A Mad Hatter’s tea party

Trump 2.0 has come out swinging, enacting a flurry of executive orders along the lines of what he had promised during his election campaign.

A short list of the most important pronouncements will help to understand the implications of Trump’s frantic, hurried interventions. First and foremost, Trump’s outlandish suggestion to “clean Gaza”. Trump thinks Gaza is now a “demolition site” after Israel’s genocidal over one year’s war has left little else but crumbling ruins in the Strip.

In Trump’s ‘humanitarian’ heart is the notion that Jordan and Egypt should accept around a million and a half people out of Gaza’s population of about 2.4 million in order to build housing for them in the countries of their displacement and offer them safe and peaceful lives after their unprecedented travails. Surprise, surprise, this outlandish notion finds no takers, from Gaza’s ruined and displaced people to Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Jordan or Egypt.

Gaza’s people affirm they wish to return to their homes, a desire temporarily stymied by the Israeli army’s refusal to let displaced denizens return to their (destroyed) homes in the north, a glitch that latest reports assure may be overcome now that one Israeli prisoner to be originally released last Saturday has now been handed over.

Palestinians fear Trump’s proposal is the Naqba 2.0, the original terrorisation, murder and eviction of the Palestinian people in 1948 when the Zionist state was imposed on them with US-led western imperialism’s support.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army, freed from the Gaza war through the ceasefire, has been conducting raids in the West Bank even before the guns fell silent in Gaza.

Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank has once again been the main target of the Israeli army, which they try to justify in the name of combating terrorism but which, if past such actions are taken into account, has likely cost the lives of many innocent Palestinians.

The Israeli army is not known for restraint when it comes to targeting Palestinians. The actions by Israel in the West Bank will no doubt receive a big fillip from Trump’s lifting of sanctions (imposed by his predecessor Biden) on West Bank Israeli settlers who have been attacking peaceful Palestinians, murdering them and burning their homes, farms and possessions.

This too is an effort to force the Palestinians to flee their difficult, under threat lives in the West Bank to pave the way for Israeli annexation of the Werst Bank.

Territory captured by the expansionist Israeli state in the Golan Heights while taking advantage of the recent civil war in Syria that ended with the ouster of Assad is still in the Israeli grip, while Israel’s military incursion into southern Lebanon during its war with Hezbollah too is not being vacated as per the agreement with Lebanon to end that conflict.

Twenty-two Lebanese citizens wishing to return to their homes in that area have been murdered by the Israeli army.

Trump has lifted the temporary suspension by Biden on the supply of 2,000 lb. bombs to Israel.

All these developments point to the precariousness of the ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, and the likely increased efforts by Israel to extend its presence or even annex these new occupied territories, such being the intrinsic character and zeitgeist of the Zionist entity thrust like a dagger in the heart of the Middle East by the western imperialists.

Trump has ‘dumped’ the Afghans who worked with the US during its 20-year occupation of Afghanistan. Over 40,000 such Afghans await deliverance and refuge in various countries, including Pakistan, after Trump halted their already long overdue flights to the US to be granted special immigrant status.

This reminds one of the similar ‘dumping’ by the fleeing US forces from Vietnam in 1975 of all those South Vietnamese who had worked for the US during its war in Vietnam. Since this ‘dumping’ after usage seems to be the pattern of US behaviour, it holds lessons for anyone contemplating playing such a role again for the fickle US.

Trump has unleashed his border security forces against illegal immigrants on US soil. Those arrested are to be deported en masse. Mexico has refused to entertain such flights, while Colombia’s initial refusal has been reversed by the threat of coercive tariff impositions by Washington.

These actions have birthed a general resentment and anger throughout Latin America, particularly where Left governments are in power.

Trump threatens trade wars with the US’s major trading partners China, Canada and Mexico. He demands all countries either manufacture on US soil or be ready to face punitive sanctions and high tariffs.

Shunning free market norms and multilateralism in his quixotic quest to “Make America Great Again!” Trump risks failure at home and destabilisation of the global, intrinsically linked economy of today’s world.

The results are unlikely to be a revival of US industry, and are certain to cause so much ruction internationally that the whole world will be hard put to it to ride out the storm economically, let alone achieve progress and growth.

Welcome to Trump’s modern-day Mad Hatter’s Tea Party (with apologies to Alice in Wonderland).

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025