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Originally published February 14, 2025 for our End-of-Month Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor. Subscribe to get semi-monthly issues.
By Michael A. Cessna, Military Affairs Correspondent
“Whoever is killed by a Jew receives the reward of two martyrs, because the very thing that the Jews did to the prophets was done to him. The Jews are the most despicable and contemptible nation to crawl upon the face of the Earth, because they have displayed hostility to Allah. Allah will kill the Jews in the hell of the world to come, just like they killed the believers in the hell of this world. The Jews kill anyone who believes in Allah. They do not want to see any peace whatsoever on Earth.” –Abu Al-Subh, former Hamas minister of culture, from a sermon which aired on Al-Aqsa TV, April 8, 2011
INTRODUCTION
As Donald J. Trump assumed office for the second time as President of the United States, aside from the hysterical – and distressingly public – psychological breaks that instantly issued forth from the ranks of the Liberal-Progressive Left on Trump’s swift engagement in the domestic and internal governmental arenas, Trump was immediately faced with an array of foreign policy disasters left for him by his defeated and disgraced predecessors, and among those was the never-healing wound that is the Gaza Strip.
In brief: Trump’s publicly proposed solution was, with colossal understatement, a bombshell to the world at large. The proposal? Hand Gaza over to America, who will clean it up and rebuild it with the conditions that the Palestinians be relocated to new lands. Technically speaking, this could be called “ethnic cleansing,” meaning to denude a geographical region of a targeted ethnic group. It could also be called “migration.”
We’ll let future historians decide what the action should be called should anything approaching the GazaLago plan happen.
To understand the possibility of such a proposal, one must consider the historical background, starting in 1948 and working up to the present day. Afterwards, we will consider the options and how that might or might not align with Trump’s proposed GazaLago.
A. HISTORY TO PRESENT DAY
With Hamas backed into a corner, now being forced to trade the hostages taken in October of 2023 in exchange for breathing room as Israeli forces close in, the people of Gaza are now facing the reality that they have been left without any effective aid or relief, because actions have consequences in proportion to their intensity.
The reality on the ground is that the people of Gaza who stayed took no action against Hamas for nearly twenty years before the attack on October 7. As a result, no civilized country wants to take them in. Unlike their counterparts in the West Bank, Gaza Palestinians have no safe harbors.
Seeking some sort of firm resolution to this long-running problem, Donald Trump did what he does best: he shocked the world out of somnolence by “thinking outside the box” – but in a way so extreme, the world gasped in shock, as Trump stated flatly, that the United States would “take over the Gaza Strip.”
Is he serious?
A couple caveats with Trump’s proposal include a statement by White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, who told the press, “It’s been made very clear to the president that the United States needs to be involved in this rebuilding effort to ensure stability in the region for all people. But that does not mean boots on the ground in Gaza. That does not mean American taxpayers will be funding this effort. It means Donald Trump, who is the best dealmaker on the planet, is going to strike a deal with our partners in a region.”
That was followed up by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who told the press that “to take over Gaza” is “… going to bring the entire region to come with their own solutions.”
- GAZA: ANCIENT LAND OF CONFLICT – The Gaza Strip’s modern history is inextricably linked to the establishment of Israel in 1948. Following Israel’s declaration of independence and the ensuing Arab Israeli War, Gaza came under Egyptian administration while experiencing a massive influx of Palestinian refugees.
This demographic shift fundamentally altered Gaza’s character, as its population swelled with displaced Palestinians from what became Israeli territory.
From 1948 to 1967, Gaza remained under Egyptian control, though Egypt did not annex the territory or grant citizenship to its residents. The 1967 Six-Day War brought another dramatic change as Israel occupied Gaza along with the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and other territories. This began a period of direct Israeli military administration that would last for decades.
- THE FIRST INTIFADA – The first Palestinian Intifada (uprising) erupted in 1987, with Gaza becoming a center of resistance against Israeli occupation. This period saw the rise of Hamas, an Islamic resistance movement founded in 1987, which would eventually become the dominant political and military force in Gaza.
The 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and limited Palestinian self-governance in parts of Gaza and the West Bank.
- THE DISENGAGEMENT – In 2005, Israel implemented a unilateral disengagement plan, withdrawing all Israeli settlements and military installations from Gaza. However, Israel maintained control over Gaza’s borders, airspace, and maritime access.
