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indigenous rights
The Real Estate of Empire: How Colonial Gentrification Fuels Trump's Gaza Plan
Trump, in positioning himself as both a political leader and a real estate mogul, offers a disturbing vision of the future in which state power is wielded to clear land for private enterprise.
Feb 07, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump's latest proposal concerning the future of Gaza has sent shockwaves throughout the international community. The plan, which envisions the mass displacement of Palestinians to make way for large-scale real estate development, has been described by many as a modern form of ethnic cleansing. However, beyond its immediate human rights implications, the proposal reflects a broader and increasingly pervasive trend: the privatization of colonialism. This emerging form of power, which fuses state-backed military interventions with corporate real estate ambitions, is not only reshaping geopolitics but also reinforcing patterns of displacement and profit-driven development that have long characterized capitalism.
In many ways, Trump's proposal is the most explicit articulation of an idea that has been growing within imperialist frameworks: that land is a commodity to be developed, often at the expense of the people who live there. This real estate-driven colonialism extends beyond Gaza, manifesting in urban gentrification, resource-driven land grabs, and international economic policies that prioritize profit over people. Trump, in positioning himself as both a political leader and a real estate mogul, offers a disturbing vision of the future in which state power is wielded to clear land for private enterprise.
Privatizing Occupation: Trump's Gaza Plan and the Business of Displacement
Trump's proposal for Gaza presents itself as a peace plan, but its underlying logic reveals an agenda that prioritizes economic opportunity for private developers over the well-being of Palestinians. According to reports, Trump envisions a future in which Gaza is transformed into a lucrative Mediterranean real estate hub, with its war-ravaged infrastructure replaced by hotels, casinos, and commercial developments. The prerequisite for this transformation? The mass displacement of the approximately 2 million Palestinians who currently live there.
The proposal suggests that Palestinians could be relocated to neighboring countries such as Jordan and Egypt, though neither of these nations has agreed to such a plan. In effect, this would mean the forced expulsion of an entire population to clear space for a new, corporate-friendly urban environment. This mirrors the logic of historical settler-colonial projects, where Indigenous populations were removed to make way for economic and territorial expansion.
Trump's plan for Gaza is not just about development; it is about a worldview in which land is valuable, but the people on it are not.
Trump's framing of the plan as an economic opportunity rather than a humanitarian crisis is key to understanding its ideological underpinnings. He clearly sees Gaza as what one commentator has called "prime real estate," describing it as "a phenomenal location. On the sea. The best weather." Such language makes it clear that he views the region not as a home for millions of people, but as an underutilized economic asset.
Moreover, the proposal fits into a larger pattern within Trump's worldview, in which peace and stability are linked to business development rather than justice or self-determination. The idea that economic investment can resolve deep-rooted political conflicts is a hallmark of neoliberal thinking, but in this case, it is being used as a smokescreen for a violent process of expulsion and reconstruction. In short, Trump's vision for Gaza is one in which real estate developers, backed by the force of the U.S. government, reap enormous profits from the destruction and displacement of an entire people.
Privately Developing the World
Trump's approach to Gaza is not an anomaly; it is emblematic of a broader trend in which colonial ambitions are increasingly expressed through private development. This is particularly evident in Trump's own history as a real estate developer and businessman, a background that deeply informs his approach to politics. Throughout his career, Trump has pursued massive redevelopment projects that often involved displacing existing communities in favor of high-end properties. Whether in New York, Atlantic City, or Florida, his business model has been one of aggressive gentrification, and his policies as president reflect this same mindset on a global scale.
This kind of real estate-driven imperialism has precedent. Historical colonial enterprises often functioned as public-private partnerships, where European powers worked alongside private companies to extract wealth from colonized lands. The British East India Company, for example, was both a corporate and colonial entity, using military force to secure economic dominance. Today, a similar dynamic is emerging, albeit in a more modern form. Instead of explicit colonial rule, nations exert influence through economic policies, real estate development, and financial speculation.
