368. Trump's Plan for Gaza

26:59Yeah, there was a very, the ambassador during his first term, Guy called David Friedman, he was another one who was saying this is great, thinking outside the box, he needs something to break this. And then I think sort of slightly gave the game away, because he was clearly sort of so excited by the whole thing. And he went, is this Mara -Gazo or Gaza Lago? And this notion that you can just turn something like the Gaza Strait. No, listen, by the way, don't give me wrong, if you could, yeah, we were in Bay Ritius today last night and this morning. And it was quite, I found it quite astonishing, you're driving through the through the city, you've got this incredible beautiful view down to the Mediterranean, you've got some fantastic sort of scenery, you've got wonderful buildings, and every few hundred yards you just see this bombed out building, okay?

27:49And which has been hit by an Israeli, yes, by an Israeli in recent recent weeks, yeah. Yeah. And so, and you think, oh, yeah, well, I could see why maybe you wouldn't want to come here on holiday without still going all along. You know, the fact that when we went to Syria, we did so having been given the very formal advice by the foreign office, this is not a clever, not a very sensible thing to do, as it happens felt, you know, where we were perfectly safe. Now, the point, the point of making is you can see why the idea of a big vision to turn this into something more positive, more more economically vibrant, so fine, but to do that at the expense of two million people being told they've got to move from their homeland.

28:30And also, I tell you the other thing which I think is, goes to the heart of this. I've told you before about a discussion I was involved with Tony Blair and George Bush and Dick Cheney, and we were talking about democratization, I made the point that, you know, every time you people talk about democracy, the world hears you saying America, you think everybody wants to be like America. And I think particularly now with Trump and power, I think in awful lot of people do not want to be like America. And this idea that the people of Gaza are going to go, wow, we could get a casino, we could get a golf course, maybe Donald Trump will drive his little, you know, mobile thing, people on the golf course, they want their own place, they want their own culture, they want their own, they want their own future, they want to be able to build it.

29:16I mean, there's one small thing which is, I mean, which is just another, maybe a good way of illustrating the extent to which Trump hasn't bothered to think this through, which is that even in the most optimistic idea, which some of his supporters were spending a couple of days ago, that his plan was to remove everybody and then build a really nice place and bring all the Palestinians back again. You can't do stuff like that because you lose all the property boundaries. I mean, the reason why you, when you reconstruct any place that's been devastated by war, you do it with the people there is that you're reconstructing their homes, you're not building, I mean, a less, I suppose, your Stalin's Russia, you're not suddenly building a whole series of brand new apartment blocks with no resemblance to the preexisting footprint.

30:07I mean, how on earth do you sort out people's claims, their compensation, their ownership, their buildings or any of this stuff? We've got some very interesting stuff coming in now from different people. One person I thought, which was quite good, let's just try to get it up, is somebody saying where a Miracula looks, the biggest fallacy of Trump's plan is to think the problem is with the land. I'm just to expand on that for a second, give that back to you. The point is that even if you moved all the Palestinians just over the border to Egypt and then you moved Israelis and to Gaza, why would that really suddenly solve Israel's security problems?

30:52You would still have some very, very angry Palestinians sitting on the edge of your new bit of Israeli territory, you're just pushing your problem a bit further up. Absolutely. The other thing I think the reason why this ISIS spec will be really eating into the hearts of the Palestinians is because one of the things that kind of is part of their mindset, part of their culture, part of their focus on why they feel so strong in the way they do, is that 800 ,000 were forced to leave their homes back in 1948 for the creation of the Israeli state. If you suddenly have the American president coming along saying the only way now to fix this is to move people out.

31:38It feels like another kind of expulsion, another rejection. The way that he framed it, everybody I've spoken to loves the idea of the US owning that piece of land. Who has he spoken to? Who has he actually spoken to? I've got to be honest, I've read a lot of reaction to this. Apart from the total cheerleaders like Musk and some of the people we've talked about so far, virtually everybody seems to be saying this is nuts and it's dangerously nuts. I think the reason it sort of fits them with the Zee Guys is that it's complete. It's completely abstract. It's got no, the thing it does, so you can sort of, as you say, imagine that if you were sitting in Mara Lago and looked quickly at a picture on a screen, you would say, okay, this looks absolutely terrible.

