The Potential Pitfalls of Trump’s Plan for the US to Occupy Gaza

Trump says US will take control and ownership of Gaza and deport 2.3 million Gazans in a historically unprecedented "nation-ending operation." Could this end up being Trump's Vietnam?

President Donald J. Trump meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House on Tuesday

May 5th Update—Two months after renewing his illegal starvation blockade and terror bombing campaign against Gaza, Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu declared today that Israel will employ five IDF army divisions to occupy and “flatten” all of Gaza, keep its troops there indefinitely and expel over 2.3 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in furtherance of his "Greater Israel" plan dating from 2007. Israel's ultranationalist finance minister Betzalel Smotrich has declared that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed” by the end of the Israeli military operation. Polls show that 60-70% oppose this plan and Israeli officials are concerned that up to 50% of the 70,000 reservists being mobilized will not show up due to the unpopularity of the war and the unprecedentedly high casualties which the Israeli forces have incurred since it began nineteen months ago. This Israeli plan aligns perfectly with President Trump's plan to take control of Gaza and deport all the Palestinians that he announced a few months ago and is likely being coordinated with the US. However, it may take years for Israel to destroy Hamas before the US can safely take it over. Furthermore, the international backlash to the US and Israel from the hundreds of thousands of civilians that are likely to be killed by Israel during this operation may make it politically impossible for Trump to ever execute his plan.

During his press conference on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald J. Trump was asked if he thought the Gaza cease-fire deal would hold and he replied he didn’t know if it would or not. Then, he made a shocking announcement on the 80^th anniversary of the Yalta Appeasement Pact in which the Allies agreed to expel fifteen million German civilians from their homes in Eastern Europe where they had lived for centuries causing two million of them to perish. Trump declared that the US would assume control of the Gaza Strip and take the lead in deporting and permanently displacing 2.3 million Palestinians from their homes in Gaza. Trump also said he will be making an announcement regarding Israeli claims to the West Bank in four weeks causing many to wonder if Trump will support an Israeli annexation of Palestine.

“I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza,” Trump said. “I think that Gaza has been very unlucky for them. They’ve lived like hell.” Asked for clarification on whether the Palestinians would have a right to return to Gaza after its reconstruction, Trump said the plan is to build them housing in other countries that’s so nice they won’t want to return. “It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn’t want to return,” Trump said, adding, “I hope that we could do something where they wouldn’t want to go back. Who would want to go back? They’ve experienced nothing but death and destruction.” Asked how many people he was talking about removing, Trump replied, “All of them.”

President Trump continued, “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we’ll do a job with it, too. We’ll own it. I do see a long-term ownership position, and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East, and maybe the entire Middle East.” Trump then suggested that U.S. troops would be used, if needed, to implement his vision for Gaza.

Trump stated that the Gazans should not go back to their homes because Gaza has become “uninhabitable,” failing to note that the reason Gaza’s cities are destroyed is because Israel terror bombed them over an extended period with little regard to civilian casualties. While Trump didn't say the deportation would be forced, he appeared to imply that all those who refused to leave willingly would be forced to leave Gaza when he said the US should “clean out” all the people out of Gaza.” Of course, if it ended up being a forceful displacement it would be considered a war crime under international law.

Trump had previously expressed support to “clean out” the Palestinians from Gaza which has been Netanyahu's number one military objective for Gaza dating back to 2010 when he first broached the idea to then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek. At one point, Trump did suggest that some Palestinians might be allowed to return to Gaza after a 10–15-year period of reconstruction had been completed. Netanyahu was all smiles and could hardly contain his glee as Trump revealed his plan for the US to seize control of Gaza. He praised the Trump plan for Gaza saying it went well-beyond Israel’s wartime objective of eliminating Hamas and that it was a very serious proposal worth considering. Meanwhile, Netanyahu vowed to restart Israel’s war against Hamas ostensibly with Trump’s support.

Since the war in Gaza began, defenders of Israel have been telling us that Israel has been taking extraordinary measures to minimize civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure and conduct a surgical precision bombing campaign targeting only Hamas militants. The facts on the ground speak otherwise as Israel’s bombing campaign during the past sixteen months has destroyed over two-thirds of Palestinian homes, buildings and hospitals and nearly all of its critical infrastructure and schools.

Next week, we will commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Allied terror bombing of the German city of Dresden which destroyed ninety percent of the city center and killed up to 135,000 people despite the fact that there were no military targets in the city itself. Even three years of sustained mass US and UK terror bombing raids on Germany killed less than one percent of its citizens destroyed no more than 18.5% of German homes in Western Germany which was the hardest hit, rendering around sixteen percent of Germany’s pre-war population refugees.

By contrast, the Israeli bombing campaign against Gaza over a period considerably less than half as long, has proven nearly four times more destructive and three times as deadly while resulting in over five times more refugees than the Allied terror bombings of Germany on a per capita basis. Over seven percent of Gazans have been killed or wounded since the war began, including 2.6 percent killed, while eighty-five to ninety percent of its surviving population are currently refugees, constituting a humanitarian crisis on a scale we have not seen in decades.

Americans have no way to comprehend the level of destruction that Israel's bombing campaign has wreaked on the people of Gaza. Applying the same percentages to the US population, an equivalent percentage of Americans would equate to 7.4 million Americans killed, 12.6 million wounded and over 243 million American refugees. By comparison, it is estimated that just over one percent of Ukraine’s prewar population have died since Russian invaded it three years ago this month. An Israeli leader has boasted that one-third of the total casualties were Hamas fighters and Gazan estimates have essentially confirmed that so based on that estimate, over 41,000 of those who have been killed have likely been civilians, the vast majority of whom are likely women and children.

How many Gazans would perish from a US occupation and mass deportation? If a similar percentage of Gazan refugees perished as did the fifteen million Germans who the Allies ethnically cleansed from Eastern Europe after World War Two, it would amount to an additional 133,000 additional civilians killed on top of the over 61,000 estimated Gazans killed by Israel thus far and more than 110,000 wounded. Deporting all of the Palestinians from Gaza would amount to a collective punishment campaign such as we have not seen since the US and UK killed 1.6 million and starved to death an additional 1.1 million German and Japanese civilians during World War Two eighty years ago. It was perhaps no coincidence that the US left the UN Human Rights Commission on the same day his Gaza takeover plan was announced. What will US troops do if innocent Gazan women and children refuse to be ripped from their homes and the only nation they've ever known?

