Le Pen and Eric Ciotti, head of Les Republicains, at yesterday's 'programme' launch (Chesnot/Getty Images)
With France bracing itself for the first round of its snap parliamentary election this Sunday, the near-certain prospect of victory for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) has sent French and EU elites to their panic stations. Reeling from their bruising defeat in this month’s European election, the bloc’s entire machinery is being mobilised to neutralise the “populist” threat.
First came the market’s attack dogs. As soon as Macron called the election, a massive sell-off of French government bonds began, causing the “spread” between French and German government borrowing costs to rise to the highest level since the euro crisis. This has been described as a “natural” reaction of financial markets to the prospect of a RN-led government — and the “fiscally irresponsible” economic policies many expect it to pursue.
While the party hasn’t published a manifesto for the upcoming election, in the 2022 election Le Pen’s RN campaigned on a strongly interventionist-welfarist economic platform: it included reducing to 60 the retirement age (which Macron last year raised to 64, amid massive protests) and raising minimum pensions, increasing welfare support for families, massively subsidising energy bills, boosting healthcare spending and renationalising the highways. It represented a radical break with the neoliberal orthodoxy.
Back in 2022, the Institut Montaigne think tank estimated that Le Pen’s policies would increase France’s deficit, which currently stands at around 5.5% of GDP, by around €100 billion a year — hence the widespread accusations that a RN-led government would cause France’s deficit and debt to “spiral out of control” and potentially plunge the country into a fiscal crisis. Markets, we were told, are simply acting upon legitimate concerns about the sustainability of France’s deficit.
There are, however, several problems with this narrative. Most obviously, financial markets have no reason to be concerned about a higher deficit. Such concerns would only be justified if there were a real risk of France defaulting on its debt, but this is extremely unlikely: for the simple reason that the European Central Bank (ECB) would never allow it to happen, as it would mean the end of the euro.
Even more importantly, all this talk of “the markets” ignores the fact that the spread is ultimately determined by a central bank — in the EU’s case, the ECB — which always has the power to bring down interest rates by intervening in sovereign bond markets. We saw this clearly during the pandemic: despite France’s budget deficit ballooning to nearly 9% of GDP, bond yields on French government bonds actually fell below zero — as the ECB bought up all the new debt issuance. Indeed, even during the decade prior to the pandemic, France registered a relatively high deficit on average — well above the EU’s deficit-to-GDP limit of 3% — but very low bond yields, thanks to the ECB’s post-euro crisis quantitative easing (QE) programme.
Moreover, in 2022, despite the tapering of its pandemic emergency purchase programme, the ECB launched a new “anti-fragmentation tool”, the Transmission Protection Instrument, explicitly aimed at keeping spreads under control by allowing the central bank to purchase the government bonds of countries whose interest rates diverge excessively due to speculation. What is currently happening on the French bond market perfectly fits this scenario. The ECB could close the spread and put an end to the panic with the press of a button. In fact, one could argue this would be particularly justified: with all the talk of electoral interference, it’s hard to see why financial markets should be allowed to manipulate elections by spreading unwarranted panic.
Yet the ECB has so far refused to take any action. “What we are seeing is a repricing but it is not in the world of disorderly market dynamics right now,” said Philip Lane, chief economist of the ECB. His comments were backed by ECB president Christine Lagarde. “We’re continuing to be attentive, but it’s limited to that,” she disclosed, signalling that the bank sees no reason for activating its bond-purchasing instrument.
Taken at face value, such comments would have us believe that the ECB has taken a technical decision based on arcane economic parameters. In reality, however, the ECB’s decision not to intervene has nothing to do with economics — and everything to do with politics. By looking the other way, the ECB is using the “bond vigilantes” as proxies through which to scare voters — and send a message to Le Pen. Adam Tooze has likened this “agreement” between bond markets and the ECB to that of “state-sanctioned paramilitaries delivering a punishment beating whilst the police look[s] on”. But look beyond the smokescreen, and it becomes apparent that it’s not the markets interfering in the French elections; it’s the ECB.
