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Josh on Trump on Gaza · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Get a humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
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This one's a doozy, it's a pretty dangerous idea, ethnically cleansing the entire Gaza
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strip and the United States embarking on a multi-year long occupation of a part of
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the Middle East.
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Our reactions to Donald Trump's latest proposal about Gaza reveal a lot and I think by analyzing
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our reactions to the proposal we can hopefully better understand our biases on the whole
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issue of Israel, Gaza and the fate of the Palestinian people.
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I will read from the newspaper to summarize the actual news in case you've only heard
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about it third or fourth hand on social media.
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In a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, President
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Trump presented an outlandish vision to resettle up to 2.3 million garsens in quote beautiful
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safe towns in nearby countries, which he said could be paid for by those governments.
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Meanwhile the US would raise, redevelop and repopulate Gaza with people quote from
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all over the world, including Jews and Muslims with Trump saying he envisaged long-term
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American ownership of the territory.
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But the US will take over the Gaza strip and do a job with it too, he said and would
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not rule out the use of US troops quote will own it and be responsible for dismantling
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all the dangerous, unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site.
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End quote.
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He added the US would level destroyed buildings and quote create an economic development that
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will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.
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There's a lot of huffing about this, about how ridiculous it is to which I say, of
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course it's fucking ridiculous, it's Donald Trump, he is fresh off the back of advocating
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the annexation of Canada, the takeover of Greenland, the seizure of the Panama Canal.
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Is anyone surprised that he's up to another gambit?
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The main thing to understand initially before we get into the details and before we get
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into the way that our reaction to this reveals our priors about the whole conflict is to
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note that this is probably a negotiating gambit, right?
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We are currently at phase one of a three stage piece process between Israel and Hamas.
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Stage one is the easy stage.
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The third stage involves demilitarizing the Gaza strip and deraticalizing and DG hardifying
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the Gaza strip, which means some help persuading Hamas to cease being Hamas and members of a radical
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death cult, a jihadist death cult, to cease existing.
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That's going to be quite a tricky thing for even the likes of BB Netanyahu to perform.
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So perhaps the best analysis of Trump's possible gambit comes from Matthew Notch, who's the
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foreign affairs correspondent for this in-money herald in the age, who writes this, there
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is the question of whether Trump is using the prospect of a U.S. takeover of Gaza as
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an ambit claim to gain leverage over Hamas, yadur.
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Just as he deployed the threat of tariffs to pressure Mexico and Canada to crack down
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on drug smuggling and illegal border crossings.
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Under the second phase of the ceasefire deal that Trump helped broker writes Matthew.
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Israel and Hamas are supposed to begin negotiating a post-war settlement for Gaza.
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And Trump, he asks, a believer in the madman theory of international relations, be trying
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to throw Hamas off balance and strengthen Netanyahu's negotiating hand.
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I think that's the best way to understand this strategy.
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And the fact that people are so outraged by the mere suggestion that one may permit
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garsons who don't want to keep living in that squalid destitute refugee camp to find
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better lives elsewhere is revealing about the contours of the conflict itself.
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Before I begin a pining, it is worth my stating, for the umpteenth time that Benjamin Netanyahu
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is a corrupt little hack of a leader, quite literally corrupt, who has been perpetuating
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the war in Gaza for his own political personal gain and to avoid going to jail for being
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the corrupt hack that he is.
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His coalition partners on the far right in Israel, um, some of them are anti-Arab bigots.
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There's no other way of putting it, who have no desire for peace in the Middle East and
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see hegemony for Israel over the entirety of the West Bank and Gaza as not only inevitable
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but desirable.
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Those people do not reflect the views of the majority of Israelis.
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They certainly do not reflect the views of the majority of Jews.
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Power hungry politicians get into bed with all sorts of people.
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In Australia, the national party, the most extreme far right individuals in the national
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party do not reflect the center of Australian public opinion, but they are in government
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because they belong to a coalition with the ruling government party.
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Not at a national federal level at the moment, but when the coalition is in power, they
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do.
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You end up with people like RFK Jr. in American administrations.
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Most Americans don't support RFK Jr.'s beliefs, but politics makes for strange bedfellows.
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Governments do deals and the Gaza war went on for far too long.
