Capital Seizes Gaza
Capital Seizes Gaza
Trump’s desire to take over Gaza is not an “irrational phantom,” but a logical conclusion to the escalating contradictions of the US economy.
It shows what interests the United States pursues with Gaza and what problems this creates for European capital as well as Egyptian and Jordanian rule.
Reminder: The words marked in red are links leading to respective critique articles.
Additionally, we recommend the following articles on The Topic of Palestine:
– “Resistance and Terror” – Which war is just? Which armed action is terrorism, and which is an act of resistance?
– “Before October 7” – What happened before October 7 and why the attack certainly didn’t come out of nowhere.
– “Contradiction: Combating Resistance” – This war cannot serve to wipe out Hamas because it makes Hamas more popular than ever.
– “The Role of Sexualized Violence” – Sexualized violence in Israeli prisons and its purpose.
– “The Great Mediator” – About China’s role in uniting various Palestinian organizations.
When Trump spoke last week about wanting to take over the Gaza Strip, we, like most of the world, believed it was a Trumpism, not a serious threat.
It was all the more shocking when Trump confirmed his intentions to buy Gaza three more times: “We are determined to own it, take it, and ensure that Hamas does not come back.”
“We will build beautiful communities for the 1.9 million people. We will build beautiful, safe communities.”
These should be built somewhat away from “all this danger,” “In the meantime, I would own it. Think of it as real estate development for the future.”
According to the US government, these “safe communities” would be established through a deal with Jordan and Egypt, ideally on the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula.
Both Egypt and Jordan evidently cannot enter such deals already because there is widespread criticism from their populations about their inaction regarding the genocide in Gaza.
An agreement to forcibly resettle the Gaza population would create a contradiction between the people and the ruling authorities in both states, likely prompting a coup in both Egypt’s Sisi and Jordan’s Abdullah II.
Trump’s statements are putting Jordan, a close partner of the EU and the US, to the test; about 60% of Jordanians have Palestinian roots, and last year millions protested for weeks outside the Israeli embassy against ongoing genocide.
This resource-scarce country, which was created as a gift from the British and French to the Hashemite Sharifs of Mecca, has since the peace treaty with Israel in 1994 become a second stationary aircraft carrier for Western capitalist interests in the region.
The relative external stability of Jordan, maintained especially because Jordan lacks significant natural resources or sea routes, is destabilized by the situation in Gaza.
Agreements to Trump’s proposal would mean the end of the political career for Jordan’s rulers; rejection might mean the end of vital American financial aid.
Egypt’s president, or post-cult military ruler al-Sisi, whose coup was largely financed by Saudi Arabia, announced a crisis summit of Arab states on the same day as Trump’s statements.
But the same applies to Egypt; as a state characterized by internal contradictions (especially between the people and Sisi’s unpopularity) and dependence on US imperialism, both accepting and rejecting Trump’s deal could have disastrous consequences.
Regardless of how the ethnic cleansing in Gaza develops further, Trump’s proposal for the “Riviera of the Middle East” has set an unavoidable turning point for the Palestinian people and neighboring states.
Independent of any agreement Trump or Netanyahu might reach with Jordan and Egypt, the ideological conditions for the further strengthening of Palestinian resistance have been created.
Both in the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli aggression continues.
In Gaza, the unplanned low delivery of aid supplies from Israel has led Hamas to postpone further releases of hostages indefinitely.
“The promise was broken (…) When the world learned of the concentration camps in 1945, it promised the Jews: never again. Luckily, the Jews did not believe those words.”
writes Filipp Piatov in Bild, a completely rational reaction to Israel’s breach of the ceasefire agreement.
Meanwhile, Israel continues its offensive on the city of Tulkarem in the West Bank.
For about 17 days, Israeli troops have been attacking the city in northwest occupied West Bank; in recent days, Israeli bulldozers have begun deliberately destroying large parts of water, electricity, and communication infrastructure.
About 85% of the residents have been displaced from the two refugee camps in the city.
In the recent offensive, 23-year-old pregnant Sondos Schalabi was shot in an execution-style manner.
She and her husband, Jasan Shula, were fleeing advancing troops when Israeli soldiers opened fire.
When pregnant Schalabi got out of her car after being hit, she was reportedly “looking suspiciously at the ground” — which was enough for three shots to her chest, according to official Israeli statements.
Schalabi’s death is just one among many in the West Bank, where the increasing toll is partly due to the January decision to expand military tactics from Gaza to the occupied West Bank, i.e., easing the shooting orders.
Earlier, Israeli soldiers had forced a resident of the refugee camp to go “to neutralize potential booby traps in several houses suspected of harboring terrorists” (jW).
In the same camp, Israeli soldiers attached an explosive device to a woman’s front door after she had asked them to leave the building for evacuation — the device exploded, killing the 21-year-old resident instantly.
Contradictions, Resistance Suppression
Our argument that traditional warfare against a national liberation movement (regardless of how reactionary its internal character is) cannot succeed has been detailed in our article “Contradiction, Resistance Suppression”.
In brief: especially resistance — which derives its internal legitimacy primarily from the understanding of revenge for 76 years of harassment, oppression, and occupation — cannot be militarily or through “relocation to a prettier place” broken.
It functions like the Hydra in the fight with Heracles; when one head is cut off, two grow back in its place.
Heracles famously defeats the Hydra by burning the severed necks, thus fighting the problem at the root.
The groups of Palestinian resistance, whether progressive or reactionary, are caused by the material conditions in Gaza and the West Bank.
