Trump’s inner real-estate developer targets Gaza

As he settles into the Oval Office for a second time, Donald Trump is thinking big or, if you prefer, bigly, at least when it comes to geopolitics. The Panama Canal, Greenland and Canada were already in his sights. Now add the Gaza Strip. It seems that Trump may be on the verge of granting it statehood as well as Canada. Who gets to be #51 and #52? 

On Tuesday evening, Trump doubled down on his smash-and-grab foreign policy, announcing that the United States “will take over the Gaza Strip.” He didn’t stop there. “We’ll own it and be responsible,” Trump said, vowing to “create an economic development that will supply an unlimited number of jobs and housing for the people of the area. Do a real job.” 

Gee willikers! The restraint and realism crowd in Washington must be beside itself. Trump has been staffing the Pentagon with opponents of intervention in the Middle East such as Dan Caldwell. The notion that America, which was supposed to be distancing itself from the ructions in the Middle East to focus on the China threat, should send in the Marines and take over the Gaza Strip rivals, if not surpasses, any previous neocon plans for remaking the Middle East in America’s image.  

It might seem like an unlovely piece of property. But Trump, like his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who speculated that it could be developed into ocean-front property, seems to be jonesing for it. Who knew that America’s Manifest Destiny stretched all the way to the Levant?   

Even Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu must be wondering what, to borrow a phrase from Trump, the hell is going on. “Create a wasteland and call it peace,” was the dictum of Tacitus. Something like that is what Israel has created in the area.  

No doubt Netanyahu was probably encouraged by Trump’s remarks earlier in the day about Gaza. “Gaza is a hellhole,” Trump himself announced. But at their joint news conference Trump turned into the Mad Hatter, a role that he seems to be playing with increasing relish. 

Bibi is surely confounded by the notion that America can turn the idea into a spot for Best Western or a new Trump Tower. So is the Arab League which denounced his plan, if that’s the right word for his madcap scheme as a threat to regional stability. Trump’s governing idea seems to be that the Palestinians — some 2 million — living in the Gaza Strip can be deported en masse to “countries of interest with humanitarian hearts.” Then Uncle Sam swoops in to build casinos and hotels — “the Riviera of the Middle East,” as Trump put it. 

It’s nothing if not bold. Trump’s lucubrations suggest that even though he’s become president for a second time, he can’t quite contain his inner real-estate developer. He’s not willing to give Israel first dibs on the Gaza Strip. Instead, he’s in acquisition mode — itching to build things. Perhaps he can finance it with his new memecoin. If not, maybe Elon Musk, who seems to have annexed the Treasury Department, can come up with the coin to make it happen. One way or another, Trump seems to be literally invested in establishing an American outpost in the Middle East.