Manifest destiny, part 3: Gaza

Acquisition of Greenland (considered in part one) is a real project, which Donald Trump is still pursuing; acquisition of Canada is only a pipe dream. Trump’s third imperial project, in the Gaza strip, is something a bit different again.

Over the last several decades, the Republican Party in the United States, like many comparable parties elsewhere, adopted the view that the defence of Israel was an integral part of the overall project of defending (and perhaps even extending) democracy around the world. This was by no means a crazy view to take. But it started to come apart with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and things have only gotten worse since then.

As we’ve noted here many times, the Republicans have changed a lot in the last twenty years. But Israel has changed a lot as well, as the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu has entrenched itself and taken on ever more extreme partners. It has become clear that it is building an authoritarian state that will easily stand comparison with Viktor Orbán’s Hungary if not Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

That has changed the relationship with the Republican Party. Once upon a time, its most pro-Israel figures were (in other respects) relative moderates; scepticism about Israel was more common further right, where a traditional antisemitism lingered. Now, however, Netanyahu and his supporters have created a bizarre fusion between Zionism and antisemitism, in which support for Israel can be used as cover for hatred of Jews anywhere else in the world – and especially hatred for liberal Jews (among whom George Soros is the archetype) who support the causes that Netanyahu and Donald Trump despise.

In the more mainstream but now thoroughly Trumpified wing of the Republicans, support for Israel was supposed to be part and parcel of a general defence of democracy. Instead, as Trump has moved more explicitly against democracy both at home and abroad, Netanyahu has become a sort of gateway drug for Putinism. Having drifted into support for autocracy and lawless violence in Israel, such Republicans find themselves unable to resist it elsewhere, including in the US itself.

All this is the necessary background to Trump’s plan (if that is not too strong a word) for ethnic cleansing and resettlement of the Gaza Strip. Trump has none of the affection for Netanyahu that he has for Putin,* but he nonetheless recognises that they are engaged in fundamentally the same project. Prior to his inauguration he strong-armed Netanyahu into agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza, raising hopes (or fears, depending on one’s point of view) that he may end up double-crossing him, but that was never likely.

Netanyahu has no interest in peace; he is focused solely on the twin goals of preventing a Palestinian state and keeping himself in office (and therefore out of jail). Trump, whose thought processes are less sophisticated but broadly similar, has now given him a green light for breaking the ceasefire and launching a fresh offensive in Gaza. As Simon Tisdall puts it, “Palestine is the benighted place in which Trump’s messiah complex and Netanyahu’s doctrine of perpetual war collide.”

So the fantasy of an American occupation of Gaza, for all that it may be (as far as anyone knows) a genuine Trump project, is mostly just a diversionary tactic. For both Trump and Netanyahu, the main thing is just to get rid of the Palestinians: from Gaza now, and ultimately from the West Bank as well. Netanyahu will duck and weave as he moves towards that objective, conscious as he is of the forces arrayed against him. Trump, who knows no such subtleties, will push for drastic measures.

Those who are not willing to sign up for genocide will hope that the weight of regional and world opinion may eventually counterbalance the Trump-Putin-Netanyahu axis. European leaders, already at breaking point with Trump over Ukraine, reacted positively this month to an Arab plan for peace and reconstruction in Gaza, even though it was swiftly rejected by both Israel and the US.

Meanwhile, among the surviving anti-Trump Republicans, as also among wide swathes of the Democratic Party, fervent support for Israel continues to coexist with resistance to the Trumpist project elsewhere. This produces a sort of cognitive dissonance that must one day produce a crisis, but that could still be some distance away.

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* Back in 2020, Netanyahu conspicuously waited half a day longer than most other leaders before congratulating Joe Biden on his election victory, as a gesture of fealty to Trump and his “big lie” of the stolen election. But Trump doesn’t care about that: all he remembers is that Netanyahu did in the end acknowledge that Biden was the winner, which he regards as an unforgivable betrayal.