Interestingly, Trump’s plan bears a number of very striking resemblances to Netanyahu’s initial ten-page plan for post-war Gaza, which was first leaked by an Israeli media outlet a mere six days after the October 7^th Hamas attacks to deport Gaza’s entire population to the northern Sinai Peninsula where they would initially be kept in tent cities before permanent cities and “a humanitarian corridor” could be constructed. Trump’s plan also bears some resemblance to Netanyahu’s subsequent three-step plan for Gaza which he announced in May 2024 during which he announced Israeli plans to enlist the help of Arab nations to rebuild Gaza into an industrial and economic powerhouse with modern, beachfront ports and cities. Others are speculating that the President’s son-in-law Jared Kushner may have had a major part in drafting Trump’s plan for Gaza.

The main difference between Trump’s plan and Israel’s 2024 plan is that while Israel’s plan was ostensibly to restore some degree of self-governance to Gaza by 2035, Trump’s plan is far more radical in calling for all Gazans to be deported while Gaza is rebuilt over a fifteen-year period. Trump stated that the “US should level Gaza” and "take over the Gaza Strip and Rebuild it." The question is for whom exactly? While he said that the new inhabitants of Gaza would be people from all over the world, its likely that Trump’s proposal is in furtherance of Netanyahu’s plan for a “Greater Israel” which would necessitate all the Gazans being deported to the Sinai so Israel could resettle Gaza.

Does Trump Really Want to Be a War President?

President Trump campaigned on being a peacemaker saying his presidential legacy would be defined by the wars he stopped and the wars that never happened so it was surprising to see him do an about face on that pledge and appear to commit the US to fight a brand-new war in the Middle East in Gaza that could mean that the US will soon be fighting a multi-year counterinsurgency war against Hamas on Israel's behalf with a risk of thousands of US soldiers being killed in action. It is important to note that the US has lost every single counterinsurgency war it has fought since World War Two. His decision to go from demanding to end the war in Gaza to wanting to restart it with US troops has overturned the pre-existing conventional wisdom that he had strong-armed Netanyahu into accepting a cease-fire which the Israeli leader believed was disadvantageous for Israel on terms he had repeatedly rejected. Trump administration officials said that the announcement had been planned at least a couple weeks in advance.

Prior to Trump’s declaration, Netanyahu had been under intense pressure from far-right members of his governing coalition to abandon the ceasefire and resume fighting in Gaza to eliminate Hamas. Bezalel Smotrich, one of Netanyahu’s key partners, has vowed to topple the government if the war isn’t restarted, a step that could lead to early elections. Hamas, which has reasserted control over Gaza since the ceasefire began last month, has said it will not release hostages in the second phase until Israel completes its military withdrawal from Gaza. Netanyahu, meanwhile, maintains that Israel is committed to keep fighting the war until it has succeeded in its objective of eradicating Hamas.

Accordingly with his plan for the US to take control of Gaza, Trump essentially bailed out Netanyahu, with whom he reportedly has a frosty relationship, out of a upcoming political crisis given that Netanyahu’s far-right governing coalition partner has been threatening to leave the government if he continued the cease-fire past Phase One of the agreement and cause it to collapse exposing Netanyahu to prosecution on corruption charges and potential imprisonment. At the press conference, Netanyahu boasted that Trump's proposal to deport all the Gazans are even more expansive than Israel's official military objectives for their war against Gaza, satisfying his far-right coalition allies.

An article published in the Hill reported that, “A senior administration official said Trump “looks at the Gaza Strip and sees it as a demolition site” and “sees it as impractical for it to be rebuilt within three to five years, believes it will take at least 10 to 15 and thinks it’s inhumane to force people to live in an uninhabitable plot of land with unexploded ordnance and rubble.” “You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “Almost everything’s demolished, and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change.”

Trump is correct in stating much of Gaza has been laid waste by Israeli bombs, many of which were supplied by the US and he is not wrong that Israel’s war on Hamas has rendered Gaza “a hellhole” with thousands of children having to have their limbs amputated. Due to Israel’s decision to block ninety percent of humanitarian aid shipments, Gazan civilians are desperately short of water, food, fuel, medicine and other necessities causing hundreds of thousands of them to be on the verge of starvation while suffering from malnutrition related illnesses while their critical infrastructure including electrical power, schools and hospitals have been largely destroyed by Israel’s collective punishment campaign against Gaza.

The head of the UN Development Program, Achim Steiner, outlined the extent of the devastation wrought from Israel’s invasion and bombing of Gaza in response to the Hamas terrorist strikes on Israel in October 2023.

"Probably between 65 percent to 70 percent of buildings in Gaza have either been entirely destroyed or damaged. But we're also talking about an economy that has been destroyed, where we estimate that roughly 60 years of development have been lost in this conflict over 15 months. Two million people who are in the Gaza Strip have lost not only their shelter: they've lost public infrastructure, sewage treatment systems, freshwater supply systems, public waste management. All of these fundamental infrastructure and service elements simply do not exist. Virtually every school and every hospital has been either severely damaged or destroyed. It's an extraordinary physical destruction that has happened," he said.

One of hundreds of thousands of refugee families struggling to survive in the wasteland created by Israel’s collective punishment campaign against Gaza.

Tragically, on the Republican side of the aisle, there has been previous little sympathy expressed for the Palestinian women and children who have been the chief victims of this senseless war as they continue to wrongly associate Palestinian civilians with Hamas fighters which currently represent less than one percent of Gaza’s population. US officials are stating it would likely take 10-15 years to rebuild Gaza, rather than the five years anticipated under Phase Three of the Gaza Cease Fire Agreement. An Israeli news outlet has estimated the cost to rebuild Gaza would be approximately $80 billion. Who is Trump proposing would pay for Gaza reconstruction? It likely won’t be Israel footing the bill or even Arab nations, but rather US taxpayers.

