Trump on Gaza: We Can Just Clean Out the Whole Thing

The U.S. president has assembled a Cabinet where a biblical devotion to Israel seems to be a requirement

U.S. President Donald Trump, who criticized the Biden administration of not being sufficiently pro-Israel during its genocide in Gaza, told reporters on Saturday that the result of the conflict may have to be the removal of Palestinians from the enclave, according to Haaretz.

Trump told reporters that he appealed to Jordan and Egypt to take in more Palestinians because of the destruction caused by Israel’s 15-month bombing campaign.

“You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” he said, according to CNN.

“Almost everything’s demolished and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change,” he said, noting that it could be for either a short time or “long term.”

Top Israeli officials have celebrated Trump’s election in the U.S. and see their best possibility ever in annexing the occupied West Bank and ethnically cleansing Gaza.

Trump, who billed himself during the entire campaign as a savior for Israel, has compiled a Cabinet and staff filled with pro-Israel religious extremists.

Bezalel Smotrich, who endorsed Trump, is an extremist settler and finance minister. He has called on Israel to annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Smotrich has said Israel cannot be truly secure without the land.

“Where there is no civilian presence, there is no long-term military presence… there is no security and there is an existential threat to the State of Israel and its citizens, and we must not allow this,” he said.

Smotrich, sounding like he belongs in Trump’s Cabinet, has said Palestinian people “do not exist and that Palestinian communities need to be erased.”

TRENDPOST: It is worth noting that David Friedman, the pro-Israel extremist who served under Trump as the U.S. ambassador, said he aims to persuade the former president if elected again to support Israel’s annexation of the West Bank based on the U.S.’s “biblical” duty.

The West Bank has become hell on earth for Palestinians living under Israel’s thumb, and recent figures show that more than 37,000 additional acres of land have been stolen by Israeli settlers—often with the backing of IDF units.

Friedman argues in his new book, “One Jewish State: The Last, Best Hope to Resolve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” that Washington should support Israel’s annexation “based first and foremost on biblical prophecies and values.”

He told The Forward that he will share his annexation plan with Trump “at the appropriate time,” according to The Middle East Eye.

Friedman, as the pro-settlement ambassador, “brought about the recognition of the Jewish state’s annexation of the occupied formerly Syrian Golan Heights, also an illegal concession, and the de facto granting of a free hand to Israel for dealing with the Palestinians as it sees fit, which is playing out currently,” Philip Giraldi, the former CIA analyst wrote.