by Angelo Turco
Shock, confusion, outrage. Disgust at such intellectual indecency. Indignation. This is what everyone—yes, everyone, including conservatives worldwide—feels in response to Donald Trump‘s Gaza Plan, unveiled after his meeting with B. Netanyahu, the first head of government welcomed to the White House by the new president.
The plan itself is simple to state: take 2 million Palestinians (minus those already killed, of course), scatter them between Egypt and Jordan, and hand over ownership (yes, that’s the word he used—apologies!) of Gaza to the U.S. The U.S. will then transform it into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” a massive luxury resort drawing wealthy tourists from around the world and creating countless jobs for “regional workers.”
A return to 19th-century imperialism, as The Guardian puts it? A case of brutal ethnic cleansing, as Le Monde describes? Absolutely. Or maybe one of The Washington Post’s alternative readings—perhaps the Madman Theory, Nixon’s old tactic with the USSR? A mass distraction? A negotiating ploy?
Or, more plausibly, what The Washington Post calls Flood the Zone, a strategy coined by Steve Bannon—what Neapolitans might call facite ammuìna (stir up chaos), a tactic I personally refer to in my research as barricaded information (like aged wine from Guardia, you know).
All of the above, of course.
But what Trump truly has in mind—who understands little of imperialism and genocide—what he really and deeply envisions is a real estate deal. E chest’è, as they say where I come from.
He sees Real Estate, while Palestinians, the Arab-Muslim Ummah, and ordinary people believed it was about a Homeland. No coincidence, then, that his Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff, was once a real estate agent and developer—now turned billionaire. Not to mention his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, husband of Ivanka, who runs the real estate firm Affinity Partners—investing, of course, on behalf of Gulf petro-monarchies.
A Waterfront Property instead of a Homeland.
Once again, my friends, this is a battle of geography—conceptual long before it is territorial. The logic of real estate can, at best, shape an economic space, while the creation of a homeland, a destiny, requires political vision. And these two ways of rationalizing territory don’t always align.
Yet, beyond the depth or completeness of the analysis, what I personally find unbearable in all of this is Netanyahu’s smile—his self-satisfaction as he endorses the American Plan, declaring that it “will change history.”
History of what, Mr. Prime Minister? History of whom?
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GREETINGS FROM THE GAZA RIVIERA
Luigino! I told you a thousand times not to dig in the sand!!