A “No-State” Solution for Gaza?

I've strongly supported President Trump on every issue since he was elected President except for his proposal to make Canada the 51st state but I must admit I have been struggling with this one. After he announced his plan to deport all of the Palestinians from Gaza, he was asked “Does this mean you will not support a two-state solution for Palestine?” Not only is this not a two-state solution, but it also amounts to a one-state solution for Israel and a “no-state” solution for Gaza. Trump’s Gaza plan has mistakenly been described as an exercise in “nation-building.” However, it would be better described as an exercise in “nation ending” as it deports all the Gazans and imports people from other nations, effectively destroying the Palestinian nation of Gaza in the process.

Of course, Netanyahu would clearly love having a US-occupied and controlled Gaza adjacent to Israel as then if Israel were to attack Iran again and Iran were to respond with missile strikes against Israel with tens of thousands of US troops dozens of miles away, the US would be much more likely to get involved in a direct war against Iran which has been one of Netanyahu’s main goals over the past few years. Trump’s plan to deport all of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, is the equivalent of deporting to Mexico the entire population of the city of Houston, which is the fourth largest city in the US. If any part of the deportation of Gaza’s population were forced, it could expose Trump to an International Criminal Court War crimes conviction which could make it dangerous for him to travel abroad because it would put him at risk of being arrested, even though the US does not recognize its authority.

President Trump appears to be committing the same error that Bush committed with his decision to start a new war and commit the US to an open-ended conflict with dubious strategic objectives and no clear strategy for victory. Indeed, the predicate necessary for the implementation of Trump’s peace plan of a US occupation of Gaza—the eradication of Hamas might very well prove unachievable. The Global War on Terror and, in particular, President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and overthrow its secular government created a vacuum in power which Iran rushed to fill, just as I warned it would before the US invasion in March 2023, transforming Iraq into a terrorist haven controlled by Iranian proxy Islamist Shiite leaders. One wonders what unforeseen consequences a US invasion and long-term occupation of Gaza might have in the Middle East and the world at large?

A US war against Hamas involving tens of thousands of US troops in Gaza would constitute a no-win counterinsurgency war of choice much like Bush’s war in Iraq--a war which Trump has tightly condemned and for which he supported the impeachment of President George W Bush. Gaza could easily become an Iraq-style quagmire for Trump if he ends up using US troops to fight a war to exterminate Hamas rather than to negotiate with them to voluntarily give up power perhaps by providing them financial incentives to surrender their arms and leave the country.

The biggest difference between the two wars is that while Bush claimed to be fighting to liberate the Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, instead of fighting to liberate the Gazans from Hamas, Trump has announced we will be liberating Gaza from the Gazans. Paul R. Pillar, a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University, underscored this point noting that a US invasion and occupation of Gaza “would be worse than the U.S. war in Iraq, because the United States could not even pose as a liberator opposing an oppressive regime but instead would be acting in concert with the oppressor.” He said that the Trump plan would not be America First but would instead be “Israel first” and would serve to undermine the peace and security of Israel and the rest of the Middle East.

Trump’s Plan for Gaza Leaves Many Unanswered Questions

Trump’s proposal to have the US occupy and take ownership of Gaza leaves many unanswered questions? The most important question is why does the President appear to believe that starting another “no-win” counterinsurgency war in the Middle East would further US national security interests? Under what authority would the US claim to forcibly seize control of an entire country and deport their entire population? Such an international aggression would surely invite condemnation from the vast majority of the world’s countries that would likely sponsor a UN Resolution against us in the UN General Assembly. How would this international aggression be received internationally by our allies and adversaries? To what extent would a US invasion and long-term occupation of Gaza undermine and destabilize our allies in the region? How many tens of thousands more Islamic jihadists would such an action end up recruiting? What are the chances that such a new war that would undoubtedly lead to the deaths of thousands if not tens of thousands more Gazan civilians might cause US troops deployed in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East to be attacked and killed or even lead to another 9-11 style terrorist attack on the US soil?

General Colin Powell, then serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney conducting a briefing during Operation Desert Shield in 1990. During the First Gulf War, he authored “the Powell Doctrine” to help US policymakers decide whether to commit US military forces to war.

As General Colin Powell stated in an April 1, 2009, interview on The Rachel Maddow Show, the US should only commit its troops to war if it first exhausts all "political, economic, and diplomatic means" to prevent the outbreak of a military conflict or US military intervention. Accordingly, before considering sending troops to fight and die in furtherance of Israel’s war in Gaza, the Trump administration should first address the questions posed by the Powell Doctrine that should all be answered in the affirmative before the US commits its troops to fight and die in a foreign war.

1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?

2. Do we have a clear attainable objective?

3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?

4. Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?

5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?

6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?

7. Is the action supported by the American people?

8. Do we have genuine broad international support?

I would argue that the answers to all these questions is no. Unlike his proposals to annex Greenland and retake control of the Panama Canal which have far more strategic merit, this is the first major US military action Trump has ever proposed which is not being taken in furtherance to any discernible threat to US national security. Israel was unsuccessful in destroying Hamas in fifteen months of fighting so what makes US leaders believe that we could succeed where Israel, the pre-eminent regional nuclear and military superpower of the Middle East has failed? I see no evidence that the risks, costs or potential consequences of a US invasion and long-term occupation of Gaza have been fully considered. President Trump gave no indication of a potential exit strategy to avoid an endless US military entanglement in Gaza. Quite the contrary, he stated that the US would seek long-term ownership of the besieged Palestinian homeland. Given the lack of support for this action even in Republican leadership circles, it seems likely that most Americans would oppose it as well. While President Trump stated, such an action would have strong international support, the only country to come out in support of it has been Israel.