32:41Then he says the war's going to continue and people having a miserable life. Wouldn't it be better if they lived somewhere else and we cleared all this and made some nice buildings? He can probably develop that a bit more. If you really wanted to play out the Trump position, you could say, well, actually, Gaza doesn't have the complicated religious claims that Jerusalem has, for example. It's a very, very interesting bit of territory with a strong history, but it's not bound up in the same way that it's not part of the historic state of Israel and it's not where the prophets, Dome of the Rock, was located around in this stuff.

33:18The problem is that it's just not listening to anyone talking about any real people. The heart of it is he's not asking himself, well, what do the garsons think? What would they do? We're going to move everyone to each other. Would the Egyptians and Jordanians accept this? The Saudis are going to pay. Are the Saudis going to pay? And here's his wick. I'm going to come to you on this one. Does no one understand how different spouting nonsense about Israel, Gaza is compared to tariffs? I think just to push you on that for saying, that's a good point from wick, that yes, you're right. To some extent, it's Rihanna CTV.

34:01But it's a level of irresponsibility and recklessness going right and punching the very most sensitive thing in global politics at the moment, alienating absolutely central American allies in Egypt, Saudi, Jordan. I mean, it's a sort of move beyond tariffs, isn't it? Absolutely, but if you look at what happened in relation to tariffs, the big target were also people that actually most Americans, particularly Canada, would see as allies. They don't think they're a war with Canada. They may think they've got a problem with the Mexican drug cartels and so forth. They don't know they're a war with Mexico.

34:43Likewise, in the Middle East, let's give you some credit where it's due. The Abrahamic courts and that sort of move towards the normalization of relations between some of the really the powers in the Middle East that have had such difficult relations over so many decades, that was a good thing. That was a good thing. And yet this seems to me goes against that because he cannot resist the idea of having these big bold plans where people like Shapiro, people like Musque, whatever has to be people like McCarthy, they will give them some kind of intellectual coherence that actually they probably don't deserve.

35:20And there was a bit on the car on the way back from the airport. I was listening to an interview with he was the Justice Minister in the Palestinian Authority, the Frongarza. And he said to me, I thought really quite moving. He said, look, we've been here for thousands of years and we want to stay here. And it made me think of things like the Highland clearances and the Irish potato famine and all of these things where bigger powers suddenly decide that you are just pawns in my game. And the game that Trump is playing at the moment is I can reshape the world. And I've got this sort of I'm not a president, I'm an emperor.

36:00And if you're an emperor, you can, you know, we've talked before about their obsession with Julius Caesar and this idea that, you know, so he starts off he's going for Canada, he's going for Mexico, he's going for Greenland, he's going for Panama, he's renaming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. And now I don't know where he's going to turn part of the Middle East, not into American influence, but literally American owned. It is off the scale. And I just, let me just find it wrong, just find a little point. I really do hope when we were in the States, we met some people who were, you know, Arabs from Michigan who basically said, yeah, there's something about, there's something about Kamala Harris I don't quite like.

36:44Well, you know, they've now got Trump and how's that going for Gaza right now? The extraordinary, one of the many extraordinary things about it is that it's going to damage him with his vows as much, much less than you could ever imagine. So you, we can explain this other people can explain this to the cows come home, right? I mean, this should be a fantastic litmus test that lets the entire world see this guy is completely irresponsible alienating his allies, doesn't do his homework, doing something incredibly dangerous, and it's actually the reverse of what he said he was doing, which is making more peaceful world as you said at the beginning.

37:25And yet we have got to a state where his charisma and people's contempt for the Democrats is so much that literally, I mean, this is where he said it and when he said, you know, I can shoot someone dead and yeah, it first happened to you and nobody care. I don't think his supporters will care at all. I don't think this is like it have any effects on his net popularity. They will feel probably that let me, let me try some thoughts. A lot of people who are pro -Israel will think, well, great, I mean, I'm not listening to detail of this, but it sounds like it's good for Israel and bad for Palestinians, so good on him.

