Donald Trump has said that Palestinians have “no alternative” but to leave Gaza due to the devastation left by Israel’s war on Hamas, in effect endorsing ethnic cleansing of the territory over the opposition of Palestinians and the neighbouring countries.
Speaking as he prepared to host Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Tuesday, Trump repeated the suggestion that Gaza’s population should be relocated to Jordan and Egypt – something both countries have firmly rejected.
Trump claimed Palestinians would “love to leave Gaza”, telling reporters: “I would think that they would be thrilled.”
What a bold lie. Biden vetoed UN votes to stop the blockade. He defended the Israeli military shooting unarmed Palestinians who approached the blockade and approved of Israel blocking the investigations of the deaths of NGO workers.
You could argue Biden was more in favor of peace than Trump is, but in practice he didn’t differ from Trump’s previous term on Israel. His record is clear.
The US built a whole temporary harbor to deliver aid to Gaza.
The whole point of that temporary pier was because Biden was unwilling to pressure Netanyahu to open any of the gates into Gaza, so sea deliveries was a way around him. It delayed aid for months, and it was eventually destroyed in a storm. And then Biden let Israeli military use it for raids and it then became a military target.
It was a failure. A policy failure through and through.
During the time of his he pier, trucks were also getting in from other entrypoints. Israel even constructed and opened new ones.
The problem with aid availability was mostly related to challenges with distribution inside Gaza.
The pier had the same issue. Aid was piling up next to it, but distribution further into Gaza was slow.
That’s simply false, and literally every aid organization and the UN and international press said otherwise. Long lines of hundreds of trucks were not allowed to enter Gaza by the Israeli military, I saw the videos and interviews of the drivers, even Biden admitted it was because Netanyahu refused to allow trucks in and not because of logistics inside Gaza itself. It was part of Netanyahu’s attempt to starve the population both to please the rightwingers in his coalition and to pressure Hamas into surrendering.