Does the administration think that 22,000 estimated surviving Hamas militants would stand back and allow the US to erase Gaza from the geopolitical map of the world without a fight? If they don’t, then arguably, Trump plan, if implemented, would commit the US to fight a war against Hamas of indefinite duration which would likely cost the lives of thousands of US military servicemembers. The only way Hamas would conceivably agree to his proposal for the US to occupy Gaza would be if Trump were to bribe Hamas fighters (likely at the cost of $1 billion) to leave Gaza and guarantee that no Gazan civilians would be forced to leave Gaza. I think that would be the only way to expel Hamas from Gaza, which was Israel’s original more limited objective. Trump could further incentivize them to leave by saying that any Hamas fighter that refused to take the deal would be subject to capture and imprisonment.

Asked if he envisioned long term US ownership of Gaza, Trump said yes. However, one of the main problems with Trump’s proposal is that any relocation plan would require the support of one or more Arab countries and at this point they are all adamantly opposed to accepting any Gazan refugees at all. From a humanitarian standpoint, no Gazans should be made to leave their country involuntarily as it would create a far greater humanitarian crisis than the current war has with Israel forcing 85-90% of Gazans to leave their homes and become refugees under borderline starvation conditions. Of course, it will most likely be the Israelis that will settle a Gaza that has been ethnically cleansed of all its Palestinian residents.

US amphibious landing ships on the beaches of Normandy, France in June 1944, which I toured in 2019 just before the 75th anniversary D-Day celebration. Will US Marines be called upon to stage an amphibious invasion of Gaza to take control of it from Hamas?

In the likely event Trump failed to reach an agreement with Hamas to allow his plan to move forward, would he then order an amphibious D-Day style invasion of Gaza or would US military forces invade Gaza from Israeli territory? It would likely require upwards of 65,000 US troops to invade and occupy Gaza and successfully prosecute a counterinsurgency war that would take at least eighteen months and had any chance of defeating Hamas, which reportedly still has an estimated 22,000 fighters. That would probably constitute a best-case scenario for us as it’s possible we would discover, as did the Israelis, that such a war would be entirely unwinnable.

A leaked Israeli Ministry of Defense document reported that Israel took over 10,000 casualties in fifteen months of fighting. It’s likely that the US would likely incur a similar number of casualties if it invaded and occupied Gaza without first obtaining a peace deal with Hamas. A no-win US counterinsurgency war in Gaza could very well end up being Trump’s Vietnam with a couple thousand dead US soldiers. And it could take years to accomplish at the cost of a trillion dollars. Just like the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which President Trump courageously opposed, a US invasion and occupation of Gaza would serve to greatly undermine US military readiness to credibly deter Chinese aggression while serving to further weaken our already badly overstretched military in contravention to Trump’s campaign promises to end America’s forever wars and rebuild our military.

Potential Blowback from Trump’s Grandiose Plan for Gaza

Implementation of Trump’s plan for the US to occupy Gaza could unleash a new Global War on Terror that would be virtually assured to greatly magnifying terror threat to the US. It also has the potential to severely destabilize US-aligned Arab states. Trump is likely to use US aid to coerce other countries like Jordan and Egypt to accept Gazan deportees while presumably having Americans, Europeans and Israelis to colonize a new Palestinian-free Gaza. It seems ironic that Trump is proposing this action with the stated goal of bringing a lasting peace to the Middle East when it would only serve to escalate a war everyone thought had just been ended with his assistance. Hamas is highly unlikely to agree to release all the hostages under Phase Two of the cease-fire agreement if it believes the Trump administration is serious about its plans to not only restart the war in Gaza but essentially abolish their country. It would be much wiser for President Trump to pressure Israel to fully implement the current cease-fire plan which went into effect the day before he was inaugurated which could bring a lasting peace to Gaza without the need for US intervention.

There are a myriad of risks to US and Israeli security that could stem from Trump’s implementation of his plan for Gaza. Former Under Secretary of Defense Dov Zakheim warned Trump’s plan could prove a disaster for Israel:

Netanyahu clearly appears to have overlooked the plan’s second- and third-order consequences. What he perceives as a resolution of the danger from Gaza could actually both increase and intensify the threats Israel would face. Palestinians in Gaza could turn once again to Hamas to lead the resistance to the plan to eject them from their homes. Hamas would resume attacking Israel with rockets and missiles, while engaging any incoming American troops in exactly the sort of combat that Trump has indicated he wishes to avoid.

At the same time, the West Bank Palestinians would almost certainly ignite a new intifada, forcing Israel to battle the Palestinians on two fronts. In addition, the new Syrian government, perhaps with an influx of arms supplies from its newfound friends in Ankara, could well launch an attack of its own, seeking to retake the territory that it lost to Israel as the Assad regime collapsed. And the Houthis would resume their missile attacks on Israeli targets.

Israel would likely once again become an international pariah. Regardless of American vetoes in the U.N. Security Council, many states, including the European Union, could impose an economic boycott on Jerusalem. Investment form anywhere other than the U.S. could dry up. The Israeli economy would be seriously damaged. The Abraham Accords would be unlikely to survive. And Egypt and Jordan might rupture their own long-standing peace treaties with the Jewish State. Israel’s prime minister argues that Trump’s plan “could change history.” It may well do so, but not in the way Netanyahu anticipates. He should be careful for what he wishes for.

This plan, if implemented, far from bringing lasting peace and stability to the Middle East, would likely lock in a permanent conflict between the US, Israel and Arabs over the next decade. A US counterinsurgency war against Hamas in Gaza would likely serve to create much greater instability in the Middle East, weakening US alliances in the region and, along with Biden’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, further strengthening the Sino-Russian military alliance which has included the Islamic Republic of Iran since 2022. Trump’s proposal for Gaza could push Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia, closer into the arms of Russia and China and might even provoke Turkey to leave NATO and join the SCO. It would also likely destroy any hope of a peace agreement between Israel and the Saudis.

Back in 2010, General David Petraeus warned that the conflict between Israel and Palestine was causing anti-US sentiment to spread throughout the Middle East and was serving as a recruiting tool for Islamist terrorist organizations. A US-led deportation of all the Palestinians from Gaza could enable the recruitment of tens of thousands of additional Islamist terrorists targeting the US and Israel. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations would recoil such a mass deportation, potentially causing irreparable damage to US relations with the Arab world. Deporting Gazan civilians into tent cities in Jordan and Egypt could very possibly lead to the overthrow of Jordan's pro-Western monarchy and its replacement with an Islamist government allied with Iran. That might restore the direct land border between Iran's vassal states and Israel which Tehran lost when Assad was overthrown and Syria fell to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militia forces, which is led by a former Al Queda and ISIS leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.