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It was far too brutal and it was far too motivated by BB's own personal political concerns.
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That being said, let's just look at this Trump strategy.
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It's a total non-starter the way that it is being taken on face value.
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The US is not going to occupy Gaza.
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Trump has no taste for getting bogged down in a military occupation.
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No gasants should be forcefully removed from Gaza if they don't want to go.
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In which case, if it became a voluntary plan, where only the gasants who wanted to leave
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left and the ones who wanted to stay would stay, then that becomes a self-sorting mechanism
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to only leave the place full of jihadists because moderate gasants would go and seek a
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better life and the people who wanted to dig in and fight to the death would be the jihadists
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and the members of the Islamist death cults.
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Each American president, precisely, wants to remain embroiled in a quagmire where all
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the reasonable Palestinians have fled and the only ones who remain are the committed jihadists,
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not many, and certainly not President Trump, a man known for his isolationism, not for
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his enthusiasm for stupid foreign wars.
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Let's look then at how this has been received.
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His peak Jewish body, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, has distance itself from
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the plan to resettle Arabs.
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Its president, Daniel Aguion, says, quote, we favor the comprehensive reconstruction
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of Gaza as a peaceful, prosperous territory, as was envisaged following Israel's unilateral
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withdrawal in 2005 and was wholly thwarted by Hamas, which will first need to be completely
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dismantled and have no role in the administration or governance of Gaza.
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He said, the question of whether some garrisons choose to remain in the territory through this
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process, temporarily relocate, or are permanently absorbed by neighboring states, is ultimately
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a decision for those affected, most of all, Gaza's civilian population.
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That is Australia's peak Jewish body speaking.
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It is not saying, let's get all the Palestinians out, let's make it in Israel from the river
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to the sea.
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They are saying it's up to garrisons to decide what to do with Gaza.
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Another Australian Jewish organization, the Australian Jewish Association, its Executive
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Director, Colin Rubinstein, said to forcibly evacuate garrisons should be unthinkable,
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and this idea should be dropped.
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Meanwhile, a Palestinian action group says, calls Trump's plan a plan for genocide.
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It has announced an emergency protest to oppose the plan at Sydney Town Hall this Friday
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night.
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The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network is urging Australia to denounce what it calls
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Mr. Trump's endorsement of ethnic cleansing of garrisons and says, quote, Australia must
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not sit by in silence while the leaders of the US and Israel openly and in broad daylight
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insight, genocidal violence against and the permanent displacement of Palestinians.
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That's the president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network.
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It's interesting that he conflates genocidal violence with the permanent displacement
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of Palestinians because I would have thought that displacing people out of harm's way
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is not the same as being violent towards them.
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But that's by the by, Omar Shakir, who is the Israel and Palestine Director at Human
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Rights Watch, so this is a supposedly independent human rights body, told CNN that Trump's plan
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to clear out Gaza violated international law and amounted to ethnic cleansing.
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Quote, this is a quote from the Human Rights Watch Palestine Director.
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This is a population that has been displaced multiple times over.
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Many in 1948, many again in 1967, many times since 2023, he said, quote, it's very clear
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that Palestinians do not want to be displaced and that they want to return to their homes,
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not just in Gaza, but the homes they were kicked out of inside Israel in 1948.
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Well there you have it, really.
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That is the actual goal.
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I mean, the actual goal of the people who are most exercised by this cockamami proposal
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that will never actually be implemented as Trump articulated it is not just for
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garsons to continue rotting in Gaza in order to put pressure on Israel to find some kind
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of a solution, but actually to put so much pressure from the international community that Palestinians
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are able to relocate back into Israel proper, make it no longer a Jewish state and either
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force it to become a Jewish state that has some kind of internal apartheid between Jews
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and Arabs or lose its Jewish characteristics altogether.
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It's interesting to imagine what the position would be of Palestinian activist groups or
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Arab activist groups if there were a proposal, for example, to resettle Jews in Israel to
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make way for Palestinians returning.
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Would they have the same magnanimous attitude that the Jewish groups are currently displaying?
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They opposed that the way that Jewish groups are opposing Donald Trump's plan to clarify.
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I've just quoted two major Jewish groups, Australia's peak Jewish body, the executive council
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of Australian Jewry and another body, the Australian Jewish Association.
