Trump's Riviera Lebensraum balloon

Fans of audacious plans will be suitably impressed by Donald Trump's latest proposal: that the US take over the Gaza Strip, remove its Palestinian population - all 2 million of them - and turn it into the 'Riviera of the Middle East'. For a powerful client state like Israel, such a 'formulation', regardless of whether the last bit is followed up or not, seems like an MoU to do away with any 'two-state solution'. When you get rid of people, you get rid of having to share or divide space.

Trump is a born-again believer in universal wide-eyed admiration for American dominionship/guardianship. Or so he wants us to believe. If so many non-Americans - Palestinians and Canadians, if not that many Greenlanders - want to make the US their home, making the American mountain come to Mohammads seems reasonable. But Trump first came to office in 2016 promising to get America out of nettlesome West Asia, and relieve Uncle Sam's burden of 'nation-building' duties. Yes, he's perfectly comfortable with saying one thing and later doing the opposite (or nothing). But getting more entrenched in quagmire would make little sense even by Trump's 'sense is overrated' standards. POTUS is right about one thing: Gaza is a 'big pile of rubble right now'. But his proposal of shunting Gazans into Egypt and Jordan (they've said no), and not to non-rubbly parts of Israel, has his slip showing.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain and France in 1916 divvied up post-Ottoman Arab territories. Its result is at play to this day. Floating a displacement plan in the form of 'project development' - recognisable in the region as both Lebensraum- and Nakba-style ethnic cleansing - can only add more destructive disruption beyond Gaza, Israel or even West Asia.