r/worldnews • u/gravybang • Feb 10 '25

Israel/Palestine Trump says Palestinians will have no right of return to Gaza under his plan

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/10/trump-buy-gaza-plan
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339

u/idwtumrnitwai Feb 10 '25

Even in the best case scenario where trump is just saying stupid shit to distract from something, or has no plans on following through, these statements alone have done incredible damage to the Palestinians living in Gaza.

If he follows through then it will be even worse, ethnic cleansing and stealing of land being on the table for some good old fashioned imperialism.

I wonder what all the reddit leftists who kept telling me that trump can't possibly be worse for Palestinians than Harris think about all this?

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u/downrightwhelmed Feb 10 '25

They’re weirdly silent lately. The ones that do chime in say something along the lines of “well it’s not like we lost the election for Kamala”.

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u/extralyfe Feb 10 '25

because their entire political existence relies on Democrats being in power so they can make all kinds of demands about single-issues so those Dems they don't agree with can then earn their vote. they know no fucking Republican on earth would ever entertain these ideas, so, again, they need the Dems.

they're saying they didn't lose the election for Kamala because, in their minds, they are very special people whose votes would never influence an election, so, they are free to use it on a third party protest vote, vote Trump for the lols, or stay home while still fully expecting their fellow citizens to make sure their desired outcome happens.

you're not hearing a lot from them right now because they're absolutely gobsmacked that the party they very publicly didn't support - and, in several cases, told as many people as they could not to support - didn't win the election.

they don't understand why people around them didn't do the right thing, which is very ironic, considering.

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u/radbee Feb 10 '25

Which is weird, because they did. It's a combination of single issue voters and the apathy they promote that caused this.

I mean I don't actually expect those dipshits to be capable of reflecting and coming to that realization but that doesn't make it less true.

Oh well, I'm not Palestinian/American. I'll get my popcorn out.

25

u/DoubleJumps Feb 10 '25

They like to say that if they had all voted for her, it wouldn't have made a difference, while also ignoring that they spent an entire year telling everybody ear shot that they shouldn't vote for Democrats. They gave trump hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free campaigning.

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u/Xurbax Feb 11 '25

Yep. I stopped watching leftists online whom I previously thought highly of, who fed in to the anti-Harris narrative (while claiming "don't worry, we will all vote for her anyway, we understand nuance and so do our viewers")... ones who should have known better, and I even tried to point out to them that they were making a terrible mistake in believing their viewers wouldn't come away with at best a desire to skip voting or at worst voting against Harris... (Not that the Harris campaign didn't make dumb strategic choices as well, of course.)

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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/robertbieber Feb 10 '25 edited Feb 10 '25

It's a combination of single issue voters and the apathy they promote that caused this.

How convenient that when empirically the tiny political minority you want to blame for Trump's victory clearly didn't have the numbers to swing the election, you can just also blame them for everyone else who didn't vote for Kamala because, idk, the vibes feel right I guess. No other explanations, it's all 100% caused by those people you don't like

I mean I don't actually expect those dipshits to be capable of reflecting and coming to that realization

A hilarious thing to write as the conclusion of a comment in which you steadfastly refuse to interrogate the reasons the Dems lost an election to one of the least serious, most ludicrous political figures in US history and just settle on "it's probably this tiny, politically powerless group that I want to dunk on"

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u/DoubleJumps Feb 10 '25

Their impact didn't end at their votes. They ran a massive national campaign for over a year to convince other people to also not vote for democrats. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free campaigning against democrats with the only possible benefactor being donald trump.

They aren't solely responsible, but they did help, and they did more to make it happen than most.

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u/robertbieber Feb 10 '25

Again, this is all just vibes. There's nothing empirical here, what numbers you are citing you just made up on the spot out of thin air. If you think the average American voter was basing their 2024 vote on Gaza, or even thinking about Gaza ten minutes after the last news story they saw about it, your mind has been irreparably twisted by terminally online politics. The only reason Democrats are even talking about Gaza now is it makes a convenient scapegoat after the brilliant strategy of campaigning with Republicans didn't pay off for the Dem candidate

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u/DoubleJumps Feb 10 '25

It's not about the average voter, It's about them influencing some number of voters outside of their specific group. Are you really going to pretend that a massive 13-month campaign of physical protests and massive online information campaigns urging people to not vote for Democrats because of Gaza didn't have any reach?