38:02Other people who will say, well, it's beating up a bunch of Muslims and their terrorists and trouble makers, so great. If you talk about, you know, what the impact will be on Jordan and Egypt, they'll think, well, screw Gordon and Egypt, we're not interested in Jordan and Egypt anyway.

38:22And they love probably the sense of raw power. I mean, this is this thing we've talked about in the past, which I think is a very, very worrying thing. I've been spending too much time recently looking at American bro podcasts and some British tech bro podcasts. And they're usually kind of really well put together young men who spend quite a lot of time in the gym and invest in, I'm doing a bit mean here, but invest in cryptocurrency and love reading biographies of American billionaires. And they love sharing tech tips and life hacks. And one of the things they absolutely love about Trump is the idea that he's a disruptor.

39:04They've gotten it that he's a guy like, you know, they keep using this analogy. Elon Musk came along, looked at electric cars and realized that they were spending all this money on lithium batteries and he took it back to first principles and worked out reverse engineer it. You didn't need so much lithium and he made a much cheaper electric vehicle. And Trump is like that. And I don't know what it would take to damage this group, short of him launching and losing a major war. I can't actually see what he can do. That can, I mean, well, yeah, we're worried, but just on that, I mean, look, I've said right at the start that he's a very different Trump to the first term Trump, but ultimately he's the same person.

39:45And I don't think that much of what he does is going to work because I don't think he sticks at things he moves on to the next episode, he moves on to the next thing. So I, but where there is a massive gap at the moment, there is no coherent Democrat campaigning opposition against him. You see bits and bobs of it here and there. They really really are in a bit of state. We've, you know, Tommy Vita, exorbarma go and leading this week and I think he accepts the Democrats really haven't got there act together. He's definitely using this first few weeks and months to really impose himself in a way that he maybe didn't first time round.

40:21Very good question here from Will Taylor, Rory. Guys, that's us. Are we going to do an emergency podcast any time Trump is mad? Don't we have to an obligation to consider whether it's credible? And that's a fair point because as I've said earlier, I do think this is partly about, Tommy Vita said that, you know, he will always get joy out of outraging and upsetting people like us. Okay? That owning the lips thing is part of what he does. But I think if you've got the elected president literally saying will that the policy of the United States now is to turn Gaza into an American owned extension of the United States, that is worth talking about.

41:03I agree though, my instinct is always with Musk and Trump to say, let's just hold back for a while. But I think on this one, we're right to this. I think we have to because I mean, I look, I didn't want to seem hysterical, but there are, I mean, increasingly believe that it feels like the 1930s now. It feels like the 1930s with the way that obsequious business people and media magnets are justifying horrendous statements. It feels like the 1930s when you've got the dominant party in Austria talking about removing Austrian citizens who are not white Austrian citizens and where the AFD appears to have people right at the core of them who are talking about basically expelling Muslims.

41:47Yeah. And where we're getting into these debates, which feel very 1930s with people saying, oh, well, you know, if you were assimilating a Muslim, you're okay, but if you're not assimilating a two alien, we're going to have to remove you from the country. And I don't think it would have been appropriate in the 1930s standing up against fascism to say, well, we'll just ignore these people. Yeah, we don't want to give them air time because the fact is that's all very well when they're running for office. But when he is the president of the most powerful wealthiest country on earth with the largest military on earth, no, you can't ignore what he says.

42:22There's a question here from A up newer who I think is in Israeli. I really hope Roy announced that don't start talking about Ben Gavir and Smokrish like they're anomalies. This is a deeply rotten society. I mean, that is an interesting point. It's the weather. We probably do, I think, still have a view of of Israelis as having a very, very sizeable liberal population. However, you know, we've seen them. We talked about this to you will know Harari and to others. We've seen Israelis who absolutely spies Netanyahu, nonetheless, do feel very threatened, do feel very motivated by a more nationalistic sense of who and what they are.