The following year, Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections, leading to tensions with the rival Fatah movement. By 2007, these tensions erupted into open conflict, resulting in Hamas taking complete control of Gaza while the PA remained dominant in the West Bank.
The post-2007 period saw Israel and Egypt impose a strict blockade on Gaza, severely restricting the movement of people and goods. This period was marked by recurring cycles of conflict between Hamas and Israel, including major military operations in 2008-2009, 2012, and 2014.
Each round of fighting resulted in significant Palestinian civilian casualties and infrastructure damage, while Israeli communities faced rocket attacks from Gaza. Despite various attempted ceasefires and Egyptian-mediated negotiations, the underlying tensions remained unresolved.
Living conditions in Gaza deteriorated under the blockade, with limited access to electricity, clean water, and economic opportunities. The territory’s population of over 2 million people, predominantly young and increasingly urbanized, faced unemployment rates among the highest in the world, caused not only by the Hamas authority’s incessant tilting at the Israeli windmill, but also by its own terrible governing practices.
- OCTOBER 7 – On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel, breaching the security barrier and attacking military installations and civilian communities.
This event marked the deadliest day in Israel’s history and led to the most intense military response against Gaza since 1948, fundamentally altering the regional security landscape and drawing increased international attention to the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
B. FALLOUT OF THE GAZA WAR
Israel, hampered by a vacillating Biden administration, has been unable to bring the conflict to a swift conclusion. This inability has been due not only to Joe Biden’s complete ineptitude, but also by a wide-ranging series of attacks from enemies as diverse as the Houthi rebels of Yemen, their co-religionists of the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon, and direct attacks from the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Those attacks, beginning in April of 2024, were by far the most serious, running until October of 2024, as Iran traded fire with Israel via drones and missiles over the Jewish state, striking their embassy in Damascus, Syria.
- IRAN – The radical religious state of Iran, being what it is, has admitted to no fault by using its embassy openly as a meeting place to plan attacks on Israel using its own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The IRGC then directed both Hezbollah, and other Iran-aligned terror groups.
The Israeli strike killed many senior field commanders, including at least two Iranian general officers of the IRGC. This put Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in the difficult position of trying to hang on to his state, while dealing with Iran’s Don Quixote impersonation as he continued to battle the remnants of the Islamic State.
This close association with Shi’a Iran has driven yet another wedge between Hamas and the Palestinian authority, as the religious divisions of Shi’a vs. Sunni cause yet more problems for Gazans, while the West Bank Palestinians continue to count their blessings on staying out of the conflict.
- SYRIA – This series of wide-ranging failures and seemingly panting desires to go to war for “reasons,” ultimately resulted in the most destabilizing event in the Middle East since the so-called “Arab Spring” of 2011, as the Assad dynasty suddenly collapsed in early December.
What we know now, after the events of recent days following the revelations of the shenanigans of USAID (which you can read more about on pg. xx), is the conversations about the REASONS for that destabilizing event could get VERY INTERESTING.
The collapse and exile of Assad and his family has completely upended the politics of the entire region, in ways that have yet to play out fully.
In this context, What about Gaza?
- GAZA OPTION #1: EVACUATE GAZA AND SEND ITS PEOPLE TO NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES?
The conflict that began with the attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians on October 7 of 2023 has made the Palestinian cause – and Palestinians in general – highly toxic throughout the world.
Playing on the sympathy of being under hostile rule in your homeland (while deftly dodging the actual history) is never a bad strategy. Slaughtering women – even pregnant women – and children, and taking hostages for torture and ransom? Not a great plan, especially when more than nine million of your people are refugees in neighboring countries.
It is this refugee problem that lies at the heart of the matter, because – for varying reasons – no one wants to take in any more of them.
- THE 60S – The Palestinian refugee situation emerged primarily from two major waves of displacement: the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the 1967 Six-Day War. Following 1948, approximately 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes in what became Israel, with many settling in neighboring Arab states. Jordan, which had annexed the West Bank in 1950, received the largest number of refugees and uniquely offered them citizenship rights.
By the late 1960s, Palestinian refugees and their descendants in Jordan numbered around 400,000, with many living in refugee camps. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), established in 1964, had become increasingly powerful within Jordan, effectively creating a “state within a state.”
Palestinian fighters (fedayeen) operated with relative autonomy, using Jordanian territory to launch operations against Israel, which often resulted in Israeli retaliatory strikes on Jordanian soil.