They are comprehensible and not ghostly apparitions, as bourgeois press often portrays them in their terror.
Like other resistance movements, especially Hamas and its popular support, it is a reaction to the neglect by the PLO under Mahmoud Abbas, i.e., the opposite of accepting Israeli harassment, which they reject explicitly and connect to the denial of the (often) progressive values of the PLO.
Already before, and increasingly after the Oslo accords’ fiasco, many Palestinians viewed Fatah and the PLO as non-acting in the face of ongoing aggression, including settlement expansion and the destruction of entire towns by Israel.
Blaming the PLO for Hamas would of course be insane, since the PLO itself is only the cause of division, which in turn is the cause of US-capitalist aggression in the land between Jordan and the Mediterranean.
Nevertheless, to remain realistic; Hamas is not an organization that acts out of pure malice or “blind terror,” as claimed by Deutschlandfunk, NZZ, and other liberal analysts.
It is clear that Hamas’s success represents the dialectical development of the diplomatic failures of the Oslo accords and the PLO, serving primarily the internal logic of revenge understood as national liberation of Palestine.
Should the United States, with support from Israel, attempt to “resettle” Gaza’s residents, it would pave the way for resistance from Gaza for generations.
Like other national liberation movements, Palestinian resistance is deeply tied to the land of Palestine.
The national liberation nationalism, underlying even the progressive factions of Palestinian resistance, cannot be broken by “relocation” to “more beautiful areas,” where subjective notions of “beauty” of a territory are irrelevant to the bond with a piece of land.
Encircled by Contradictions
Trump’s tariff policies, which rely less on economic calculation and more on geopolitical power pursuits, will lead to a massive decline in US economic performance in the coming years.
According to the Institute for Macroeconomics and Economic Research of the Hans Böckler Foundation, the US GDP could fall by between 3.8% and 5.2% in the next years, implying a decline of 0.4% to 1% for Germany and 0.3% to 1.1% for the Eurozone.
A key reason: Rising consumer goods prices reduce the purchasing power of US households. At the same time, the US Federal Reserve is likely to adopt a more restrictive course due to increasing inflation; growth among US trading partners will be slowed by declining export demand and shrinking profit margins.
Additionally, the GDP losses will increase if (as announced) China implements retaliatory measures, which would directly affect the US the most.
Contrary to what is often claimed in liberal media, Trump’s tariff policy is not an “erratic act of a madman,” but a logical step to safeguard US capital, which feels more threatened than ever by Chinese exports.
Since the next few years will be tough for US capital, the United States sees its interests served by securing capital through a post-war Gaza.
The reactions from key EU states, claiming Trump’s proposal to be “unacceptable and illegal under international law” (Baerbock), do not stem from sudden pro-Palestinian consciousness, but from the fact that US control over Gaza would cause significant geopolitical and economic problems for the EU.
This development could negatively affect relations with important Arab partners like Egypt, Jordan, or Gulf states, which, as explained, are in a dilemma due to Trump’s statements.
Saudi Arabia, for example, for which the US is now merely a secondary economic partner, could cut off vital oil exports if the EU cooperated militarily on Trump’s Gaza “cleansing” plans (including possible blockade or military intervention).
Already in 2022, the EU, together with Israel and Egypt, decided to expand the export of “Israeli” gas (also from occupied Palestinian territories) to Europe.
While the US has similar agreements, their main interest is to deepen transatlantic relations, i.e., further increasing dependencies of EU states on the US.
Israel plans to “increase natural gas production and more than double exports” (Klimareporter) in the coming years.
The logical consequence of October 7 was also the swift granting of twelve oil extraction licenses to six oil companies (including BP and Eni), authorized to extract oil from Gaza.
For oil and gas capital, especially “Gaza Marine,” a huge gas field located 17 to 21 miles off Gaza’s coast, plays a crucial role.
According to OSLO-II, Palestine holds exclusive rights to the 20-mile zone off its coast, but Israel and its collaborators have ignored all aspects of the agreement, so nothing actually prevents exploitation.
For Trump, taking over Gaza would mean US capital having privileged access to Gaza’s oil, allowing him to deepen European dependence on American oil and mitigate some of his protectionist policies (see below).
Suez and Ben-Gurion
Gaza’s oil, or lack thereof: Control over the Suez Canal is of paramount importance to the Trump administration.
Let us recall the consequences of Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal; the empire was not pleased.
About 14% of world trade and 8% of global liquefied natural gas transit pass through the Suez.
Trump had already highlighted his aim to accelerate US domestic oil production with his “Drill, Baby, Drill!” call — and to rely more on foreign oil again.
In the context of Trump’s new protectionist stance, minimizing transport costs for Asian goods (to offset costs of Chinese tariffs, among others) is essential.
The US-led “Operation Prosperity Guardian,” involving the UK, France, Italy, and other EU states since 2023, aims to contain the threat posed by the Palestine-solidarity Huthis.
Control over Gaza would give the US not only influence over the coast and the Suez but also establish Egypt as a regional aircraft carrier through further dependencies. Besides the Suez, controlling Gaza would finally allow the US and Israel to realize their long-held dream of a “Ben-Gurion Canal.”
This hypothetical canal, planned since the 1960s, could create an alternative route between the Gulf of Aqaba and the Mediterranean, bypassing the Suez.
The pesky, surprisingly resilient “Gaza” spot could then be transformed into a strategic link, changing the regional power dynamics.