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Both denouncing Trump's plan saying, garsons have the right to decide where they want to live.
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Garsons should decide their own fate.
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Gaza is for garsons.
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We shouldn't force them to move to make way for anybody.
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Would Arab and Palestinian activists say the same if there was a proposal for Palestinians
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to return to homes that they were pushed out of in 1948 and for Israelis to have to make
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way for them?
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It's inconceivable.
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I mean, we've literally just heard from Omar Shaqir, the Israel and Palestine director,
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human rights watch, responding to this by saying, not only should garsons have the right
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to choose to stay in Gaza, they should also have the right to go back to the homes they
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were kicked out of inside Israel in 1948.
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Look, the fact that Israel occupies another group of people is completely inimical to the
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interests not just of Palestinians and not just of Israelis but of Jews everywhere.
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It is an albatross around our neck that there is this country that remains so intransigent
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governed by such an awful right wing coalition that makes not the slightest overture towards
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relinquishing its occupation of the territories and creating a two-state solution.
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And Israelis seem to enjoy being the government, that is not the people, seem to enjoy being
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the only country in the world that can pull off whatever barbarous shit they want to and
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then hide behind the excuse of any criticism being an attack on Jews.
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At the same time, Palestinians, the leadership that is, again, not necessarily the people,
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seem to enjoy being the only people in the world who don't have to obey the sad historical
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logic of war and nation building and population movements and colonialism and shifting national
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borders.
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The birth of every country has been formed in war and struggle and bloodshed.
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Almost every country has endured some kind of battle or sloughing off of oppression,
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some sort of self-determination movement that involved the movement of people, the suppression
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of some and the dominance of others.
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The fate of the Palestinians has been exacerbated by the fact that Arab states kept trying to
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invade Israel, first the instant that it was brought into existence in 1948 and then
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again in 1967.
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And in the process of losing their war of trying to drive all the Jews out of the Middle
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East, Israel ended up sitting on top of these large portions of land, not knowing exactly
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what to do with them.
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And in the intervening half century or more, Israelis have occasionally attempted to find
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ways to give that land back to Palestinians.
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And the greatest impediment has not been Israeli in Transigence, although there are many
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sort of blame to go around on the Israeli side.
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But the main impediment has been a maximalist vision of returning Palestinians to all of
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the land that all of them were kicked out of in all of Israel proper in 1948.
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That's just not how history works, it's not how countries get founded, it's not how
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refugee populations end up being dispersed.
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Arab states and self-annoying to pro-Palestinian activists have intentionally inflamed the
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living situation of Palestinians in order to continue making this an open wound.
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There are all kinds of things that could have been done for Palestinians to improve the actual
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lived lives of real living Palestinians that have not been done, because they would be
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perceived to undermine the credibility of self-appointed Palestinian spokespeople in
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having this moral calamity that they can punish Israel for and encourage the international
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community to do something about.
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Simple things like pressuring Lebanon to give more rights to Palestinians who live in Lebanon.
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There are currently Palestinian refugees who are the children of the children of the children
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of the children of people who were kicked out of Israel who don't have proper rights in
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Lebanon.
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In any other situation, that person would now be a member of that society, that person
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would now enjoy the rights of citizenship, but they are intentionally deprived of those
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rights, because Lebanon insists that those people are Palestinian, not Lebanese, that they
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are just temporarily kicked out of, we're talking about Israel proper here, not the occupied
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territories, temporarily kicked out of what ought to be a grand historical uber Palestine
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from the river to the sea, and that just as soon as this greater Palestine gets reinstantiated,
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those refugees will be able to go back to a world of pleasure and plenty where the rivers
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flow with honey and the lion slips with the lamb.
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Maybe that'll happen, but in the meantime, could you give them a fucking work permit?
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That might make their lives better in the meantime.
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Could maybe Qatar, which imports so much labor from Bangladesh and Pakistan and the subcontinent
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to build its stadiums?
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Could they maybe give some work permits to Palestinian people, so they can send some
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money home and help rebuild Gaza?
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Could we pressure Egypt to permit Palestinian refugees to find a life in the Sinai Peninsula?
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A lot of land there.
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It's big and empty.
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You know, one of the first things that happened after the October 7th attacks in 2023.