Chinese President Xi Jinping sharing a laugh with former President Joe Biden. The PRC has been the chief beneficiary of Biden’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. It is likely that it would be the main beneficiary of a protracted US counterinsurgency war against Hamas in Gaza as well.

Even worse, Trump’s Gaza plan could renew the threat of a direct war between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran that could bring in the US, Russia and China and potentially escalate to the nuclear level, which could prove a humanitarian catastrophe on a scale never seen in history. Furthermore, if the US had a large military force bogged down fighting 22,000 Hamas fighters for over a year if not years on end, the PRC might be tempted to exploit this window of vulnerability by blockading Taiwan in the belief that the US would be unable to respond effectively militarily.

Implementation of Trump’s Plan Could Derail His Entire Middle East Agenda

Trump’s plan to deport all the Palestinians from Gaza would effectively end the dream of a two-state solution which offers the best hope of a lasting peace in the Middle East and an objective of every Arab nation in the region that has been embraced by every other modern-day US Presidents from Bill Clinton onward. As previously noted, execution of this plan would deliver a heavy blow to US and Israeli relations with Arab states.

Arab leaders in the region have said efforts to displace Palestinians or move them into neighboring countries are a non-starter. Egypt and Jordan, countries with peace treaties with Israel, oppose absorbing Palestinians claiming it poses a security risk, is destabilizing, and threatens to provoke mass opposition on the Arab street. Axios has reported that five Arab foreign ministers and a senior Palestinian official sent a joint letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio opposing plans to displace Palestinians from Gaza, Axios reported.

One of Trump’s and Israel’s top foreign policy objectives in the Middle East has been the creation of a new entente consisting of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the other smaller Arab states that signed the Abraham Accords. Yet, Saudi leaders have signaled since the Gaza war began that they will not sign a peace agreement with Israel until it agrees to establish an independent Palestinian state, something Netanyahu will never agree to and even Trump openly discarded at his press conference on Tuesday. Pressuring a couple million Palestinians to leave their ancestral homes in Gaza is just going to make Trump’s goal of peace with Israel and Saudi Arabia even more unachievable.

In a Politico article, Jamie Dettmer outlines a number of pitfalls which would likely accompany Trump's implementation of his risky plan to use tens of thousands of US troops to invade and occupy Gaza to "cleanse out" over 2.3 million Gazans. Trump’s plan to send US troops to occupy Gaza is a recipe for a forever war that could last many years and cost the lives of over 10,000 US soldiers killed and wounded, the exact type of war which Trump has repeatedly and courageously pledged to end during three successive presidential campaigns over the past eight years.

It would likely wreck all hopes for peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors and could well prove a gift to America’s adversaries causing some of our longest-term allies to break with the US and ally with Russia, China and even Iran against us instead.

It would make the U.S. arguably an even bigger target for every aspiring jihadi group and throw the entire region into greater turbulence, destabilizing allies from Cairo to Riyadh. It could draw U.S. troops on the ground — something Trump hasn’t ruled out — into prolonged urban battles, inviting worldwide condemnation and possibly prosecution, as they clear out Palestinians in a forcible transfer of population. In an overnight statement, Saudi Arabia totally rejected displacing Palestinians from their ancestral land and warned it wouldn’t normalize relations with Israel without the establishment of a Palestinian state. It’s a move that would wreck the completion of the Abraham Accords — the Arab-Israeli normalization process Trump kick-started during his first term in office and has moved apace since 2020.

As far as he and Netanyahu see it, they’re finally changing the Middle East paradigm. They’re giving up on what every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter has attempted to achieve — a negotiated settlement to a two-state solution — and replacing it with what Israeli hard-right politicians have wanted for years: Getting rid of the “Palestinian problem” by getting rid of the Palestinians. But can any Gulf leader risk facilitating what, to all intents and purposes, would amount to ethnic cleansing and a violation of international law — not to mention the fury it would whip up on their own streets, possibly imperiling their regimes?

The Trump administration is gambling on being able to strong-arm Cairo and Amman by threatening to cut U.S. aid, as both countries are directly dependent on it. Without aid they would be forced to introduce austerity measures, risking political and economic turmoil. Just last week, Trump hinted at the leverage he feels he has: “They will do it. They will do it… We do a lot for them, and they’re gonna do it,” he said. But so far, the hints of financial blackmail have not been working. Meanwhile, Sisi’s security forces are already engaged in a long-standing counterinsurgency against Islamist militant groups in the Sinai, where the displaced Gazans would likely have to be accommodated.

Adam Weinstein, a Middle East fellow at the Quincy Institute and a veteran of the Afghanistan War responded to Trump’s proposal by stating:

"President Trump has long prioritized lowering the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East and encouraging peace deals. This is the opposite of that. The president’s proposal of occupying Gaza hits the trifecta of bad ideas," he added. "It’s simultaneously illegal, unethical, and terrible for U.S. interests. Whether said in earnest or as some perverse form of leverage, it’s already damaging and should be reversed.”

Pro-Western Jordanian King Abdullah whose government might be overthrown if Trump pressured Jordan to accept hundreds of thousands of Gazan refugees.

Daniel R. DePetris, a Fellow at Defense Priorities wrote:

“Countries throughout the Middle East disagree on a lot of things, but dislocating more than 2 million Palestinians from their homes in Gaza and opening the door to Israeli annexation of the coastal enclave — a fantasy ultranationalist Israeli ministers like Bezalel Smotrich surely dream about — certainly isn’t one of them. If there was any dispute about that, the Arab League put it to rest over the weekend, when it released a statement that such plans “threaten the region’s stability, risk expanding the conflict, and undermine prospects for peace and coexistence among its peoples.”

