President of the United States announced this week Plans to transform the coastal belt under US control into a “ close East Riviera” and forced resettlement of 2 million Palestinians.
Thomas Jaeger of the University of Cologne explains in an interview with "Blick", how to read Donald Trump's behaviour and actions.
Blick: US president Trump wants to drive Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip and build Dubai on the Mediterranean Sea.Is he serious?
Thomas Jaeger: Donald Trump identifies power and politics with his own will. During his first term, it was always said that Trump should be taken seriously, but not literally. Rereliance on it would be a large mistake.
What does that mean?
In his first term, Trump had people around him who kept him from doing what he truly wanted. This time Trump is much better prepared and more ambitious due to the fact that he knows that he has surrounded himself with people to “yes”. He doesn't gotta check his ideas with the Department of defence or the State Department.
Trump despises conventional organization procedures, administration is his enemy. He rules more like a king than a president. The plan to make a riviera for the Gaza Strip amazed even his closest associates.
What does this mean for the mediate East?Does Donald Trump truly want to take over the Gaza Strip?
What goals does Trump want to achieve?
Trump's thought to solve the conflict is that he is simply a speculator. For him. Gaza Strip is an attractive real property project. Everything's in ruins anyway, why wouldn't you benefit from it?
Because 2 million people would be forcibly displaced and robbed from their homes?
To Trump, it's his will, not the people who live there. The culture and past of the Palestinian people are completely abroad to Trump. He assumes that they will leave Palestine voluntarily if they are offered a decent place to live elsewhere.
Trump besides sells his madness as a generous humanitarian gesture.
Trump is simply a real property man. erstwhile he had talks with Kim Jong Un during his first term, Trump was delighted with the wonderful hotel complexes that could be built on North Korean beaches. And 1 more thing: Trump is simply a showman. She's looking for attention and enjoying it, and now she has her show again.
With possibly dramatic consequences.Trump threatens the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the lives of another Israeli hostages.
His plans give Binjamin Netanyahu the chance to prolong the war in the Gaza Strip and stay in power. However, a more dangerous escalation in the mediate East threatens Iran, which is presently sinking due to Trump's crazy ideas about the Gaza Strip.
What do you mean?
Trump and Netanjahu surely talked Iran behind closed doors. The U.S. president wants to prevent Iran from gaining atomic weapons, while at the same time freeing the Prime Minister of Israel from the constraints of Biden's administration.
Biden prevented him from utilizing any weapons systems. The biggest question now is whether there will be a preemptive attack at any point to destruct atomic objects in Iran.
"Europe was blind. She is inactive in deep sleep”
The president of the United States not only causes unrest in the mediate East, but besides tries to dismantle the UN.Do you believe that the order based on the values and principles on which the West is based is threatened?
Was Europe blind?
Yeah, we're inactive in deep sleep. We are utilized to the fact that we no longer consider the dimension of power in politics, but for interior political disputes during election campaigns.
And that's why we're being pointed out by Trump?
He does what he wants due to the fact that there's almost no resistance, even in the United States itself. Everyone knew what was ahead, but it seems that no 1 has prepared for this situation. It's just the way it is.
If you want to run the marathon, and you've been eating quite a few chocolate for the last 3 years alternatively of training, you're not going to make it. Europe must find a way to deal with this dependence under Trump.
Returning to the Gaza Strip, do you see anything good in Trump's extremist ideas?
Trump has exposed all those who have been promoting for decades that the conflict in the mediate East must be completed by a two-state solution. However, there were no concrete plans for its implementation, no 1 wanted to be involved.
Trump unrelentingly exposed it, entering like a bullet into the storm and saying that "then we'll just do something else."
Can riviera fantasies give a two-state solution a fresh impulse?
They could be a chance, but no 1 will take it. The United States has abandoned specified considerations, Israel pursues its own interests, Europeans play no role, and Russia is rather happy if it can at least keep its military bases in Syria. Therefore, nothing will happen in this substance in a foreseeable future.
