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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   35728 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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Trump, in Shock Announcement, Says U.S. Will Take Over Gaza After Permanently Displacing Palestinians

U.S. President Donald Trump made the shocking announcement on Tuesday during a joint press conference with visiting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he will pursue a plan where the U.S. assumes ownership of Gaza, shortly after calling for the permanent displacement of the Strip's residents.

"The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we'll do a good job with it too. We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out and create economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area," he said.

When asked if this meant that Trump would send U.S. troops to Gaza, he said "if it's necessary, we'll do that. We're gonna take over that piece and develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs. It will be something the entire Middle East can be very proud of."

Now there are a few problems with this. One is that Egypt and Jordan, the obvious candidates, are absolutely against it. Second is that it will be horribly embarrassing when an American soldier gets blown up by unexploded American ordnance that was donated to Israel. It's also somewhat incoherent - he's going to make it into some kind of big multicultural party zone?

"I envision the world's people living there. You'll make it into an international, unbelievable place. The entire world will be there - Palestinians also - many people will live there.

The US does have lots of leverage over Egypt though, their economy has been on the cusp of collapse for a while now. So maybe Trump's increased willingness to deploy coercion will bear fruit here.

I don’t think this will happen, but it is a step toward my “preferred deal”, which is that Saudi Arabia takes control of Gaza and Area C (and possibly some of areas A + B) as an “Emirate of Palestine” under the suzerainty (and effective direct control) of the kingdom.

A resolution to the Palestinian question has 3 core roadblocks:

  1. It is politically untenable for Egypt or Jordan to resettle Palestinians (even if the governments wanted to, which they don’t) without the state being overthrown. Not only do the locals and governments not want them there (Egypt having dealt with the Muslim Brotherhood for decades, Jordan having been almost overthrown by Palestinian refugees), but the humiliation to the Arab world would be too much to bear and the states would be rendered catastrophically illegitimate in the eyes of the people. Even if the US somehow forced them to do it, it’s likely we would then have to directly and militarily defend one or both governments against populations hostile to them indefinitely.

  2. An independent Palestine has no safety mechanism against a Palestinian chim uhh decolonialist uprising other than Israeli invasion or carpet bombing, which raises the stakes and would lead to endless geopolitical tension without an off-ramp. It is therefore critical for another Islamic, preferably Arab, army, to take on the duty of pacifying the Palestinians when they start agitating too harshly or when various local terrorist groups form. Arabs and certainly the global Ummah don’t give a shit when Muslims oppress each other, so this is what has to happen.

  3. The extremist religious zionist settlers will advance until they are stopped. They are unlikely to invade the sovereign territory of Saudi Arabia, even guarded by the Saudi military. This provides a good way of slowly removing some of the more embarrassing settlements and permanently avoiding further escalation. The IDF will always find it difficult to police settlers given they’re a growing and valuable political constituency; the Saudis won’t.

  1. Israel is an unsustainable state. Their population minus Palestinians and ultra orthodox who are a net drag on society is equivalent to that of Denmark and their land area is equivalent to New Jersey. At the same time they are more or less at war with everyone around them. They have two million Palestinian citizens that fundamentally hate them and they are at a numerical disadvantage compared to the Palestinians.

They are in a similar situation to south Vietnam, the Rhodesians or the French in Algeria. Their state is inherently going to be stuck in a mess that is slowly going to bring it down.

The idea of resettling the ghetto population of Europe in Palestine was incredibly poorly thought through. At least the British chose Australia to dump criminals in which was far more viable as a state.

The Rhodesians were fine until they got sanctioned and embargoed. There would still be a Rhodesia if they could have imported weapons.

And Rhodesia would be a great place to visit.

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