This isn’t the first time the ECB has engaged in financial and monetary blackmail to coerce governments into complying with the EU’s political-economic agenda. Former ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet made no secret of the fact that he effectively engineered the European “sovereign debt crisis” of 2009-2012, by refusing to support bond markets in order to pressure governments into consolidating their budgets and implementing “structural reforms”. But over the years, the ECB has gone even further than simply turning a blind eye to market speculation. On several occasions, it has engaged in speculation itself, engineering sell-offs of the bonds of certain countries, or other comparable actions, in order to plunge hostile governments into fiscal crises. Most recently, Giorgia Meloni and Lagarde have clashed on various occasions, with the latter often using the spread to turn the heat up on the Italian government.
What is playing out today in France, then, is nothing new. And yet, there is something unprecedentedly brazen about the ECB’s latest attempt at electoral manipulation. What we are witnessing is effectively an unholy alliance between an increasingly discredited national elite and the supranational institutions of the EU against the common “populist” threat. The strategy should be clear by now: the EU creates an artificial financial panic and national elites then use that to scare voters away from the “wrong” candidate. As an MP from Macron’s party told Le Figaro: “First and foremost, we need to scare people… to show the consequences and financial risks of the [National Rally’s] proposed measures.”
Thus, Macron was quick to seize onto the turbulence in the markets to paint Le Pen as an economic menace and invite voters to rally against the National Rally. Meanwhile, his finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, has made the spectre of a financial disaster his main campaign argument. “I would like to know who is going to pay the bill of the Marxist programme of Marine Le Pen,” he said in an interview. (The news that Le Pen is a Marxist will, of course, come as a surprise to many on the French Left.)
As mentioned, the goal of this strategy is twofold: to scare voters and — should that fail — to send a message to the next government. While such fear-mongering appears to be failing on the first front — Le Pen continues to surge in the polls — it is definitely delivering on the second. Over the past week, the RN has backpedalled on many of its flagship economic proposals, in particular the idea of reducing the retirement age to 60 for some categories of workers.
Yesterday, the party’s young and charismatic president, Jordan Bardella, made clear that his party’s programme would be far from radical: the RN would focus on “realistic” measures to curb inflation, he said, primarily by cutting energy taxes. On Sunday, meanwhile, Jean-Phillipe Tanguy, the RN favourite to head France’s finance ministry, pledged that his party will not “let the deficit run out of control”, and that it will stick to the EU’s fiscal rules. The party has also shifted away from its longstanding Gaullist and anti-American stance, rowing back on its previous promise to pull out of Nato strategic military command.
The party’s “normalisation” has left many on the French Right feeling that Le Pen has gone too far in her bid for power. “Bardella has already sold out completely. It is not the patriotic economic model that I wanted,” said Bernard Monot, once the party’s chief economic strategist. “He’s changed the party’s position on fundamental positions. He’s pro-Zelensky and pro-Nato, just like Meloni. He is entirely compatible with liberal Atlanticism.”
But accusations of selling-out ultimately miss the point. This has little to do with Bardella, but instead is a consequence of the inevitable constraints that the euro system places on governments. The reality is that even if the RN manages to win an absolute majority, they will be forced to toe the EU-Nato line on economic and foreign policy if they want the ECB to play ball and keep the French bond market afloat. After all, all it takes to engineer a fiscal crisis is for Lagarde to look the other way as bond vigilantes do the dirty work.
Indeed, only last week, the EU hinted at what this might look like after it opened an “excessive deficit procedure” against France, along with six other member states. This means that the next government will be forced to rein in the deficit — or face disciplinary action. While it is true that France’s deficit exceeds the bloc’s 3% borrowing limit, this has been the case for a very long time — and yet the Commission has often let France off the hook in the past, provided pro-EU governments were in power.