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The first thing that Egypt did was to send tanks to the border with Gaza and make sure
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no one got out.
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And we blame Israel for the blockade on Gaza.
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Yes, Israel blocks blockades Gaza on two sides.
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The ocean does it on the other side, and on the fourth side, it's Egypt.
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Another thing that the international community could do and that Arab states could do would
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be to properly police the removal of Hezbollah rockets in southern Lebanon, so that Israel
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doesn't have to remain the only country that is responsible for ensuring that all of
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its northern cities aren't under constant rocket attack from Hezbollah guerrillas and militants.
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Could the French go in there and do that?
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Could the Americans go in there and do that?
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Why is this issue that everybody claims to care so much about?
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Always so hands off from the people who could do something to help, to help the actual
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lived lives of real people.
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You have to ask yourself whether Arab leaders and pro-Palestinian activists have an agenda
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to continue the emiseration of the Palestinian people in order to keep the issue alive.
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And that's what's so revealing about so much of the reaction to President Trump's ridiculous
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proposal.
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The outrage is less about his proposal that the United States should occupy Gaza and
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more focused on how sacrilegious it is to suggest that a garrison might want to move
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even just temporarily to a place with proper sanitation, clean running water, a toilet
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that flushes, health care, and education.
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It is just a fundamental part of the pro-Palestinian mindset that to do so is to betray the Palestinian
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cause and the Palestinian cause with a capital P and a capital C. This grand ideological
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movement takes precedence over the lives of actual living Palestinians because the Palestinian
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cause is noble.
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It involves Palestinians not leaving for a better life in another Arab state in a place
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with a language they speak and the people whose ethnicity they share, whose religion they
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share, whose way of life they share.
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Rather, it involves them being repatriated back to the land that they were kicked off,
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or not they, but their parents' parents' parents' parents were kicked off, even though
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there just so happens to be a new country that is now sitting on top of that land.
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This is not an expectation that we have of Australia towards our regionies.
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It's not an expectation that we have of Canadians towards their First Nations people.
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It's not an expectation we have of any other country, except for the country for the Jews.
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Now I understand how problematic and probably self-serving this might sound because obviously
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it would have been better if 20 years ago or 30 years ago or 40 years ago, Israel could
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have found a way to get rid of the occupied territories and create a Palestinian state.
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Let's just talk about that period because the existence of the occupied territories,
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there's thorn in the side of Israel, this albatross hanging around the neck of every
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Jew on the world, this instigator, inspirer of anti-Semitic violence all over the world,
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this fact of keeping a people living in an in squalid, open air refugee camps in perpetuity.
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It was not a foregone conclusion, and it was not always the case that Israeli governments
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showed as cavalier an attitude, as BB Netanyahu's does, towards the idea of Palestinian self-determination.
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There was a war in 1948, Israel won. In 1967, yet again, Israel won. In 1973 they almost
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didn't win, but they won again. And nonetheless, in 1978, they came together with the Palestinians
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who were still hijacking planes, not exactly the easiest people to negotiate with, still
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had a fully maximalist vision of what Palestine meant, in other words, the eradication of Israel.
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They came together at Camp David for the first Camp David process. They came back in Oslo
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in 1993 to continue the conversation. They came back for Oslo II in 1995. In 2000, there
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were the Camp David Accords, which came very, very close to the creation of a Palestinian state.
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And basically, the dispute once again was about the right of return of refugees, about whether or
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not millions of people who had fled Israel, Palestinian people, Arabs who had fled Israel, should
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be allowed to come back to the homes of their forefathers in Israel proper, thereby diluting the
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Jewish character of the Jewish state, whether they could be given some other form of compensation,
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or additional land instead. Now, what happened after 2000 is important? Because the first
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interfarter had been a movement of liberation amongst Palestinians that had support from large
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numbers of the Israeli population who thought that the occupation of the West Bank and of Gaza
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was untenable and immoral and flew in the face of the Jewish aspiration for freedom and
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for the equal treatment of all people. There was nothing less Jewish than making a person a refugee.
