Trump confirms US seeks forcible expulsion of Gaza's entire population

Trump is committing to an extreme war crime - one Israel sought from the start, normalised by the Western media

So it’s clear that the US government is dead set on facilitating a grave war crime - the forced displacement of the Palestinian population of Gaza.

That’s what President Trump reconfirmed when responding to questions from journalists at the White House.

The question from British journalist Danny Kemp, the White House Correspondent for the AFP news agency, is a textbook example of media normalisation of US-Israeli crimes. Kemp notes how the Egyptian president and Jordanian king have said they won’t take in displaced people from Gaza as Trump had suggested. “Is there anything you can do to make them do it?” asks Kemp. “I mean, tariffs against those countries, for example?” Trump responds matter of factly: “They will do it. They will do it” - an answer he sticks to.

What Kemp is referring to is forced displacement, which is a grave war crime. It is ethnic cleansing. The criminality of the act isn’t even hinted at in the question. Instead, he suggests Trump pursues economic warfare against two Arab nations to force them to become complicit in a grave war crime.

Now I know Kemp’s fellow journalists are defensive about critiques of this question. Their view is: look at the answer he elicited, that’s the story, focus on that. Indeed we must, but not before we discuss the normalisation of extreme war crimes. The Western media has normalised Israel’s genocidal mayhem ever since it began 482 days ago, and here is a striking example of it. The premise of the question is about whether Trump can wage economic warfare against two countries so they are coerced into facilitating war crimes.

Where are the journalists asking Trump whether he is aware that forced displacement is a war crime? Where are the journalists asking about ethnic cleansing? It seems utopian to even suggest journalists might consider asking basic questions like this, which speaks to the problem. Maybe they fear they’d never get to ask questions again - well if you can’t ask meaningful questions, and instead feel you’re unable to do anything else than normalise hideous war crimes, then perhaps ask yourself if there’s any point you being there anyway.

Imagine Trump had publicly committed to the forcible removal of the Ukrainian people, and was trying to force Poland and Belarus and other countries to take them all? Would journalists really be asking Trump about whether he was going to impose tariffs on them in order to compel them to facilitate ethnic cleansing?

Now in terms of the substance of what Trump has said here, he has clearly committed to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. What he said a few days ago to reporters on Air Force One, in which he said Gaza was a “demolition site” and Egypt and Jordan would need “to take people” in order "to “clean out that whole thing” were clearly not whimsical asides. Indeed Israeli officials briefed Israeli television that these comments were coordinated with Israel.

With that in mind, let’s turn to Steve Witkoff, the White House Special Envoy to the Middle East. He has just visited Gaza, or rather, more to the point, what remains of Gaza. He’s the first US official to visit Gaza in 15 years, itself a damning indictment which speaks for itself.

He told the US website Axios: “What was inescapable is that there is almost nothing left of Gaza.”

He added:

"People are moving north to get back to their homes and see what happened and turn around and leave ... there is no water and no electricity. It is stunning just how much damage occurred there.”

He told them based on what he saw, Gaza is “uninhabitable.” He added:

“There is nothing left standing. Many unexploded ordnances. It is not safe to walk there. It is very dangerous. I wouldn't have known this without going there and inspecting.”

Not to be rude here, but really? Could Witkoff really not have known this without going there? I haven’t visited the apocalyptic wasteland Gaza was deliberately and systematically reduced to, but I really could have told him that in advance for free. Has he not watched the freely available footage of what Israel has been doing to Gaza virtually every day now for 16 months? Has he not seen the videos of entire residential blocks being destroyed, or indeed of Israeli soldiers wiring up explosives to, say, mosques, schools and universities, then blowing them up? Did he not watch the footage of Israeli soldiers often laughing raucously as they blow stuff up for the hell of it, then post it on social media for public amusement?

Was Witkoff not aware of what experts concluded in December 2023 after just over two months, that Israel had wreaked more destruction in that time period than the razing Aleppo in Syria in four years, Ukraine’s Mariupol by Russian forces, or indeed proportionately the Allied bombing of Germany in World War 2? That as one of those experts stated, that “Gaza is now a different color from space. It’s a different texture.”

Did Witkoff not see the UN estimates that about 70% of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed? Was he not familiar with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs publishing a report this month estimating that 92% of housing units were destroyed or severely or partially damaged? When the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres declared he’d "never seen such a level of death and destruction as we are seeing in Gaza in the last few months,” did Witkoff think he was exaggerating?

Yes, undoubtedly the total ruin of Gaza, when seen up close, must be unimaginably shocking, even for those who have cheered on the crime. Many months ago a Palestinian former journalist in Gaza I’ve regularly spoken to texted meL it was in the early hours, I was in a bar of Dublin, punters were drunk and merry. He said it was like being trapped in an “end of the world film”. The contrast between where I was, and what he was enduring, was itself a shocking jolt. Actually seeing the devastated ruins of Gaza, a strip of land no bigger than East London, where Israel has detonated explosives with several times the equivalent firepower of the Hiroshima, must be a salutary experience. But Witkoff must have known, because the devastating truth was there for anyone and everyone.

And how can the US Special Envoy to the Middle East not look at this utter apocalyptic devastation and not conclude that a terrible crime has been committed? Does he really believe in his heart of heart that there was a legitimate military target in virtually every square metre of Gaza, with an attack on that legitimate military target which was proportionate to the military advantage gained, despite the civilian slaughter and suffering it would cause? No, of course he doesn’t believe that. No one believes that fiction. Everyone knows that Israel set out to destroy Gaza and inflict a terrible collective punishment on its people, because the Israeli state made that clear from day one.

It is worth looking at some of the drone footage of what has been done to Gaza, though. The incredible, courageous Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat posted this footage of Beit Hanoun, which had a population of over 50,000 before the genocide began. Take a look.

Now Steve Witkoff says it will take between 10 and 15 years to rebuild Gaza. What is very clear is that Israel’s plan all along was to make Gaza inhospitable, so its population would be killed and those who survived would end up forced to flee.

Indeed, according to a report in an Israeli newspaper back in December 2023, Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his too advisor, Ron Dermer, the minister of strategic affairs, to come up with plans to in quotes “thin” out the Palestinian population in Gaza “to a minimum.”

It was always clear what Israel was going to do, because they said what they would do from the start. The Western media normalised this abomination. And now they are going to normalise Trump’s support for literal mass ethnic cleansing of Gaza. As ever, we have to document all of this, because we have to hold the guilty to account - and eventually to justice.