiators in Egypt and Qatar went into an emergency huddle, accompanied by a flurry of diplomatic activity. The result was that Israel backed down and opened the gates for the aid convoys to start rolling through. The crisis was averted, for the moment at least, and the sixth prisoner exchange went ahead as scheduled. The three Israeli prisoners released looked as healthy as if they had just returned from a football match.
Nothing is settled with finality, however. There are still two more phases to the Gaza ceasefire agreement that are still to be negotiated and settled. And then there is the fact that Israel has never fully carried out any agreement involving either the status of Palestine or the surrounding countries.
As evidence of the above, we need only look at the West Bank, which Israel has continued to occupy in violation of international agreements, creating numerous illegal settlements in the territory. Now, it appears that Trump may have made a secret deal with Netanyahu, “giving” him the West Bank in exchange for the ceasefire deal in Gaza. According to the New York Times and other sources, Trump plans to make an announcement about this in coming weeks.
The Trump regime has already ordered that all references to the “West Bank” and “occupied territories” be expunged from government documents and replaced with “Judea and Samaria,” the Bible names used by Israel. Elise Stefanik, Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the UN, has said that Israel has a “Biblical right” to Judea and Samaria.
Meanwhile, settler and Israeli army attacks on Palestinians continue in the West Bank. Regardless of what happens in the weeks ahead, this is no time for the international Palestine solidarity movement to stand down!
[Look for more coverage of the West Bank, as well as Lebanon and Syria, in Red October in coming weeks. The struggles in the Middle East are part of the global class struggle for self-determination and workers’ power against Zionism and capitalist imperialism.]
Last week, 700 members of the Culinary Workers Union ended a 69-day strike against Virgin Hotels in Las Vegas. On Wednesday the workers voted unanimously to accept a new contract. Details of the deal have not yet been made public, but recent hotel contracts in the area have included a 32% pay increase over 5 years. This one is expected to be in the same range. The Virgin unionists worked without a contract from June 2023 until they went out on strike November 15 of last year.
Kroger workers in Denver: On Feb. 6, some 10,000 grocery workers in the Denver area went on strike. The stores affected include 77 Kroger-owned King Soopers. UFCW Local 7, the union representing the workers, is bargaining for increased staffing and better pay. On Feb. 10, King Soopers was working to file a restraining order against striking workers.
Oregon Providence health care workers: On Feb. 10, the union representing Providence health care workers rejected a tentative agreement with the hospital network. On Dec. 10, the Oregon Nurses Association went on strike. Among the 4,800 nurses working at eight Providence hospitals and six clinics, all but 600 walked off the job. Dozens of physicians also joined the protest. The union is bargaining for a new contract that includes a measure that would pause hospital admissions temporarily when there are too many patients for health care workers to keep up with. On Jan. 14, Providence said it was ready to resume negotiations.
Kaiser Permanente mental health workers: More than 2,300 behavioral health professionals in Southern California have been on strike since Oct. 21. Striking members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers are seeking wage increases and a restoration of pensions, and are calling attention to deficiencies in Kaiser’s mental health care because of staffing shortages and related issues.
Meanwhile, A tentative deal to prevent a strike was reached between Costco and some 18,000 Teamsters union members at warehouse stores across five states. The Costco locations are in California, New York, Maryland, Virginia and Washington. The union negotiated for better pay and benefits, along with improved working conditions. A day prior to the Feb. 1 strike deadline, Costco announced it was increasing pay for workers beginning in March — rising $1 to $30.20 per hour for store clerks and assistants and a 50 cent increase for entry-level workers, which brings their pay to $20 per hour.