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So there was a lot of support in Israel on the peace side, on the left, for the first Palestinian
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interfarter. But as the peace process, a group dragged on, and as the 2000 Camp David Accords failed,
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the second interfarter began. At a time when the peace process was healthy and there was a strong
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Israeli support for continuing the process that had narrowly failed in the year 2000 under President
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Clinton. If you don't understand the impact that the second interfarter had on Israeli public
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opinion, then you don't understand what's going on today and you don't understand the fate of
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the Palestinian people. A decision was made by Palestinian leadership to launch the largest and
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most aggressive attack on Jews in Israel in history outside of wartime. The suicide bombings
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began in earnest in the summer of 2001. The second interfarter had begun in September of 2000.
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In the first year of the interfarter alone, there were 1500 Palestinian drive-by shootings in
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Israel. I should imagine how many is that a day? Five a day? Five a day in the first year.
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Just Palestinians randomly firing on people from cars, people just getting shot in the street.
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On the 1st of June 2001, a suicide bomber detonated himself in a dance club on the Tel Aviv coastline,
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the Dolphinarium. Most of the people there were high school students in Israel. They have these
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under-age dance clubs where there's no alcohol and these are specifically what the bombers were
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targeting. They were also targeting buses at in peak hour traffic, so buses that were largely
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full of school students. It was an attack on people's children, mostly. So 21 Israeli civilians,
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most of them high school students were killed, 132 injured in this attack. It just went on and on,
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and on. The Sparrow Restaurant Massacre, 15 civilian casualties, seven of whom were children.
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The Nahrir train station, suicide bombing. The part is Hannah Bus bombing. The Ben Yuhuta street
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bombing, 11 civilian deaths, many of them children. The Haifa bus suicide bombing, 15 civilian
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casualties. In March of 2002, this is not ancient history. There were 15 suicide bombings. In one
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month, so one every two days. So just imagine you're living in a country that finds itself in this
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precarious situation, this shitty situation. Everyone sort of knows it's a shitty situation,
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and you're broadly sympathetic to the self-determination aspirations of the people who,
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unfortunately, you are occupying because they all tried to kill you some decades ago.
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And you took their land because you won a war that they had started after they'd started a
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previous war before that. And they're surrounded. I mean, you're surrounded by a half billion Arab
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Muslims who also don't really want you there and kicked all the Jews out of their countries,
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like Iraq, when your country was being formed. And in the period immediately before that.
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So you're this minority of people, you've done a very successful job of making the country
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prosperous and liberal. You know, it's one of the most secular and tolerant and pro-gay and
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feminist countries in the Middle East. But you're sitting on top of this population of people who
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obviously deserve a better life. And you're broadly sympathetic in the first
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interferer to their aspirations. And their response to your peace process,
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their response to this multi-year-long process of trying to find an accommodation and trying
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to iron out the wrinkles and the differences of agreement in order to give their land back.
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Your response to Camp David in 1978, to Oslo in 93, to Oslo 2 in 95, to Camp David in the year 2000.
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The response you're getting is that there is a suicide bombing every other day.
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Every other day, frequently against buses and dance clubs where young people hang out.
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So you're just terrified that your kids or your friends or your nieces or nephews are going to
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get blown up. And this is an period in which Israel is not conducting brutal war.
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Fair in the Palestinian territories. Israel is trying to proactively find an accommodation
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in which it can liberate the West Bank and Gaza and former two-state solution.
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So 2005 comes, the second interferer has ended. And Ariel Sharon, the right-wing
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prime minister says, you know what, we're just going to leave Gaza altogether. We're just going
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to get out. And Israel withdraws from Gaza. It literally forcibly takes entire towns full of
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Jews and drags them out kicking and screaming under the guise of the military and says we're
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giving it back to the Palestinians. You guys win. And there's a question about who's going to run
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Gaza. There's a period of time where there's a tussle between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas,
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the George Bush administration in the United States after 9-11 is very much on a let's spread
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democracy in the Middle East path. And so they say it should be up to the garsens themselves
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to vote for who they want to vote for. And of course the garsens elect a jihadist death cult,
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not in a very free and fair election because jihadist death cults tend not to really play by the
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rules when they're trying to get elected. And that's one election and then that's it. And ever since
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then they have been essentially prisoners, the garsens people, to this jihadist death cult.
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So is BB Netanyahu corrupt? Are the right-wing people in his government beyond the pale?