Trump's vision for Gaza exemplifies this shift. His proposal is not framed in terms of direct military occupation, but rather in terms of economic opportunity. In this sense, it represents an updated form of colonialism as led by an imperialist "developer in chief." One that eschews traditional mechanisms of control in favor of the logic of private investment. This shift has significant implications for how global conflicts are managed and resolved. Increasingly, wars and crises are being viewed not as humanitarian emergencies, but as business opportunities. Here the "temporary" displacement of Palestinians is being done in the name of making it the "the Riviera of the Middle East".
Profitable Properties, Expendable Populations
Trump's plan for Gaza is not just about development; it is about a worldview in which land is valuable, but the people on it are not. This is a direct extension of the logic of capitalism, which prioritizes profit over people and often sees human communities as obstacles to economic growth.
In this emerging paradigm, the world is increasingly seen as a series of underdeveloped properties waiting to be monetized. Whether in Gaza, Haiti, Sudan, or urban neighborhoods across major cities in the Global North and South, communities are being displaced under the guise of economic revitalization. The logic is simple: If a population is not financially profitable, it can be removed and replaced with one that is. This perspective transforms entire societies into mere real estate assets, and in doing so, it redefines the meaning of sovereignty, citizenship, and human rights.
Ultimately, Trump's Gaza plan is a warning: If we do not challenge the privatization of colonialism now, we will see this model replicated elsewhere.
This process is not just gentrification in the traditional sense but a form of colonial gentrification—one that operates at a global scale and fuses private development with state-backed displacement. Unlike typical urban gentrification, which displaces lower-income communities within a city, colonial gentrification is an extension of historic imperialism, where entire nations and Indigenous lands are restructured to serve the economic interests of external elites. It is a process in which the destruction of communities—whether through war, economic crisis, or environmental devastation—creates new financial opportunities for corporate actors and ruling-class investors. It does not merely "upgrade" an area for wealthier residents; it systematically removes and replaces populations that have already been subjected to colonial violence and economic marginalization. The same Palestinians whose dispossession began with Zionist settlement in the 20th century are now facing an escalated form of removal under the banner of capitalist redevelopment.
However, it is not just the economic dimension that makes this model so dangerous—it is also the political incentives that come with it. Figures like Trump and other far-right populists have increasingly politically profited from making certain populations expendable. By framing marginalized communities—whether refugees, the poor, Indigenous peoples, or racialized groups—as obstacles to national progress or economic revitalization, these leaders channel popular discontent into reactionary and xenophobic movements. This tactic diverts working-class anger away from the real sources of economic inequality—corporate greed, wealth extraction, and financial speculation—and redirects it toward vulnerable populations. At the same time, the same elites pushing these narratives are also economically profiting from this manufactured expendability, using state power to clear land, remove protections, and privatize resources under the guise of "security" or "development."
In Gaza, the historical injustices of dispossession and occupation have already left the Palestinian people in a precarious position. Trump's plan, far from being an isolated event, is simply the latest manifestation of a global pattern in which communities rendered vulnerable by centuries of exploitation are continually pushed aside in favor of profit-driven redevelopment. This is not just about turning land into a commodity; it is about reinforcing a hierarchy in which certain populations are deemed disposable while others are prioritized as the rightful beneficiaries of development.
The Progressive Struggle Against Global Gentrification
The fight against Trump's Gaza plan is about resisting an entire worldview in which land is nothing more than a commodity to be bought, sold, and developed for profit. The struggles in Palestine are deeply connected to broader struggles against gentrification and displacement across the world. Communities everywhere are being pushed out to make way for wealthier and more politically connected interests. In each case, state power is weaponized through both the police, private security firms, or the military to facilitate the removal of marginalized people, reinforcing systems of inequality while presenting these transformations as "progress" or "revitalization."
