U.S. President Donald Trump’s early statements regarding the future of Gaza seemed nonsensical and absurd to many observers. Some interpreted his words as a result of poor judgment, while others dismissed them as an unconventional negotiation style from a wealthy real estate mogul turned president. However, when his subsequent remarks confirmed the initial proposal, people began to wonder whether Trump or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could truly pursue such an irrational aim. No one can predict the future, but a close look at history can be illuminating.
Trump’s infamous solution for Gaza surfaced right after the first phase of the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, at a time when thousands of Gazans were resolutely walking from the south back to their homelands in northern Gaza. Trump envisioned forcing Gazans to leave Gaza entirely – sending them to Jordan, Egypt or elsewhere. For him, it apparently mattered little where they ended up, given his assumption that Palestinians lack agency over their own lives or the knowledge that they might be happy in a homeland other than their own. In Trump’s view, he and his wealthy allies would find Gazans a safe home somewhere, then rebuild Gaza as a luxurious riviera for the international community – on the blood and bones of the Gazan people.
Patrick Wolfe, a leading scholar of settler-colonialism, coined the term “logic of elimination,” which posits that Indigenous populations must be removed to make way for settler expansion. As President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan once shouted at an Israeli president, “They know very well how to kill children on the beaches of Palestine,” this fact comes as no surprise to the subaltern peoples of the world, who understand all too well the meaning of dispossession, displacement and elimination. Today’s Gazans mirror the historical experiences of American Indians, Aborigines and South Africans – victims of settler colonialism and apartheid. The memories of these peoples are often erased beneath the well-built and prosperous “rivieras” established on their former lands.
Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, has described a century of Palestinian history as one of settler-colonialism. He identifies recurring patterns and a tradition cultivated over centuries: dispossession, displacement, elimination and then the founding of a riviera. In this context, the notorious Zionist slogan, “A land without a people for a people without a land,” is hardly unique. It echoes a broader colonial logic that erases the very existence of the colonized – Zionism is not alone in this.
Sharing the same colonial greed, Trump seeks to be Israel’s imperial partner and take his share of Gaza under the most banal refrain of colonial powers: “For the good of the Gazan people and for the sake of the international community – indeed, for all humanity.” This is not merely a reconstruction plan; it is a colonial blueprint for demographic engineering – one designed to ensure Gaza no longer belongs to its original Palestinian inhabitants. Trump, likewise, adopts a colonial mindset, dismissing Indigenous voices and treating their land as a bargaining chip for geopolitical and economic gain.
Given the enduring legacy of settler colonialism and the century-long brutality in Palestine, Trump’s proposal and Netanyahu’s insatiable appetite for territory are alarming. What’s more, ever since the al-Aqsa Flood, Western political circles have dropped any remaining veneer of political correctness. That flood washed away the façade of global power structures, leaving the world forced to choose where it stands on ethnic cleansing and genocide. Ultimately, it comes down to how the international community will respond to settler colonialist ambitions, now revealed for what they are – ambitions without the usual cloak of globalization or so-called “universal values.”