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Yes and yes. And also what the fuck did you expect? What the fuck do you expect a people to do
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when they are pushed that far? Now the counterpoint to this and I see it very clearly is what do you
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expect garsens to do when they are forced to live in the conditions that they're forced to live in
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except to erupt? I'm not sure that I would expect them necessarily to go on a slorderous rampage
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where they're raping young women with rifle butts and slashing their breasts off and playing
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hacky sack with them. There are probably more sophisticated ways to try to get your point across
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but when you're dealing with a jihadist death cult, sophistication isn't on the cards.
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And that really brings us to the deepest problem that we face, which I reluctantly give Trump
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some credit for trying to shake up, for trying to I see this announcement as an attempt to create a
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new whiteboard, to shake the etcher sketch and get people to stop thinking in the same limited
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ways they're thinking in because what this really is is sort of a civilizational battle
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to the people who still believe in a two-state solution. What is the Arab Muslim state that you
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would like the new Palestinian state to most look like? Is it Syria? Is it Yemen? Is it Tunisia?
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Is it Sudan? Where is it that the Arab Muslim street, the demos, has been able to create a society
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as liberal, tolerant, technologically sophisticated, and pluralistic as Israel, where one in five people
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are Arabs and there are Arabs in parliament and there are Arabs on the Supreme Court,
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where in the Arab world is there a single Jew in parliament, a single Jew on a Supreme Court?
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Political Islam is grappling with a civilizational political challenge and nobody understands this
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better than the Israelis who live alongside that challenge, who live in the midst of a half billion
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people who are really not crazy about them being there. So the challenge of creating a Palestinian
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state has never been just a technocratic one. It's been a civilizational one and it's been more than
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anything. One which requires us to start digging deep about what we want for the actual human
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beings who live in that part of the world. It should not be taboo to say that
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gazons who want to live in the Sinai Peninsula or in Qatar should be allowed to do so. I mean
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speaking of Qatar, they just had a bloody world cup. They built entire villagers for that world
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cup. You know who lives in those world cup villages now? No one. They are empty. Do you think that
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if you were living in Gaza, you might welcome the opportunity for subsidized free housing in a
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Qatar world cup village where the water runs clean and the toilet flushes and there's healthcare
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and there's education. Would you regard that as a betrayal? Because we're being told that's a
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betrayal. That is a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. Maybe it is a betrayal of your ideology,
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but maybe it's not a betrayal of me and my kid. Maybe it's something I would want on the table.
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If there had been greater tolerance among Arab states and pro-Palestinian activists for policies
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that enhance the lives of real living Palestinians like work permits and residency visas,
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then we wouldn't find ourselves with these all or nothing proposals. This Trump proposal for me
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is just yet another example of how when you want the entire pie, you often end up with none of it.
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If we had been less maximalist in our positions and by we I mean everybody who wants peace.
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If people had just been more willing to compromise, to be pragmatic about things, to be less
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ideological about things, we wouldn't find ourselves in an impossible situation where some orange
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idiot has to come in swinging a sledgehammer and saying that he's going to build a river era on
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the Gaza Strip. No gardens should be forcibly removed from Gaza. But the foreign editor of the
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Australian newspaper Greg Sheridan writes something worthwhile in this morning's paper.
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He says throughout post-World War II history, it's often been the case that populations of refugees
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who could easily be resettled are maintained in artificial refugee status for decades,
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for generations in order to confer a dubious political legitimacy on the people who notionally
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represent them. Remember that when you hear the outrage about the Trump proposal. Who's it coming
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from? Is it coming from a mother in Gaza who wants her children to be safe and educated?
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Or is it coming from a self-appointed pro-Palestinian activist railing about the injustice
33:44
of history and how evil the Jewish state and Donald Trump are?
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Lastly, a long acknowledged reality in the Middle East writes another columnist.
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Is that any solution would likely have to see some multinational force led perhaps by the
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Gulf states come in to run and rebuild the joint? The best case scenario out of all this
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is that Hamas and the Arab states get shit scared that Trump might be serious and they get serious
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about leading a multinational force to go in and rebuild Gaza properly. The most charitable
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interpretation of what Trump is doing is making a maximalist, ridiculous threat in order to
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coerce other people to get their shit together. And in Gaza, nobody's been getting their shit
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together for a very long time. See you next time.