The use of euphemistic language to conceal war crimes is sadly nothing new, but Donald Trump’s attempt to pitch ethnic cleansing as a can’t-miss real-estate deal is a new low. During a joint press conference with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in early February, Trump proposed relocating Gaza’s population to clear the way for a U.S.-led development project that would turn the decimated strip into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, for their part, seem to view Trump’s idea and his presidency in general as an opportunity for “total victory” in the region, including not just the depopulation of Gaza, but also partnered strikes against Iran and the annexation of the West Bank.

In laying out his obscene vision, Trump acknowledged the scope of the destruction in Gaza in a way the Biden administration would not: “It’s right now a demolition site,” he said. “Virtually every building is down. They’re living under fallen concrete.” This amounted to an implicit acknowledgment that the goal of the war was never, as stated, to simply incapacitate Hamas so that an attack like October 7 could not be repeated; it was to make Gaza uninhabitable and force all of its surviving residents to leave. By conservative estimates, more than forty-seven thousand Palestinians—a majority of them women and children—are dead, and around 70 percent of the buildings, including 92 percent of housing units, have been destroyed. This has left about 1.9 million of 2.1 million Gazans displaced.

During its bombardment of Gaza, Israel deliberately blocked the delivery of food and medicine, killed aid workers, and undermined humanitarian organizations. The ceasefire, which took effect in mid-January, has allowed more aid to flow, but the humanitarian crisis is ongoing, with children affected the most. This winter, at least seven infants have frozen to death in makeshift tents. Some sixty thousand children are experiencing acute malnutrition, and seventeen thousand are orphaned or separated from their families. Almost every school has been destroyed. Instead of focusing on how to end the crisis and help rebuild the structures and lives that American weapons helped destroy, Trump is promising to facilitate a new phase of the assault against Gaza’s Palestinians.

But there are no signs Gazans are planning to leave as Trump suggested they would. Many are now camping outside their destroyed homes, mourning their dead but vowing to rebuild. Afaf Ahmed, who has lost twenty-two family members and been displaced seven times, told the Intercept, “We’ve already given our blood, sweat, and tears for our homeland and it’s not going to stop because Trump decided: you know what, let’s move them somewhere else.” Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia—countries Trump hopes will assist in resettling refugees—have been defiant as well, issuing a statement rejecting the “transfer or uprooting of Palestinians from their land.” Given these barriers and Netanyahu’s totalizing ambitions—as well as pressure from far-right members of his cabinet—the prospect of a renewed, even more brutal war that includes the mass expulsion hinted at by Trump’s plan now looms.

While his communications staff tried to spin Trump’s plan as “outside-of-the-box” thinking for an intractable problem, it speaks more to the president’s utter lack of principle. Even Republican loyalists loath to appear at odds with him expressed qualms about the idea, especially given the administration’s promise of a restrained, “America First” foreign policy. But Trump’s proposal—evoking grotesque images of tourists sunbathing on “waterfront property” from which Palestinians have been forcibly expelled—doesn’t derive from any coherent ideology. It springs from a narcissistic image of himself as a dealmaker, an attraction to the naked exercise of power, and open contempt for the very idea of justice.