This situation created growing tensions with the government of Jordan’s then King Hussein. The PLO’s military presence, parallel administrative structures, and challenge to Jordanian sovereignty became increasingly problematic.
Palestinian militants began setting up checkpoints in Jordanian cities and occasionally clashed with Jordanian security forces. The situation was further complicated by the presence of more radical Palestinian factions that rejected even the PLO’s authority.
- BLACK SEPTEMBER – The deteriorating relationship between the Jordanian government and Palestinian organizations was exacerbated by several airline hijackings carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in September 1970. The PFLP hijacked four aircraft, landing three of them at Dawson’s Field in Jordan, which they renamed “Revolution Airport.” This dramatic action, combined with mounting tensions, led King Hussein to declare martial law.
The ensuing conflict, known as Black September, lasted from September 1970 to July 1971. The Jordanian military’s campaign against Palestinian armed groups resulted in thousands of casualties and ultimately led to the expulsion of the PLO and other Palestinian armed organizations from Jordan.
Most Palestinian fighters relocated to Lebanon, significantly shifting the regional dynamic of the Palestinian resistance movement and leading to long-term consequences for Lebanon’s internal stability.
- CURRENT DAY – The events of Black September marked a crucial turning point in the Palestinian national movement and highlighted the complex relationships between Palestinian organizations and their Arab host states, relationships that continue to influence regional politics today.
In brief: Jordan still maintains Palestinian refugee camps housing more than 2.3 million refugees. It cannot take more, especially the heavily radicalized Hamas fighters and their supporters from Gaza.
Likewise, Egypt cannot take in too many Gazans, either. This is not so much due to bad history with the Palestinians, but because Egypt is an economic basket case. The massive state is desperately trying to stabilize its economic situation, before it turns into a far worse version of Tunisia in 2011. Adding over 2 million desperate and radicalized refugees is a recipe for disaster, one far worse than Jordan.
- GAZA OPTION #2: RETURN GAZA TO PALESTINIAN RULE, SANS HAMAS?
In a word, NO. Israel has been dealing with the “Gaza Problem” for over 75 years, and after committing the largest killing of Jews since World War II, no rational Israeli government is going to agree to let Gazans rule that state again, as they have proven – through their acquiescence to rule by Hamas – that they cannot be trusted with even humanitarian aid.
The October 7 attacks fundamentally altered Israeli security calculations regarding Gaza. The swift breaching of Israeli border defenses, which were previously considered highly secure, demonstrated vulnerabilities that Israeli military planners hadn’t anticipated, such as the use of paraglider assault troops. The scale of civilian casualties and the methods employed raised serious concerns about future security threats if Gaza returns to Palestinian control.
From Israel’s security perspective, the attack highlighted how civilian infrastructure and resources in Gaza, including construction materials and humanitarian aid, had been utilized for military purposes, such as the construction of extensive tunnel networks. This has led to heightened skepticism about the ability to prevent future militarization of the territory under Palestinian governance.
Additionally, polling data has indicated that Hamas maintained significant popular support in Gaza prior to October 7, even though that support is eroding steadily. This erosion has occurred as Hamas has shown that it cannot follow through with its rhetoric, thus raising Israeli concerns about whether any alternative Palestinian leadership could effectively prevent new militant groups from regaining influence in the territory.
The extensive tunnel system discovered during the subsequent conflict has reinforced Israeli arguments that any future governance arrangement would require strict security oversight to prevent rearmament.
In brief: Israel no longer wants “home rule” in Gaza, as that has proven to be a catastrophic failure.
C. GAZA OPTION #3: LET IRAN DEAL WITH IT?
The fighting that began in earnest in late 2023 was driven by money given to Hamas by Iran via a deranged release of some $6 billion dollars to the terrorist regime in Tehran by the Biden Gang. It is not unreasonable to demand that the Iranian regime take in the Gazans it goaded into a suicidal attack on Israel. This is in no way as ludicrous as it might first appear, as it would not be the first time this would have happened.
In 1982, the original secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) withdrew from Beirut, Lebanon, by sea, under the protection of a multinational peacekeeping force led by the United States and France. Although thoroughly beaten by Israeli forces, the PLO did their best to reform and reorganize in their new homes in Tunisia and Libya.
Responsibly, then, Iran should be on the hook to resettle the population of Gaza, as they are ultimately responsible for this mess. The spectacular mismanagement of social and economic policies by the incompetent mullahs has created a situation where Iran definitely needs the infusion of a population with no issues with procreation.