To combat this, we need a global movement that recognizes the link between colonialism, capitalism, and displacement. This means fighting not just for the right of Palestinians to remain in their homeland, but for the right of all people to stay in the communities they call home. It requires resisting policies that prioritize profit over people, exposing the ways in which development projects serve elite interests, and building systems that value human lives over real estate speculation. The forces pushing for displacement—whether through military occupation, corporate-led gentrification, or neoliberal economic restructuring—are deeply interconnected, which means resistance must be interconnected as well.
Palestinians, despite facing overwhelming military, political, and economic pressure, are already resisting this plan. Grassroots organizations, activists, and everyday people in Gaza and the broader Palestinian diaspora have long been engaged in a struggle to defend their land, preserve their culture, and assert their right to self-determination.
Ultimately, Trump's Gaza plan is a warning: If we do not challenge the privatization of colonialism now, we will see this model replicated elsewhere. But it is also an opportunity—an opportunity to build new coalitions, new strategies, and new visions for a world in which people, not profits, come first. The struggle against displacement in Palestine must be linked to struggles everywhere, forging a movement that refuses to accept a world in which entire communities are deemed expendable for the sake of corporate and political gain.
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The Right to Remain in the Face of Genocide
Trump’s latest comments confirm that Israel’s wholesale destruction of Gaza is aimed at permanently removing its Palestinian population.
Feb 07, 2025
Ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump said Palestinians have “no alternative” but to leave Gaza. When the two leaders met in the oval office, Trump declared that after Palestinians from the Gaza Strip are moved elsewhere, the U.S. will “take over.” The U.S. president also expressed his desire to transform the Israeli-occupied territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
These surrealistic statements were uttered as Palestinians across the Gaza Strip are facing the unprecedented destruction left behind by the Israeli army. Many of those who were displaced and have managed to go back to their homes in the past two weeks found only ruins. According to the United Nations, the Israeli army has bombed 90% of all housing units in the Gaza Strip, leaving 160,000 units completely destroyed and 276,000 severely or partially damaged.
Any discussion about the future of Gaza must be guided by the claims and aspirations of the Palestinian people.
As the dust settles and images of the extent of the devastation circulate on mainstream media, it has become clear that the genocidal violence Israel unleashed in Gaza was not only used to kill, displace, and destroy, but also to undercut the Palestinian population’s right to remain. And it is precisely the possibility of securing this right that the Trump-Netanyahu duo is now bent on preventing.
Remaining as a Right
The right to remain is not formally recognized within the human rights canon and is usually associated with refugees who have fled their country and are permitted to stay in a host country while seeking asylum. It has also been invoked in the context of so-called “urban renewal” projects where largely marginalized and insecurely housed urban residents demand their right to stay in their homes and among their community when faced with pressure from powerful actors pushing for redevelopment and gentrification. The right to remain is particularly urgent in settler-colonial situations where colonizers actively displace the Indigenous population and try to replace them with settlers. From First Nations in North America to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia, settlers have used genocidal violence to deny Indigenous people this right.
The right to remain, however, is not merely the right to “stay put.” Rather, to enjoy this right, people must be able to remain within their community and have access to both material and social “infrastructures of existence,” including water and food, hospitals, schools, places of worship, and the means of livelihood. Without these infrastructures the right to remain becomes impossible.
Beyond mere physical presence, the right to remain also encompasses the right to maintain the historical and contemporary stories and webs of relations that hold people and communities together in place and time. This is a crucial aspect of this right, since the settler-colonial project not only aims for the physical removal and replacement of Indigenous people, but also seeks to erase Indigenous cultures, histories, and identities as well as any attachments to land. Finally, it cannot be enough to be allowed to remain as an occupied inhabitant within a besieged territory. The right to remain includes the ability of a people to determine their own destiny.