43:02There was one question which I can no longer find, but it was somebody who was saying that what these all this stuff here we are, Elaine Chalice, to what extent is this pronouncement on Gaza, distraction politics, diverting the world and its media from the illegality of the ongoing dismemberment of the US state by Elon Musk. This relates to the whole thing about getting access to federal information, etc, etc, etc. And you've got to be careful with Trump because he is, that is what he's good at. What he's brilliant at is kind of playing the media, attacking the media, undermining the media and getting them to dance to his tune.

43:39I don't mean dance to his tune, say that I think he's great, there are lots of them do, but dance to his tune and where he wants them to go. They go. We've been challenged by somebody again on the smot -rich Benghaviour thing. So let's be clear, smot -rich Benghaviour are very, very fringe extremists. They have a few percentage of the vote in Israel. Where you're absolutely right, Alistair though, is that Israeli support for the war is very, very high and encompasses the majority of the population and the majority of the population. A lot of polls have not favored a ceasefire. You're also right that I notice now that people are more and more reluctant to talk about Palestinians and people are less and less interested in the idea of a two -state solution and Netanyahu who is a widely politician since, is that?

44:37I think many Israelis feel that it's very difficult to disentangle Hamas from Gaza and we're very shaken when the hostages were returned to see people in Hamas for teaks. And that's a problem for Netanyahu because he promised that he destroyed Hamas and they're clearly very much still there. And I think at the heart of it is that many Israelis understandably having been through this attack which completely threw them off balance and reminded people of the horror of pogroms want to try to live in a zero -risk environment. And that's a very unfair thing to say but I'm afraid it's true. And the problem we're trying to live in a zero -risk environment is you put a hundred percent of the risk on someone else.

45:22So there's no longer a practical conversation happening about what exactly happened on October 7th. How could you have prevented it? What kind of standoff would you need? How would you prevent Hamas posing a significant security threat to Israel? The desire now is 100 percent security and 100 percent security does not at the moment seem to be consistent with allowing Gaza to have its own administration and rebuild itself because so many Israelis are concerned that if it were rebuilt tunnels would be rebuilt. Hamas infrastructure should be rebuilt and they would be it strut again. Yeah there's a comment here from something called Lyle saying Trump understands people way better than you guys.

46:07Well I'd say that Leo Lyle he understands some people way better than we do and he understands those Americans who put him in power way better than we do possibly. But I think going around different parts of the world there is this sort of massively well -organized well -funded very far -right campaign. I think Trump's part we must part of it. We've got elements of it here in the UK and around Europe. But I think most decent people around the world are actually utterly revolted by Trump and I find it sad that so many people, Rory mentioned the ones in business but there's also people in politics right around the world we feel that because he's been re -elected somehow they have to stop telling their own truth.

46:53And I don't think that that is the way to deal with Trump. I think the way that people stood up to this today better than they did save over sanctions. We've got question time coming out tomorrow, Rory. There was the question, why Canada is a member of the Commonwealth and we've got very, very close ties. But did you hear any of our politicians stand up and speaking up for Canada? We've got to understand this guy, we saw Rummer and Davos, we're talking to some people who would describe themselves as kind of geostrategic experts. And they were basically saying it's a very, very interesting question today as to whether the biggest threat to the UK comes from America or China.

47:33Now it's weird that we might even allow that into our thinking. And I would still say, no it's China. But I just think we've got to understand we're dealing with somebody here is not just unpredictable but is utterly unreliable because it's all about him. We had a challenge from E plus U saying Rory or wrong, Shinbet Mossad, the army would oppose the occupation of Gaza. That's absolutely right. Israel does not want to be an occupying up power in Gaza because that would be like what Israel did in Lebanon from 1982 to the mid 2000s. They don't want soldiers being killed. They don't want the responsibility of Gaza.

48:11They don't want the cost of trying to occupy Gaza. But on the other hand, they do not want certain Netanyahu's coalition, do not want a strong, successful Palestinian state running Gaza. And they don't want a situation which is almost inevitable, which is the state reaching some kind of understanding with Hamas, which have a big de facto presence on the ground. So Israel is between a rock and a hard place. And the likelihood is what they will do is not occupy Gaza. Not take responsibility for reconstructing. But nor will they allow the Palestinian authority to establish itself in Gaza. Instead, it will continue being pummeled to rubble.