Egypt and Jordan also have self-interested reasons for dismissing any Gazan relocation effort. Jordan, for one, is already hosting more than 2 million Palestinians who are registered as refugees, making approximately half of the kingdom’s population of Palestinian origin. As a resource-poor country, Jordan doesn’t have the luxury of sustaining a new influx of new refugees and wouldn’t want to, even if Washington or its Gulf allies picked up the tab (the U.S. already provides Jordan with $1.45 billion in foreign aid every year).

For Egyptian President Sisi, the issue is less about economics and more about security. This is the same guy, after all, who led a 2013 military coup against a democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood-led government (Hamas was established in 1987 as an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood), killed more than 800 people in the process and jailed tens of thousands more in an attempt to snuff out any resistance. If Sisi wasn’t willing to let Palestinians into Egypt when Israeli military operations in Gaza were at its height, he’s unlikely to do so when the guns have fallen silent (for the time being). Encouraging or compelling Palestinian civilians to leave Gaza, even if it’s ostensibly to accelerate reconstruction, is liable to kill Trump's diplomatic agenda in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the New York Times speculated that Trump’s plan may not be a serious proposal but merely an attempt to get Hamas and Saudi Arabia to make peace with Israel on better terms:

President Trump’s plan to place Gaza under American occupation and transfer its two million Palestinian residents has delighted the Israeli right, horrified Palestinians, shocked America’s Arab allies and confounded regional analysts who saw it as unworkable. While Mr. Trump portrayed the idea as a kindness to Palestinians living in a decimated territory, legal experts said that forced deportation would be a crime against humanity. Past population transfers on this scale have often exacerbated social and political problems instead of solving them, and caused extreme hardship for the people forced from their homes. The displacement of roughly 20 million people during the partition of India in 1947, for example, had political consequences that lasted for decades and contributed to several conflicts.

Mr. Trump’s maximalist plans may have been an attempt to get both Hamas and Saudi Arabia to shift their positions, Israeli and Palestinian analysts said. Faced with a choice between preserving its control over Gaza and maintaining a Palestinian presence there, Hamas might perhaps settle for the latter, according to Michael Milshtein, an Israeli analyst of Palestinian affairs. And Saudi Arabia is being prodded to give up its insistence on Palestinian statehood and settle instead for a deal that preserves Palestinians’ right to stay in Gaza but not their right to sovereignty, according to Professor Abusada, the Palestinian political scientist.

In turn, Mr. Trump has given the Israeli right a reason to support an extension of the cease-fire, Israeli analysts said. For more than a year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing allies have threatened to collapse his coalition if the war ends with Hamas still in power. Now, those hard-liners have an off-ramp — a pledge from Israel’s biggest ally to empty Gaza of Palestinians at some point in the future, an idea that Israel has pushed since the start of the war.

Trump’s Plan Draws Substantial Bipartisan and International Opposition

In accordance with the US constitution, President Trump would need to obtain congressional authorization for such an invasion and at this point it’s highly unlikely Congress would approve given the fact that the president's proposal has been greeted with alarm by Democrats and a lot of skepticism bordering on bewilderment by his Republican allies, who had clearly not been informed about the President’s plan in advance of the announcement.

Democrats immediately insisted that the idea was a non-starter. “Any vote for the occupation of Gaza will fail in the Senate,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), exclaiming, “What happened to the anti-war president?” he asked. Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) was similarly aghast. “For the first time in more than two decades, U.S. troops aren’t at war,” he said. “Now Trump wants to send U.S. servicemembers halfway around the world to occupy land in the Middle East.” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) responded to Trump’s proposal by stating, "He’s totally lost it. A U.S. invasion of Gaza would lead to the slaughter of thousands of U.S. troops and decades of war in the Middle East." Meanwhile, Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green said Wednesday he plans to bring articles of impeachment against President Trump after he suggested the U.S. should take over Gaza. One MSNBC host declared that President Trump had morphed from an “isolationist” into an imperialist almost overnight, ignoring the fact that neither Trump, nor any other US President in history, has ever supported a policy of “isolationism.”

Senate Homeland Security Chairman Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has come out in strong opposition to any Gaza plan that would involve the commitment of tens of thousands of US troops to engage in a counterinsurgency campaign against Hamas, seeing it as a potential quagmire like Bush’s war in Iraq.

Even some of Trump’s most staunch America First conservative allies have expressed skepticism of his proposal. Rep. Warren Davidson, (R-Ohio), a supporter of Trump, just offered one question: "America First?"

Sen. Josh Hawley, (R-MO) "I don’t know that I think it’s the best use of United States resources to spend a bunch of money in Gaza. I think maybe I prefer that to be spent in the United States first, but let’s see what happens.” When asked if he thought sending US troops to Gaza was the right solution, the Missouri Republican said he did not.

Yesterday, Senator Rand Paul expressed opposition to the President’s plan to start a new quagmire in the Middle East that could cost the lives of thousands of US soldiers:

“The pursuit for peace should be that of the Israelis and the Palestinians. I thought we voted for America First. We have no business contemplating yet another occupation to doom our treasure and spill our soldier’s blood.”

Even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) who earlier in the war had called on Israel to nuke Gaza and mass murdering a couple million civilians in response to the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, was clearly a bit squeamish about the ramifications of Trump’s plan seeming to involve the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian civilians from Gaza. Graham expressed doubt about the wisdom of potentially sending thousands of US troops to die fighting Hamas, particularly after Hamas accepted a cease-fire last month which they are on record wanting to make permanent following a full Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza. “We’ll see what our Arab friends say about that. And I think most South Carolinians are probably not excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza. I think that might be problematic, but I’ll keep an open mind. That would be a tough place to be stationed as an American, would be Gaza." It’s unclear why Graham appears to believe that nuking Palestinian civilians would be more humane than deporting them to other countries.