A History of Permanent Displacement
During the 1948 war, Palestinian cities were depopulated and about 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed, while most of their inhabitants became refugees in neighbouring countries. In total, about 750,000 Palestinians out of a population of 900,000 were displaced from their homes and ancestral lands and were never allowed to return. Since then, displacement or the threat of displacement has been part of the everyday Palestinian experience. Indeed, throughout the West Bank and even within Israel, in places like Umm al Hiran, Palestinian communities continue to be forcibly uprooted and removed from their lands and prevented from returning.
The U.S.-backed Israeli denial of the right to remain in the Gaza Strip is far worse—not only because many communities are made up of refugees and this is their second, third, or fourth displacement—but also because displacement has now become a tool of genocide. As early as October 13, 2023, Israel issued a collective evacuation order to 1.1 million Palestinians living north of Wadi Gaza, and, in the following months similar orders were issued time and again, ultimately displacing 90% of the strip’s population.
To be sure, international humanitarian law obligates warring parties to protect civilian populations, which includes allowing them to move from war zones to safe areas. Yet, these provisions are informed by the assumption that populations have a right to remain in their homes and therefore stipulate that evacuees must be allowed to return when the fighting ends, rendering any form of permanent displacement illegal. Population transfer must be temporary and can only be used for protection and humanitarian relief, and not, as Israel has used and Trump’s recent comments reinforce, a “humanitarian camouflage” to cover up the wholesale destruction and undoing of Palestinian spaces.
The Right to Remain and Self-Determination
Now that a cease-fire has been declared, displaced Palestinians are able to go back to their homes. Yet, this movement back in no way satisfies their right to remain. This is no coincidence: The ability to remain is precisely what Israel has been aiming to eradicate in 15 months of war.
The razing of hospitals, schools, universities and mosques, shops and street markets, cemeteries, and libraries, alongside the destruction of roads, wells, electricity grids, greenhouses, and fishing vessels, was not only carried out in the service of mass killings and the temporary cleansing of areas of their inhabitants, but also to create a new reality on the ground, particularly in northern Gaza. Thus, it is not just that Palestinian homes have been destroyed but that the very existence of the population will now be compromised for years to come.
This is not a new thing. We have seen throughout history how settlers act to permanently displace and eliminate Indigenous populations from the territories. Learning from these stories we know that financial investment in rebuilding houses and infrastructure will not—in itself—ensure the population’s right to remain. Remaining requires self-determination. To enact their right to remain, Palestinians must finally gain their freedom as a self-determining people.
Israel has denied Palestinians their right to remain for over 75 years; it is high time to set things straight. Any discussion about the future of Gaza must be guided by the claims and aspirations of the Palestinian people. Promises of reconstruction and economic prosperity by foreign countries are irrelevant unless explicitly tied to Palestinian self-determination. The right to remain can only be guaranteed through decolonization and Palestinians liberation.
This article first appeared in Al Jazeera English.
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Biden Tried to Protect the Vulnerable Bering Sea; Will It Work?
The climate emergency has led to dramatic changes for Alaska fish and wildlife and for the subsistence-based communities of the Arctic who depend on these creatures for their survival.
Jan 22, 2025
In early January, as one of his last acts in office, former U.S. President Joe Biden banned future offshore oil and gas drilling on more than 625 million acres of U.S. coastal waters including the entire East Coast, West Coast, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico as well as the northern Bering Sea.
He did this using presidential powers granted under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953, which in 2019 a federal judge in Alaska ruled cannot be rescinded by a future president. This means, despite his day one executive order reversing Biden’s order, President Donald Trump will likely have to get Congress to pass legislation negating this drilling ban. Three Republican congressmen from Louisiana and Texas have already introduced legislation to do that, but may have a hard time getting fellow Republicans from states like South Carolina and Florida—where anti-drilling sentiment is strong—to go along.
It’s pretty clear why Biden did what he did, first to thwart Trump’s “Drill Baby Drill” energy plan and to burnish his own environmental legacy. What is less clear to most people is why he included 44 million acres of the Northern Bering Sea off of Alaska in the drilling ban.
“Everything’s declining, even our (summer) moss berries, cloud berries, everything.”