48:49And there will be occasional humanitarian confiice left in. But never enough because Israel will continue to demand that it can stop those convoys at any moment that it worries that things are getting into Gaza. It doesn't want to get into Gaza. But let me sort of let me replying to the challenge on the chat. Can I come back to your bigger point though? I was talking to a Syrian friend two days ago about this. And he said, when is the world going to come together and stand up to Trump? When are people going to actually unify? Now you talked about this in relation to Canada. But why are we not yet seeing a really strong unified response?

49:37Britain, EU, Canada, G7 saying, no, we profound the particularly since, as you said before, our instinct is he's a bully who responds to strength. I mean, I don't know when the next G7 gathering would be. Of course, at the moment, you've got Trudeau on the way out. You've got Shalts probably on the way out. You've got Macron weakened. But let's just imagine that the G7, the next G7 was taking place next week. Okay, let's just imagine it was. You've got seven people that have always been presented. We had the bit when it became G8 and the Russians were there. But generally, these are seven countries that have a lot to agree on.

50:20What would the G7 have said if it met, the leaders met next week at a time when Trump is saying, hey Trudeau, you're peddling little countries should just be part of the mind. That you have to, or night now, let's say there's a meeting of NATO heads of government tomorrow. What is the Prime Minister of Denmark meant to say across the table with NATO members there to Trump who's basically saying, I can take over a huge chunk, greenland, a huge chunk of your country. So I think we've got to stop pretending and stop kidding ourselves that we're living in normal times with a normal American president.

50:56We're dealing with somebody who I think you're right. I think people are going to have to stand up. This is a very good example of where it could happen. I actually think for one of the, even one of the Fervent and Five leaders to say, maybe it's time just to have a bit of a clear, the air kind of discussion at United Nations about this. Or maybe we need to, if we're now talking about such a fundamental change in the Middle East, let's have a special G7. Let's have a special meeting of the key players in the Middle East. Because what you can't do is just have every world leader every day wake up and see what rubbish he's come out with overnight and then have all these kind of cheerleaders saying there's method in the madness.

51:35One of the problems which Sarah Cunn, who's one of our subscribers, just pointed out in the comments is that from the point of view of many people, Biden was not that great on international law either. That will be true for people who feel strong solidarity for gas and Palestinians. It's also true for the Gulf Arabs. So part of the problem is we're positing it that there is, was an old world where you could sort of, if you were the Gulf or the Palestinians, you could rely on Europe and the United States and now suddenly Trump's coming from their point of view, they would say, for example, let's take the Houthis.

52:13So the Houthis fired rockets at Saudi and the US did not protect Saudi and Biden refused to declare the Houthis a terrorist group. As soon as the Houthis fired rockets at Israel or at ships trying to get to Israel, Biden intervened and launched a strikes against the Houthis in Yemen. That would be an example of people thinking there's double standards here. They will also think, well, actually in the end, Biden caved into every Israeli demand there was. So one of the challenges, I guess, is for people like you and me who feel very, very strongly that Biden was much, much better than Trump is trying to explain something which is quite difficult, which is he's much better than Trump despite all his flaws, despite all the hypocrisy.

53:02And of course, Europe is a much better ally than Trump. Again, despite all its hypocrisy, despite all its history, despite all its flaws. And that's a more difficult argument than just a kind of black and white hero against villain argument. There's somebody just put a thing in the chat saying that there's quite a lot of people saying we've got Trump in the range of the syndrome. I'm not sure about that, but anyway, maybe we have. But there's somebody saying that Biden actually did fail on this. And what he's trying to do, what Trump is trying to do, is to shake things up because the truth, here we go, red bucks, what progress to China, Hamas and Israel, are you talking about AC?

53:34I guess I'm talking about the ceasefire. The back and forth slaughter will continue forever unless something monumental is done. Trump is trying to shake things up. That is the disruptive. That's the saying he's a disruptor. He'll shake things up, see. And there's an argument of that. You could say there's an argument of that. By the way, the other thing that people are saying in the chat is that it was pointless verbally on about the International Criminal Court because America is not a party to it. However, I checked on this earlier today, under the Rome statute, Palestine is a party to the ICC.

