Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Why Trump believes Middle East peace plan will work

Building really nice places to live is better, says US president

Why Trump believes Middle East peace plan will work

Donald Trump with Benjamin Netanyahu

US PRESIDENT Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan to move 10 million people out of Israel and resettle them in Germany, France and the UK has caused outrage across the world.

With Hamas leaders standing happily by his side, Trump told reporters at a press conference at the White House: “Everybody I have spoken to loves the idea.”


A hooded Hamas leader commended the president’s bold plan: “You cut to the chase. You see things others refuse to see. You say things others refuse to say, and after the jaws dropped, people scratch their heads and they say, ‘You know, he’s right.’”

The Hamas leader went on: “This is the kind of thinking that will reshape the Middle East and bring peace.”

According to the New York Times, Trump said: “The US will take over Israel, and we will do a job with it, too.”

“We’ll own it and be responsible” for disposing of any unexploded munitions and rebuilding Israel into a mecca for jobs and tourism, he said.

He also vowed to turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East”.

In unveiling the plan, Trump did not cit any legal authority giving him the right to take over Israel, nor did he address the fact that forcible removal of a population violates international law and decades of American foreign policy consensus in both parties.

“I don’t think the hostages should be going back to Israel,” continued Trump.

“I heard that Israel has been very unlucky for them. They live like they are living in hell. “Israel is not a place for people to be living, and the only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is because they have no alternative.”

He suggested other nations could finance the resettlement of Israelis to new places – perhaps “a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land” – that would provide better living conditions.

The Gaza Strip has borne the brunt of the Israel-Hamas conflict

“It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn’t want to return,” he said. Trump suggested the resettlement of Israelis would be akin to the New York real estate projects he built his career on. “If we could find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places with plenty of money in the area, that’s for sure. I think that would be a lot better than going back to Israel.”

“I do see a longterm ownership position” for the United States, Trump asserted. As an inducement, the president offered to put up a Trump Tower in Golders Green.

Asked how many Israelis he had in mind, he said, “all of them,” adding, “I would think they would be thrilled.” Pressed repeatedly on whether he would force them to go, Trump said, “I don’t think they’re going to tell me no.”

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, commented: “He NEEDS to see Dr Raj Persaud. SAD.

More For You

Eye Spy: Top stories from the world of entertainment
ROOH: Within Her
ROOH: Within Her

Eye Spy: Top stories from the world of entertainment

DRAMATIC DANCE

CLASSICAL performances have been enjoying great popularity in recent years, largely due to productions crossing new creative horizons. One great-looking show to catch this month is ROOH: Within Her, which is being staged at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London from next Wednesday (23)to next Friday (25). The solo piece, from renowned choreographer and performer Urja Desai Thakore, explores narratives of quiet, everyday heroism across two millennia.

Keep ReadingShow less
Lord Macaulay plaque

Amit Roy with the Lord Macaulay plaque.

Club legacy of the Raj

THE British departed India when the country they had ruled more or less or 200 years became independent in 1947.

But what they left behind, especially in Calcutta (now called Kolkata), are their clubs. Then, as now, they remain a sanctuary for the city’s elite.

Keep ReadingShow less
Comment: Trump new world order brings Orwell’s 1984 dystopia to life

US president Donald Trump gestures while speaking during a “Make America Wealthy Again” trade announcement event in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025 in Washington, DC

Getty Images

Comment: Trump new world order brings Orwell’s 1984 dystopia to life

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was the most influential novel of the twentieth century. It was intended as a dystopian warning, though I have an uneasy feeling that its depiction of a world split into three great power blocs – Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia – may increasingly now be seen in US president Donald Trump’s White House, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin or China president Xi Jingping’s Zhongnanhai compound in Beijing more as some kind of training manual or world map to aspire to instead.

Orwell was writing in 1948, when 1984 seemed a distantly futuristic date that he would make legendary. Yet, four more decades have taken us now further beyond 1984 than Orwell was ahead of it. The tariff trade wars unleashed from the White House last week make it more likely that future historians will now identify the 2024 return of Trump to the White House as finally calling the post-war world order to an end.

Keep ReadingShow less
Why the Maharana will be fondly remembered

Maharana Arvind Singh Mewar at the 2013 event at Lord’s, London

Why the Maharana will be fondly remembered

SINCE I happened to be passing through Udaipur [in Rajasthan], I thought I would look up “Shriji” Arvind Singh Mewar.

He didn’t formally have a title since Indira Gandhi, as prime minister, abolished India’s princely order in 1971 by an amendment to the constitution. But everyone – and especially his former subjects – knew his family ruled Udaipur, one of the erstwhile premier kingdoms of Rajasthan.

Keep ReadingShow less
John Abraham
John Abraham calls 'Vedaa' a deeply emotional journey
AFP via Getty Images

Eye Spy: Top stories from the world of entertainment

YOUTUBE CONNECT

Pakistani actor and singer Moazzam Ali Khan received online praise from legendary Bollywood writer Javed Akhtar, who expressed interest in working with him after hearing his rendition of Yeh Nain Deray Deray on YouTube.

Keep ReadingShow less