Gaza the chip Trump will use to trigger war with many countries especially China - the only way for US to erase its debt, stay No.1?
Written by Stan Lee, PoliticsNow Malaysia
KUALA LUMPUR (politicsnowmy.blogspot.com) - As expected, the world has thumped Trump on the head over his "outlandish" idea for the US to take over the Gaza strip and pack the Palestinians living there off to 'voluntary' host-nations.
From Beijing to Moscow, from Riyadh to Germany, the answer was a resounding no! Even the Foreign Minister Mohamad Hassan from small little Malaysia called it "crazy".
As for the Gazans, not that anyone especially the US had thought of asking them, the answer was a no-holds-barred 'go to Hell!'
“Why should I leave my country? You want to send me to Egypt or Jordan? No, we won’t accept it, we will put up a tent and whatever you do, we will not leave our country. We don’t give a damn about Trump’s threats or Netanyahu’s threats,” CNN reported an inhabitant of the war-ravaged land as saying.
WAR WITH MANY COUNTRIES
But is all the resistance and condemnation enough to stop Donald Trump, the scion of a wealth New York family who made their fortune from developing and reconstructing real estate.
US president for the second time, Trump is almost utterly unconstrained by the law, the Constitution or anyone around him stopping him from doing exactly as he wants.
"If Trump doesn't back off, there will be war, I predict high possibility of war with many countries especially against China," Tian Chua, a former member of the Malaysian Parliament and currently the spokesman for the Malaysia-Palestinian Solidarity Secretariat told PoliticsNow Malaysia.
Since taking office in January, Trump has threatened to seize the Panama Canal, declare Canada the United States' 51st state and taking over Greenland again by force if Denmark refuses to sell. He has also slapped on tariffs as high as 25% on imports from Canada, Mexico and China.
But taking the cake is the Gaza takeover plan, with the others now seen as mere red herrings fired out to scare the rest of the world into thinking he is a madman willing and ready to do whatever it takes to make America great again.
IF HE CAN U-TURN ON CLIMATE CHANGE, HE CAN DEFINITELY WAGE WAR
The greatest debtor nation in the world, the US is also losing its dominance in the high-tech sector and its military edge. Trump had surrounded himself with a coterie of America's richest tech billionaires including the likes of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison, who generously funded his campaign.
It was believed they wanted Trump to prioritize big tech's next wave of growth - massive data centers to drive the next-generation of AI. But China's DeepSeek pooped their party by releasing a homegrown version that has since gone viral worldwide, built at a cost of only US$6 million compared to the hundreds of billions poured in by the US firms. The release of DeepSeek not only sent the Nasdaq crashing but it has signaled the start of an irrevocable bursting of the US tech bubble.
"I am not sure if Trump enlisted the help of the US big tech boys or if it was the other way round," a senior analyst at an international bank told PoliticsNow Malaysia.
"Yes, no doubt DeepSeek pooped their party but it came out of the blue which they had never expected. They knew the tech bubble was prime to be burst because with the Ukraine conflict almost done, there will be major reallocation of funds by asset managers into the construction sector to rebuild Ukraine and also Gaza, although at that time there was no ceasefire there yet. So it makes sense they would ask Trump for help but enter DeepSeek, the game is up! Everybody knows the US tech bubble is over and the only way for the stock markets now is down."
War is often said to be the only way out for the US to get out of its trouble, given the massive size of its borrowings. At the end of 2020, Americans owed $14 trillion more to the rest of the world than the rest of the world owed to America, according to statistics from its Bureau of Economic Analysis. That’s 67 percent of the US GDP, up from about 50 percent at the end of 2019 and well above the 16 percent of GDP recorded a decade ago.
"That's not the latest data but a great snapshot of how much trouble the US is in due to its poor leadership and lavish lifestyles," said the analyst.
"That US presidents are ready to renege on long-term policies and visions just to bail out its business is apparent by the way Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement just a day after his inauguration last month. So if he can do that to the rest of the world, turn his back on the global environment, why not wage war?"
Indeed, reneging on climate change paves the way for US oil firms to continue drilling and electricity plants to be built and expanded so as to meet the massive energy demands of the next AI wave. But those ambitions look stillborn now, as even if the US bans DeepSeek, the 'big bluff' is up. The world already knows there are other much cheaper and energy-efficient ways of developing and using AI than the ones sold by the US big tech.
With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu standing beside Trump and all smiles as he announced his controversial plan, it is hard not fear that the Gaza takeover is not in bare essence an act of sheer political opportunism and dangerous aggression that can bring on World War 3.
For sure, the Middle Eastern nations and the Muslim world will fight the US move. Russia and China may find themselves dragged into the conflict. Sides will have to be taken.
Despite sugar-coating the plan as some sort of fancy, upscale redevelopment to turn the Gaza into a "Riviera of the Middle East" and luxury home for "the world's people", the 78-year-old Trump made it clear the Gaza would be an American "ownership position".
No wonder he is being hailed a "messenger of God" by Israel's top politicians. The Jewish country stands to be the biggest winner and who is to say that America, which is historically Israel's biggest and staunchest ally, won't one day hand over the Gaza to them to control and to own too.
SUPERPOWERS CHINA & MOSCOW SAY NO!
Meanwhile, superpowers China and Moscow have both rebuffed the Trump plan.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a press briefing that "Moscow's position is that the only way to resolve the Middle East conflict is to create a Palestinian state to exist side-by-side with Israel."
China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters, "We oppose the forced displacement of the people in Gaza. Beijing has all along believed that ‘the Palestinians governing Palestine’ is the fundamental principle of post-conflict governance of Gaza."
The UN too rebuked Trump's call, warning that any forced displacement of people "ethnic cleansing" as Washington cast its eyes on Gaza. "Any forced displacement of people is tantamount to ethnic cleansing," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told a news conference.
Hamas, which seized sole power of Gaza in 2007, rejected the Trump proposal, branding it a” racist” idea aimed at “eliminating” the Palestinian cause.
“The American racist stance aligns with the Israeli extreme right’s position in displacing our people and eliminating our cause,“ Hamas spokesman Abdel Latif al-Qanou said in a statement.
Almost all of Gaza was levelled in a 15-month war triggered by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel. Trump, who criticized his predecessor Joe Biden for being too weak in handling the conflict, moved swiftly after his January inauguration to seal a ceasefire agreement that took effect last month.
TRUMP AIDES HAIL HIS PLAN, REFUSE TO RULE OUT SENDING US TROOPS TO GAZA
There are now fears that his controversial proposal may reignite violence and fighting there. It is doubtful Gazans will now agree to shift out from the strip for any rebuilding exercise, lest they lose their home permanently.
Making matters worse, despite the storm of international condemnation, Trump's top aides hailed his push to transfer Palestinians out of Gaza and have the US take over the war-ruined enclave.
They only walked back his assertion that Gazans needed to be "permanently resettled" in neighboring countries to Gazans needed to be "temporarily relocated" for the rebuilding process.
At a White House briefing on Wednesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt stressed that the president had not committed to putting "boots on the ground" in the territory.
However, it was telling that she refused to rule out the use of US troops there.
Written by Stan Lee, PoliticsNow Malaysia
https://politicsnowmy.blogspot.com/
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