The Hill reported earlier today that most Republican Senators were strongly opposition to Trump’s plan:

“I think it’s a really dumb idea to talk about having U.S. troops in Gaza. It’s the last place on earth I’d send U.S. troops and I won’t support it,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of Trump’s closest Senate allies, warned that a U.S.-led attempt to remove Palestinians from Gaza would be “very problematic.” “All I can say is I want to destroy Hamas, but I’ve been on the phone with Arabs all day. That approach I think will be very problematic. The idea of Americans going in on the ground in Gaza is a nonstarter for every senator,” Graham said.“I would suggest we go back to what we’ve been trying to do: Destroy Hamas and find a way for the Arab world to take over Gaza and the West Bank in a fashion that would lead to a Palestinian state Israel could live with,” Graham said.

“Steve Witkoff was just talking about that in there, and what he said was the president doesn’t want to put any U.S. troops on the ground … and he doesn’t want to spend any U.S. money, dollars, at all,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). “My view is that I’m very opposed to any U.S. troops on the ground there and I don’t want to spend taxpayer dollars in Gaza. I want to spend taxpayer dollars cleaning up St. Louis, Missouri, cleaning up our nuclear radiation, helping our victims,” he said.

Other Republican senators echoed skepticism about pouring U.S. money into a rebuilding of Gaza. “I really am an ‘America First’ person. I really want to take care of America first,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY). Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) warned that putting U.S. boots on the ground in Gaza would be a bad idea. “The issue of the Palestinian state has been part of a too-long negotiation between interested parties and is not something that can be unilaterally decided,” he said. “Of all the places that I wouldn’t want to see U.S. troops, it would be in places like Gaza.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said “there’s enough turmoil there” without Trump leading a U.S. intervention in the conflict.

Turning Point CEO and longtime Trump ally Charlie Kirk has likened the current insurgency in Gaza to Vietnam. During his radio show shortly after the Trump announcement, Kirk laid out two “red lines.” First, “The United States would not accept any refugees from Gaza” and second “we’re not going to have any U.S. troops fighting in Gaza.” This would be “a detrimental mistake,” and he vowed that “to speak out against that with every fiber of our being.”

The Washington Times reported yesterday that President Trump’s proposal that the U.S. “take over” the war-ravaged Gaza, possibly even using American troops to force Palestinians living there from their homes, was met with international outrage Wednesday — perhaps most notably from Saudi Arabia, which Mr. Trump has long hoped would normalize relations with Israel. The Saudis responded to Mr. Trump’s proposal by saying they won’t accept such a normalization without the creation of a Palestinian state, while China said it opposes the forced transfer of people from Gaza. The same message echoed across Europe, where Germany’s foreign minister said Mr. Trump’s idea would “lead to new suffering and new hatred.”

The Guardian interviewed one Gaza resident who said he would welcome US help rebuilding Gaza but responded to Trump’s call to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its Palestinians by saying. “We would rather die here than leave this land. No amount of money in the world can replace your homeland.” Another Gazan resident stated, “In the end, despite all this destruction we will stay here on our land to live and die with dignity.” They likely represent the opinion of most of their fellow Gazans who love their country and don’t want to leave even with continuing efforts by its enemies to obliterate it. The Guardian further reports that “Hamas’s military capacity has been badly degraded, but once the ceasefire was declared dozens of fighters emerged into the streets to manage hostage releases, manage the migration north, and claim a form of victory in survival. Any US military mission would face the same guerrilla attacks that killed and injured so many Israeli troops in Gaza, even months into the war.”

However, the New York Times reported that: “while some residents rejected leaving Gaza under any circumstances, others said conditions were so unlivable after 15 months of Israeli bombardment that they would consider relocating.”

For years Israel’s Gaza policy has been to turn Gaza into a veritable concentration camp and make life so miserable for impoverished and beleaguered Gazan residents that they would feel compelled to relocate. However, its policy was doomed to failure since it has not allowed any Palestinians to leave Gaza. There would be nothing wrong with the US or Israel offering lucrative financial rewards for them to move out of Gaza but to expel them by force would be grossly immoral and inhumane.

White House Attempts to “Walk Back” Trump’s Comments on Gaza

On Tuesday, Trump did not rule out sending the American military to secure Gaza while it was being rebuilt. Asked if U.S. troops would be deployed, Trump said that “we’ll do what’s necessary … We’ll take it over and develop it.” The New York Times reported yesterday that top Trump administration officials attempted to walk back his comments in response to pushback from Republican members of Congress, directly contradicting the president on Wednesday after he proposed that the United States “take over” Gaza and drive out the Palestinian population, insisting that he had not committed to using American troops and that any relocation of Palestinians would be temporary.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt normally has an easy job of defending the President’s America First conservative agenda but struggled somewhat when asked if Trump’s plan would amount to an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza.

When asked if it was worth risking the life of a single U.S. Marine to turn the Gaza Strip into “the Riviera of the Middle East,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded, “I’ve already said the president has not committed to sending Marines or any boots on the ground.” She did not specify how the United States could take control of Gaza without using military force. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, told Republican senators at a closed-door luncheon in the Capitol that Trump “doesn’t want to put any U.S. troops on the ground, and he doesn’t want to spend any U.S. dollars at all” on Gaza, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri said.

This is the first time the Trump White House has tried to walk back his statements, something we had previously only seen with the Biden White House due to Trump’s gaffe prone, cognitively challenged predecessor. Yesterday, President Trump modified his comments from the day before by stating no US troops would be required to implement his planned takeover of Gaza. In a post on his Truth Social platform earlier today, Trump clarified: “The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting” which could be years away given Hamas still has an estimated 22,000 fighters. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seemed to confirm this on Wednesday when he stated that that the U.S. is “a very long way” from intervening in the Strip given Israel does not control Gaza. Of course, even if Hamas had been eradicated, Palestinian citizens would likely resort to armed resistance against US efforts to expel them from their homes which could result in hundreds if not thousands of US personnel being shot and killed without the protection of US soldiers, causing Trump’s popularity to plummet.