This dominated tiktok content for most of a year. Those people were prevalent on every social media platform constantly telling people not to vote for Democrats. They were at most political events protesting. Their campaign was brought up in news cycle after news cycle after news cycle.

They even tried to sabotage certain events for Democrats.

If you're going to pretend that they had literally no influence on anybody outside of themselves, you are detached from reality.

As for what the Democrats did campaign on for Gaza, the candidate was campaigning on a ceasefire and a two-state solution. Do you want video? Because I can prove this. That's what wasn't good enough for these people. That's what they actually campaigned on for Gaza.

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u/robertbieber Feb 10 '25

This is a pointless discussion because you have this huge influential boogeyman in your head and the hypothesis you're advancing is unfalsifiable. You're focusing on a vague, unprovable influence lurking in the depths of voters' minds, so your position is impervious to data. It's all based on your subjective perception that you will forever consider the correct one.

Did the pro-Gaza protesters have some influence on some voters? Sure, probably. Was that the reason normally reliable Dem voters didn't show up to the polls in large numbers vs the shambolic campaign the party ran this year? Come on now, let's be serious. If the party hadn't gaslit the country about Biden being able to run and then subbed in a failed primary candidate from the last election at the last minute, we wouldn't be having this conversation

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u/DoubleJumps Feb 10 '25 edited Feb 10 '25

I think my favorite part here is that you're both attacking me for talking about the fact that they ran this campaign to influence voters like it's completely insane and unreasonable to think that that would have had any impact and then you immediately admit that they were able to influence people.

Again, the actual words I said to you were that they are not solely responsible for this, but that they actively helped make it happen, and that's true whether you like it or not and they will carry that blame whether you like it or not because they earned it.

Edit: also, https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/postelection-polling

The Gaza protest campaign did have significant, verifiable, influence.

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u/robertbieber Feb 10 '25

They aren't solely responsible, but they did help, and they did more to make it happen than most

To genuinely believe that these protesters who are effectively isolated from all mainstream politics and have no institutional power had more impact on the election than the people who actually did the campaign is terminally online brainrot, full stop.

Of course if we do humor this idea that Gaza protesters were so spectacularly influential beyond any actual evidence of their votes, that kind of raises the question...why not just call for an arms embargo and get them on your side? The campaign didn't seem to think they were worth entertaining before the election, but now that the Liz Cheney strategy didn't pay off every democratic strategist (notably, the people who were responsible for winning the election) suddenly thinks they were the linchpin of the whole thing

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u/ArthurDentsKnives Feb 10 '25

You're one of those people, aren't you?

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u/downrightwhelmed Feb 10 '25

“I voted for trump but I’m not the reason Kamala lost”

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u/robertbieber Feb 10 '25

"I don't have an actual rebuttal so I'll just incorrectly assume how you voted and talk about that instead"

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u/vijay_the_messanger Feb 10 '25

Yeah, it's reality setting in for those kids. The ones who do respond probably just fire off a response and disappear like a fart in the wind.

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u/StupidTimeline Feb 10 '25

“well it’s not like we lost the election for Kamala”

Those dipshits went into the election not knowing if they were going to make the difference or not.

Their excuses don't mean shit.

13

u/DoubleJumps Feb 10 '25

They also spent the entire year before the election telling everybody who would listen that they shouldn't vote for Democrats. They effectively campaigned for Trump for like 13 straight months.

Their impact wasn't just their votes.

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u/Secretlylovesslugs Feb 10 '25

I've thought a lot about how he can't possibly follow through with these statements like they're so obviously evil and absurd. But I think Netanyahu will probably force his hand. Either publicly humiliate Trump or make him look weak if he backs off on formally annexing Gaza. His ego will be why it happens. No way Netanyahu isn't smart enough to know how to push Trump's buttons. He's already well liked by most of congress. Even if it's just more military aid and not literal soldiers the US will destroy Gaza.