54:09And that means that if there are any Americans who take part in such a program, inside Palestine, they would be covered by the International Criminal Court. So it's not as simple as just saying because America is not involved. But anyway, yet again, was that, would that even go across his desk? I doubt it. Can I finish? We're coming to the end. But just let's just finish with the final difficult question for you. How does Kierstama handle this? Because again, a bit 1930s, we've got a guy who's going around insulting aggressively a lot of the rest of the world while occasionally tempting a bit of a charm offensive against Pritz.

54:52Yeah, he keeps saying, you know, he really likes Kierstama. And he might give them a softer trade deal than he'd give other people. And so there will be big pressures when Britain is worried about its economy and its growth and this kind of thing to think, well, maybe we shouldn't speak up too much. Maybe we should let European speak up. Maybe if we're gentle with him, we might be able to get away with stuff. What's, how is, how is, I mean, on the one hand, we're calling people to come together and stand up against Trump. On the other hand, and this is the problem I'm giving you, let's imagine you're the Comps director in number 10.

55:26How do you balance that against the railpolitik of what Starmer may want to get out of Trump? Yeah. Well, again, we talked about it this briefly on the main podcast this week about how this, the right in particular, I'm trying to force upon Kierstama this false choice between you can either be with America or you can be with Europe, you can't be with both. I think he's got to try to maintain good relations with both. I do think in terms of economic and diplomatic power, far more should be invested in Europe, particularly with Trump being so unreliable. But in terms of this specifically, I actually think that I was quite encouraged by the way I, as soon as I should do this, but as soon as I got off the plane and we were you and I were both sort of looking at our phones as we sat on the plane this morning just checking on all the things that Trump had said and done.

56:15And one of the first things I did was I texted David Lamy and said, you can't sit this out, you've got to say something about this. Anyway, by the time I got home, both Kierstama and David Lamy had said something and Kierstama was asked about it at PM Hughes. And he was, he was fairly moderate in the language, but he basically said that, you know, the, the, the, Garzons want to live there, they're, they want to go home. We did not know what the people's, of these Rayleigh hostages have been reunited with their families, but in the other was of these thousands and thousands of Garzons, you know, trudging, walking to their homes, because they did want to rediscover, they did want to see how badly damaged they were, they did want to see whether they could, could rebuild.

57:03So, I think he's sticking to the British position is which is that we've got to ultimately keep trying to work towards a two -state solution. What he hasn't done is come out and said the sort of things that you and I have said, because we are no longer political players as it were, involved in this, as it were, commentating from the outside. But I think the important thing is, there's got to be values and principles at the heart of this. And the values and the principles say the British role in this should be to keep pressing and keep arguing and fighting for proper justice for the Palestinians, security for the Israelis, and work towards a two -state solution.

57:41Good. Let's finish on that. And remember that the thing that's been lost in all of this is the question of peace for Gaza and reconstruction for Gaza. He's just thrown this completely irrelevant, unworkable plan down on the table by doing so, taken all the pressure on Israel to think seriously about what the future of Gaza could be, how reconstruction could happen, what kind of government it would have, the interests of the Palestinians being completely ignored. And the world is flailing around dealing with a US president who is in a way that wasn't true really in his first term, is trying to set himself up not as he claimed in his inaugural address as a agent of peace, but as an agent of chaos.

58:30Yeah. I just remind people, the main podcast this week is already up. We talk about Syria, we talk about Trump and tariffs, we talk about Germany, we talk about Rory and JD Vance arguing about God, we talk about Heathrow and Gross, Q &A's overnight tomorrow, into tomorrow, and then on Monday, the interview that Rory and I just come back from Syria doing with the new president of Palestine, a new president of Syria, Ahmed Al -Sharah, which I think you will find very, very interesting. And by the way, one of the reasons we did this emergency podcast is because plenty of our subscribers were telling us that they wanted to, so if you want to become a subscriber, go to theRestysPolitics .com.

59:11Thank you for listening and watching. Thank you again. Bye bye guys.