But…let’s give Iran a dodge to get out of doing that – after all, that is certainly what the Biden administration would have done.
Let Iran send the Gazans to their co-religionist proxies in Yemen, the Houthi rebels. Sure, that would transfer the fighting to Yemen, but, like Somalia, Yemen is one of those wars “voted most likely to continue.”
Doing so, applying an appropriately ruthless level of ‘realpolitik’, would both kick this particular can down the road, and be a stick to keep Saudi Arabia in check…or, at least force them to hire more mercenary troops for the long term.
If that sounds harsh, what is harsher is considering how many people have been killed to date by children in a sandbox, thinking that they are adults, while their sand squabbles kill people continuously.
Playtime is over, and it’s time to grow up and join the rest of the adults in the 21st Century.
PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS
So – “GazaLago?” What? – And then…there is The Donald. When Trump made what at first sounded like an off-hand comment from someone who might be getting a bit old in the brain, people were really shocked when he doubled down on his statement.
Is the United States about to go “boots on the ground” to take over Gaza? Hopefully, this is a serious bluff by Trump, as doing so would be a catastrophic blunder on his part.
The Palestinians in Gaza are outraged at the very idea of being displaced. However, given their role to date in how we got here, their say does not really carry as much weight as they or their supporters think.
If Gazans are really serious about wanting a better life, their best bet is to find somewhere else to live…because they are ultimately responsible for creating this problem, and actions have consequences.
If Trump is using this as a bluff to force Egypt and Jordan to cave on taking in Gaza refugees, he is being ill-advised, because – for the reasons outlined above – neither state can really absorb any more radicalized Palestinians.
For his part, King Abdullah of Jordan bought time by offering to take in some 2,000 sick Palestinian children from Gaza, but this is actually much more than Jordan should have to do, as the Hashemite kingdom is one of the U.S.’s staunchest and most consistent allies in the Middle East. For its part, Egypt has offered to help rebuild Gaza, but without Palestinians becoming their problem.
This is an uncharacteristically dangerous gamble on Trump’s part, as even back-room diplomacy in the Middle East has to maintain “wasta” (or “face”) for the leader, lest they lose their perceived legitimacy.
But…Let’s assume, for a moment, that Trump actually follows through on establishing a U.S. “protectorate” of some kind over Gaza. What would that look like?
Firstly, it would be an abject failure of staggering proportions if such a geopolitical situation were to occur, and the Gazans were left in place, while the rebuilding would continue. Terrorist attacks and sabotage would be rampant, as would relentless attempts to infiltrate the U.S. through a visa program. These things would happen as a matter of course.
On the other hand: What if Trump can actually force a displacement of Gazans to “somewhere else”? This would leave a blasted hellscape of rubble and ruins, lousy with unexploded ordnance, riddled with unstable tunnel networks.
Now, Trump – who made his money, one should recall, in real estate development – is well aware of what it would take to rebuild Gaza, in a “mechanical” sense; in fact, he likely did the calculations in his head.
In this event, yes – with multiple billions of dollars in investment over at least a decade – the Gaza Strip could become a new “Riviera” for the Mediterranean, although the advertising campaign would be insane. It would take at least another decade to approach paying off its initial capital investment, however…and that is leaving aside the potential political fallout that would occur initially.
There is, however, another option – which, let me note, would also involve removing the Palestinians: Converting the Gaza Strip into a new version of the “Tangier International Zone.”
An artifact of the colonial era, the Tangier International Zone (TIZ) was a diplomatic agreement between Britain, France and Spain to convert the ancient port city across from Gibraltar to a kind of “free state,” which operated as a completely open city from 1925 to 1956, mostly to ease British fears of Spain taking control of the southern side of the Straits.
Morocco, the technical ruler of the city, was at that time under the “protection” of France, and did not have much say in the process. It was a home for all manner of hedonists, smugglers, rebels, renegades, and shady bankers; in a very real sense, it was “more Casablanca than Casablanca.”
That potential could turn GazaLago it into an economic powerhouse, and pay off its reconstruction bills in short order… But don’t hold your breath – that sort of vision is something unreadable by the rickety post-WWII international diktat, and something the Skittle Hair Brigade will never accept, even if it benefits them directly.
FURTHER RESOURCES
The Lessons of Modern War, Vol. 2: The Iran-Iraq War – Anthony H Cordesman (Author), Abraham Wagner
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