But now that a Le Pen majority looms on the horizon, the EU’s economic police force is suddenly sounding the alarm. As with the ECB’s refusal to intervene in the French bond market, this is a wholly political decision aimed at pre-emptively tying the hands of a future RN-led government. As Politico put it, saying the quiet part out loud: “It’s one thing to let off a pro-EU, statesmanlike leader for the type of reckless spending that endangers the economic stability of the eurozone. It’s quite another if it’s carried out brazenly by a nationalist firebrand.”
The implication is all too clear: within the eurozone, “populists” such as Le Pen and Bardella may very well come to power — but radical change will always be beyond their reach.
Thomas Fazi is an UnHerd columnist and translator. His latest book is The Covid Consensus, co-authored with Toby Green.
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“Let’s start with Jordan. When it became an independent state, in 1946, it did so as a largely Palestinian one . . .Today, one in five Jordanians is of Palestinian descent”
That portion of this paragraph makes no sence. If it was largly Palestinian 75 years ago and now only 1 in 5 Jordanians are Palestinians, WHAT HAPPENED? Did the IDF come in and ethnicly cleans Jordan.
Methinks that perhaps the author is using different definitions of what a Palestinian is within the paragraph.
BTW the Hashimite rulers are often thought of as being Imposed on the country by the British and are not regarded as representative by many within Jordan.
I could not get beyond “That the “plan” would be a gross violation of international law is probably irrelevant to Trump. Netanyahu understands all this. He is a sociopath with a messiah complex; he genuinely believes his destiny is to save Western civilisation from the scourge of radical Islam.” The most recent hostage release clearly shows that Palestinian society is entirely constructed around a poisonous and murderous hatred of Jews and the desire to remove them from the face of the earth. Why removing them is a gross violation of the international law? If Trump and Bibi can do it, that would be a mitzvah to the civilized world.
❝keep peace so tortuously at bay for almost 60 years❞? There has been war in Israel since 1948 (at least) which is 76 years.
Sipping Negronis under rocket fire sounds like adventure tourism at its best. Would the bellowing Hamas personnel be offered Negronis as well, or would that be culturally insensitive?
I think President Trump’s statement is to say, “Okay you don’t like my plan, what is your plan to rebuild Gaza and what to do with the Gazan while the rebuilding is underway.”
So let’s see who has a better plan, including who pays for the rebuilding, where to put the Gazans in the meantime (if that means in tents in Gaza, say so) and what happens with Hamas.
Why not move Israel into the U.S.? If we’re talking about outside-the-box solutions, this surely is one, but it has the advantage of an idea that has been considered before.
There never has been peace there for very long and there never will be.
The Palestinians have been given and offered everything inc in 1939 the whole of Israel and turned it all down.
No one wants a two state solution now. No one wants the Palestinians because they are major trouble.
So why not develop it? Obviously, it would have to be Muslim free or they would start killing everyone again. How to get around that is the problem. Someone mentioned Somalia the other day which is not a bad idea … so long as it isn’t Europe or the West.
I shudder at how easily westerners refer to those in the Middle east as nothing more than chess pieces that they can move about at whim. The historical reality is uncontestable: Israel exists because the West wanted nothing to do with Jews fleeing Hitler in WW2 and, after the war ended and the Holocaust was revealed in all its horror, the British came up with a clever plan to assauge their guilt and ‘deal’ with the problem – let’s ‘give’ them Palestine and completely and conveniently forget that it is already inhabited. (As an Australian I am more than familiar with the Brits foisting those it does not want on populations far out of sight, and claiming that the original inhabitants had no claim to their homeland, or indeed, even existed).
It amazes me that so many who will argue against immigration on the grounds of maintaining cultural integrity (generally of white westerners) again see no problem with it when it comes down to brown or black people and their culture. Pack their bags for them and send them off to somewhere else. Who wouldn’t want that?