The New York Times also reported that when Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that Trump wanted to rebuild Gaza to allow it to be repopulated, he would not say whether any of those returning to Gaza would be Palestinians. Needless to say, it would not be possible for the US to take control and ownership of Gaza without the use of tens of thousands of US troops occupying it. Furthermore, there aren’t any Arab countries that would fund the reconstruction of a Gaza which had been emptied of all the Gazans so the US would have to foot the full $80 billion bill to do so. Arab nations have expressed interest in funding the reconstruction of Gaza following a full Israeli withdrawal and an agreement offering some level of self-governance to the people of Gaza providing that none of its residents are deported as would be the case under the Trump plan. President Trump should encourage Arab nations to pay for Gazan reconstruction by encouraging Israel to accept a peace deal which is fair and just to the people of Gaza.

Hopefully, Trump’s threat to invade, occupy and annex the Gaza Strip is just his opening gambit to get Hamas to agree to something less expansive in a negotiated peace deal with the US and Israel but based on his statements, and the statements of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, it seems like he is quite serious about moving forward with this plan. If not, the plan will likely prove unachievable and doomed to fail.

My next article will include a proposal for how President Trump could realistically succeed in his objective of rebuilding Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East” while getting Arab nations to pay for it.

© David T. Pyne 2025

David T. Pyne, Esq. is a former U.S. Army combat arms and Headquarters staff officer, who was in charge of armaments cooperation with the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas from 2000-2003, with an M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He is the former President and current Deputy Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He also serves as a member of the Committee on the Present Danger-China. He recently served as Defense and Foreign Policy Advisor to former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. He has also co-authored the best-selling new book, “Catastrophe Now--America’s Last Chance to Avoid an EMP Disaster” and his new book “Restoring Strategic Deterrence” will be published in March or April 2024. He serves as the Editor of “The Real War” newsletter at dpyne.substack.com and previously served as a contributor to “The National Interest”. Here is a link to his interview archive. He may be reached at emptaskforce.ut@gmail.com.

Recent Interviews

December 2nd—Interview with COL Rob Manass on the Rob Manass show to discuss Russia’s decision to begin using ICBMs to attack Ukraine to restore deterrence with Ukraine and NATO and show he is willing to escalate the war to the nuclear level if the West does not agree to a negotiated diplomatic settlement of the conflict. Here is the link to the interview.

December 3rd—Interview with Brannon Howse on Brannon Howse Live to discuss Russia’s super stealthy Kilo II class submarine Ufa which Russia’s Tass News Agency reports carries a nuclear missile with a 12,000 KM range. We will also discuss the Biden administration’s attempts to stir up trouble for Russia in Syria by supporting Al Queda rebels and in Georgia by supporting violent protests against the government. Here is a link to the interview.

December 5th—Panel Discussion with Scott Ritter on RT International’s Crosstalk program to discuss the prospects for peace in Ukraine after Trump becomes President. Here is the link to the interview.

December 5th—Interview with Brannon Howse on Brannon Howse Live to discuss the just released House Intelligence Committee report detailing the US intelligence committees attempt to cover up Russia’s use of microwave Americans to target US military personnel, US intelligence personnel and embassy officials with microwave weapons since 2016. Here is a link to the interview.

December 10th—Interview with Brannon Howse on Brannon Howse Live to discuss the fall of Syria to the HTS jihadist forces led by a former Al Queda and ISIS terrorist leader as well as China’s massive Joint Air-Naval Blockade exercises surrounding Taiwan, reported to be the largest such exercises in the past three decades. Here is the link to the interview.

December 17th—Interview on Main Street Radio with Jon Twitchell to discuss my latest article on the myths of World War Two and why it was an unnecessary war as well as Biden’s attempts to get the US into World War Three with Russia before Trump takes office. Here is a link to the interview.

December 20th—Interview with Brannon Howse on Brannon Howse Live to discuss the report that Biden has more than doubled the number of US troops in Syria, China’s ongoing efforts to penetrate US cyber networks in preparation for war with us and the latest revelations that Biden has been a figurehead President over the past four years with a cabal of his senior cabinet officials setting policy in his absence. Here is the link to the interview.

January 20th-Interview with Brannon Howse on Brannon Howse Live to discuss the impact of President Trump’s inauguration on US national security policy including the war in Ukraine, Gaza and what I see as China’s plan to blockade Taiwan later this year. Here is the link to the interview.

January 21st—Interview on Main Street Radio with Jon Twitchell discussing a host of issues including the Biden crime family pardons, President Trump's inauguration and executive orders, and my proposal to enable the US to exert greater influence over Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal. I will also discuss my new peace plan and the prospects for Trump achieve a permanent peace deal ending the war in Ukraine. Here is a link to the interview.

January 30th—Interview with Brannon Howse on Brannon Howse Live to discuss my latest articles focusing on Trump’s leaked 100-day Ukraine war peace plan and the prospects for Trump realizing his noble goal of achieving a permanent peace deal ending the war in Ukraine. Here is the link to the interview.

February 3rd—Interview with Nima Alkhorshid on his Dialogue Works podcast to discuss my latest plan to end the war in Ukraine in days not months as well as my analysis of Trump’s 100 day peace plan and its prospects for success in ending the war in Ukraine. Here is a link to the interview.

February 3rd—Interview with COL Rob Maness to discuss my latest articles focusing on Trump’s leaked 100-day Ukraine war peace plan and the prospects for Trump realizing his goal of achieving a permanent peace deal ending the war in Ukraine. Here is the link to the interview.

February 4th—Interview with Dr. Pascal Lottaz on his Neutrality Studies podcast to discuss my latest plan to end the war in Ukraine in days not months as well as my analysis of Trump’s 100 day peace plan and its prospects for success in ending the war in Ukraine. Here is a link to the interview.

February 6th—Interview with Brannon Howse on Brannon Howse Live to discuss Trump’s official Ukraine war peace plan due for release this weekend and the chances that Russia might accept it. Here is the link to the discussion.

Upcoming Interviews

February 14th—Interview with Brannon Howse on Brannon Howse Live to discuss comments by President Trump about his phone call with Ukraine discussing ending the war in Ukraine and the comments by Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at the Munich Security Conference.

February 18th—Interview on Main Street Radio with Jon Twitchell discussing my latest articles focusing on Trump’s leaked 100-day Ukraine war peace plan and the prospects for Trump realizing his noble goal of achieving a permanent peace deal ending the war in Ukraine.