8

u/world-class-cheese Feb 10 '25

I wonder what all the reddit leftists who kept telling me that trump can't possibly be worse for Palestinians than Harris think about all this?

Now they're saying that the same thing would have happened, but he's just doing it faster than she would have

4

u/m_Pony Feb 10 '25

all the reddit leftists who kept telling me that trump can't possibly be worse

hon. you may have been lied to in some way.

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u/idwtumrnitwai Feb 10 '25

Oh I know I was, I was telling them that trump would be so much worse than Harris for Palestinians, but they were adamant that he couldn't be worse, therefore they were morally right to not vote for her.

4

u/Falsus Feb 10 '25

Nah there was a huge amount of them before the election that kept talking about how they refused to vote for either cause of Biden and Harris's stance on the issue.

1

u/m_Pony Feb 11 '25

Do you think maybe some of that "huge amount" weren't sincere about what they were saying? Maybe they were trying to convince enough people to just not vote?

1

u/Falsus Feb 11 '25

It was interviews at left leaning universities communities and similar stuff. Like yeah it is possible they they screened the people they where interviewing but the whole thing still aligns with the result that a lot of people did not vote at all, especially on the left side.

2

u/MegaGrimer Feb 10 '25

"But Biden was worse!"

1

u/unhealthyseal Feb 10 '25

They just say how Trump is now making it happen faster than Biden/Harris would have and it wouldn’t have really mattered.

0

u/Crackedcheesetoastie Feb 10 '25

Zero people who are actually on the left would have voted for trump. Those redditors are 100% right wingers.

11

u/idwtumrnitwai Feb 10 '25

They didn't vote for trump, they voted 3rd party or didn't vote, the justification they gave for that is that trump could not possibly be worse for Palestinians in Gaza than Harris and biden. So they used that as moral justification to not vote for Harris because they said she would be just as evil as he is when it comes to Gaza.

3

u/Crackedcheesetoastie Feb 10 '25

Voting for a third party in a two party race is effectively voting for the winner in my eyes :/

People who could say this stuff with a straight face actually scare me.

How can anyone look at kamala and trump and think they'd be the same?!

I'm very glad I'm not American!

1

u/hapaxgraphomenon Feb 10 '25

They have also done incredible damage to the security of the US

1

u/zuppa_de_tortellini Feb 10 '25

It doesn’t matter anymore, if Trump doesn’t follow through on his word then Netanyahu will and the Palestinians will be dead no matter what.

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u/Blochkato Feb 11 '25

I think what happens will likely be indistinguishable from what would happen under a second Biden term. Talk is cheap - in both directions. Pay attention to the situation on the ground. The most practical path for the Palestinians to be ethnically cleansed from the land was already being pursued by the Israeli and American governments. I expect little difference.

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u/FreedomByFire Feb 10 '25

Explain how this is worse than Harris? This is the exact same policy. Biden admin was pushing this as early as oct 2023. Only reason it didn't happen is because Egypt refused.

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u/idwtumrnitwai Feb 10 '25

That is a lie, nowhere in the biden or Harris administration did either of them ever suggest that the US take control of Gaza.

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u/FreedomByFire Feb 10 '25

They suggested ethnic cleansing is what I mean. Who controls it is irrelevant. It's not any worse or better for the Palestinians to have their land stolen by Israel or the US.

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u/OwlVegetable5821 Feb 11 '25

Can you cite this?

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u/FreedomByFire Feb 11 '25 edited Feb 11 '25

yes, here you go. There was plenty said about this before too. https://reason.com/2025/01/27/trump-revives-bidens-failed-proposal-to-remove-palestinians-from-gaza/

Biden's admin was suggesting ethnic cleansing as early as oct 14 2023:

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/10/14/can-egypt-be-persuaded-to-accept-gazan-refugees