As a Biden White House fact-sheet explained it: “The Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area was established in 2016 and includes one of the largest marine mammal migrations in the world—beluga and bowhead whales, walruses, and seals… the health of these waters is critically important to food security and to the culture of more than 70 coastal Tribes, including the Yup’ik, Cup’ik, and Inupiaq people who have relied on these resources for millennia.”
So, what’s the Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area? Established by President Barack Obama in December of 2016, it was an attempt to meet the concerns of both Alaska Natives and environmental scientists studying the rapidly changing conditions they were witnessing. Alaska and its waters are today warming two to three times faster than the rest of the world due to a climate phenomenon known as “Arctic amplification,” linked to vanishing sea ice. As the Arctic Ocean ice cover that reflects solar radiation back into space has retreated, the dark ocean waters exposed absorb ever greater amounts of heat leading to 2024 being listed as the hottest year on record going back to 1850. 2023 was the previous hottest year. The 10 warmest years have all occurred in the last decade.
This has led to dramatic changes for the fish and wildlife and for the subsistence-based communities of the Arctic who depend on these creatures for their survival. For example, a study published last month found that 4 million common murres, a seabird that frequents the area, recently died as the result of a marine heatwave. This was about half the state of Alaska’s population, and may be the largest documented die-off of a single species of wild bird.
The Bering Sea’s Alaska Native communities—some 70 federally recognized tribes—first requested action under Obama and got both a ban on destructive bottom trawl fishing in the 113,000-square-mile resilience area and a ban on oil drilling in about half the area (rescinded by Trump during his first term and now fully protected by Biden under the Lands Act), also a commitment for the Coast Guard to restrict shipping channels in areas where native communities are involved in fishing, hunting, and whaling (still not finalized by the Coast Guard) and a pledge to consult with these same communities moving forward. Three leading Alaska Native organizations—Kawerak, Inc., the Association of Village Council Presidents, and the Bering Sea Elders Group—released a joint statement on the day Biden acted expressing their “deepest appreciation and gratitude” to him for protecting waters that President Trump hopes to reopen to oil drilling.
I recently interviewed two women from St. Paul Island in the Pribilof Islands, about 300 miles off the Alaskan mainland in the Bering Sea. Destiny Bristol Kushin is a 20-year-old college student working toward an associate degree in environmental sciences, and her grandmother Zinaida Melovidov is an elder who has lived on the island, with a population of just under 400 people, most of her life. They both talked about the decline of the murres that were hunted for meat and whose eggs were collected on a nearby island where they’ve all but disappeared since the die-off.
“Everything’s declining, even our (summer) moss berries, cloud berries, everything,” Melovidov worries.
“Even in the last 20 years since I was born, you can see the differences in the environment, especially with the seasons. Our summers will be later and foggy where they used to be sunny,” Kushin notes. “Our winters aren’t as snowy. It’s mostly wet now, like rain and snow all during the winter time.”
I’ve heard similar concerns about climate impacts on lives and livelihoods from Alaska Natives in the Aleutians and Southwest Alaska whose villages are also at risk from erosion, flooding, and thawing permafrost.
Even if Biden’s drilling ban in the Bering Sea stands the test of Trump, other threats will remain including oil spills from Russian tankers passing through the 55-mile-wide Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia delivering oil to China via Russia’s Northern Sea Route of retreating Arctic ice. Russia’s oil trade with China has increased since Western sanctions were imposed following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Reflecting these tensions around oil, in 2023 the Russians refused to participate with the U.S. Coast Guard in a joint oil spill response exercise.
Even with drilling protections for coastal America, the U.S. will remain the world’s leading oil and gas producer, including the 14% of national production that comes from the western Gulf of Mexico where the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster took place.
And, with President Trump’s commitment to produce ever more fossil fuels that drive climate disruption and contribute to extreme weather events from heatwaves in the Arctic to the Los Angeles’ firestorms, our problems with oil and gas remain far from over.
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