Resisting Trump's "Riviera of the Middle East" in Gaza

“There is something sick and rotten about states and societies that not only support and enable mass killings but also make money off of them.” —Pankaj Mishra, January 30, 2025

At a February 4th, 2025, press conference in Washington, D.C., President Trump, standing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, announced U.S. intent to turn the Gaza Strip into something that could be phenomenal…the Riviera of the Middle East.

Reading from prepared notes, he stated “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip.” He said Palestinians in Gaza would be relocated to other countries, and he later questioned why they would ever want to return. He went on to say that he would decide about Israeli annexation of the West Bank in the next month.

According to international law, forcibly transferring people from their land is a crime against humanity. Annexation violates people’s right to self-determination, a fundamental principle of international law.

States and societies around the world harshly condemned President Trump’s total disregard for international law. And yet, every member state of the United Nations General Assembly has a duty, now, under international law, to abstain from any actions enabling the Israeli military to continue its illegal occupation of the Occupied Palestine Territory.

This means every state must stop shipments of weapons to Israel. The U.S., for instance, is required not to send the one billion dollars’ worth of bombs, rifles, ammunition, and Caterpillar bulldozers which President Trump had readied to send Israel.

In the past, Democrats in positions of power allowed President Biden to provision Israel with massive arms sales, enabling a killing spree, over the past 15 months, which has left Gaza in ruins. In June, 2025, Biden moved forward on a $18 billion arms sale to Israel.

Pankaj Mishra, an Indian essayist and novelist, sadly describes the bleak reality of international weapon peddling. “There is something sick and rotten,” Mishra writes, “about states and societies that not only support and enable mass killings but also make money off of them.”

Throughout the world, grass roots groups struggle to uphold international law and resist governments which support the wholesale Israeli slaughter and destruction of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestine Territory.

In Ireland, activists across the country hold weekly demonstrations insisting Ireland must not allow use of Shannon Airport for transport of weapons or equipment to Israel’s military.

A flier announcing an upcoming action at Shannon airport on February 9, 2025 calls for protest against “the use of Irish airspace to deliver arms, tech and logistical support to the genocidal, apartheid state of Israel that has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians over the past 15 months, including more than 17,000 children, while more than 100,000 have been maimed. In the West Bank, more than 800 people have been killed, and Israel’s brutal illegal occupation continues...”

European human rights activists emphasize that the European Union is Israel’s biggest trade partner, accounting for 28.8% of its trade in goods in 2022. Israel is also among the EU’s main trading partners in the Mediterranean area.

Now, a coalition of over 160 human rights organizations, trade unions, and civil society groups is calling on the European Commission to take immediate action to ban all trade and business with Israel’s illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. The coalition’s demand follows a landmark advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July 2024, which reaffirmed that:

“Pending an end to Israel’s occupation, third states must immediately stop all forms of aid or assistance that help maintain the unlawful occupation, including halting arms transfers to Israel and ceasing all trade with illegal settlements.”

Robert Jereski, an attorney in NYC, works with Code Pink and a coalition of activists campaigning for UN member states to suspend Israel from the United Nations because it has murdered Palestinians and driven them off their land. Jereski and his colleagues note that Israel’s renewed offensives in the West Bank mark a shift in the tactics of genocide rather than an actual ceasefire. Israel’s bombing of Jenin has led to the forced displacement of 26,000 Palestinians. The Israeli military has escalated widespread arrests and restrictions while settlement expansion continues at an unprecedented pace, with frequent approvals for new outposts and housing.

Trump’s most recent statements, coupled with his withdrawal this week of the U.S. from the United Nations Human Rights Council, underscore the urgent need for the United Nations General Assembly to hold an emergency meeting. The UNGA should judge whether the United States fails to be an impartial arbiter and is, instead, party to the genocide in Gaza. Further, the UNGA should decide whether to suspend the U.S. veto power at the Security Council visavis matters pertaining to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Mindful of Pankaj Mishra’s observation that there is something sick and rotten in the act of enabling and profiting from mass killings, we must vow never to stop clamoring for the United Nations member states to fulfill their obligations under international law and live up to the UN’s founding mission: to eradicate the scourge of war for future generations.