We should all know of course that Trump’s ‘Riviera’ is all the more disgusting as before the latest destruction of Gaza, it was indeed akin to a Riviera of the middle east. He speaks as if it was some sort of Third world shanty town that never had any value or sophistication, much as the world viewed Iraq and Iran before the disaster of western ‘intervention’ . It was a beautiful and sophisticated place, as a google of Gaza before and after will attest
I shudder at how easily westerners refer to those in the Middle east as nothing more than chess pieces that they can move about at whim. The historical reality is uncontestable: Israel exists because the West wanted nothing to do with Jews fleeing Hitler in WW2 and, after the war ended and the Holocaust was revealed in all its horror, the British came up with a clever plan to assauge their guilt and ‘deal’ with the problem – let’s ‘give’ them Palestine and completely and conveniently forget that it is already inhabited. (As an Australian I am more than familiar with the Brits foisting those it does not want on populations far out of sight, and claiming that the original inhabitants had no claim to their homeland, or indeed, even existed).
It amazes me that so many who will argue against immigration on the grounds of maintaining cultural integrity (generally of white westerners) again see no problem with it when it comes down to brown or black people and their culture. Pack their bags for them and send them off to somewhere else. Who wouldn’t want that?
We should all know of course that Trump’s ‘Riviera’ is all the more disgusting as before the latest destruction of Gaza, it was indeed akin to a Riviera of the middle east. He speaks as if it was some sort of Third world shanty town that never had any value or sophistication, much as the world viewed Iraq and Iran before the disaster of western ‘intervention’ . It was a beautiful and sophisticated place, as these images attest.w w w .youtube.com/watch?v=tir36oMKWEM
Sorry this has been posted 3 times. Some sort of system glitch
Netanyahu understands all this. He is a sociopath with a messiah complex; he genuinely believes his destiny is to save Western civilisation from the scourge of radical Islam.
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David, let me paraphrase you:
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Patrikarakos understands all this. He is a sociopath with a messiah complex; he genuinely believes his destiny is to save Western civilisation from the scourge of radical Judaism.
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P.S. My paraphrase sounds stupid. I know it and agree with it. What about yours?
Lots of complaining, but no better alternatives? Nothing but the old two-state non-solution? Hamas appears now to be a generational mindset for the Palestinians.
As you say, an angry population is a destabilizing one, and so one might expect there to be no regional takers for even temporary migrants.
BUT WHAT IF there was a way to alter the hateful mindset of Hamas, as by employing their members (and Palestinians) as construction workers to rebuild? No helicopter money, but by using measurable performance metrics and trickle-funding, likely requiring Arab construction firms known to be effective as Primes. Relocate the UN there. Draw regional investment.
Oh, what a wonderful world it could be. Ideas are needed, not complaints.
Trump was convicted by a jury and got away scot free. No wonder he thinks he can do and say anything no matter how outlandish. It’s school playground bullying taken the ultimate level.
“helped to keep peace so tortuously at bay for almost 60 years.”
Whaaat????
“Trump’s Riviera would tear the Middle East apart – His Gaza plan makes peace impossible”
Did the author somehow miss, or have they perhaps forgotten, what happened on October 7th?
Seems to me that regardless of the actual results, the entire conversation has now shifted from “The poor Palestenians” to, “No one wants the Palestenians to come to their country because their radical nutcases that destabilize countries.” Pretty dang effective PR jiu-jitsu it seems.
I like the idea of those people going away to come back and work in a rebuilt and prosperous Gaza.
However, their life’s mission is to destroy the Jewish state and murder all the Jews in Israel.
So if they are permitted to stick around, then unfortunately they will.
“But Trump’s real estate plan has left Riyadh with no alternative but to publicly support a two-state solution”.
First, they’ ve always publicly supported a two-state solution. Second, just like all politicians they’ve got to perform an outrage spectacle for their local audience and forget about it next week.
The idea of population transfer is effectively the only way to resolve ethnic conflicts ( what else do you do in the int’l order of nation states?). It successfully worked more than once. Success of course measured only by the following stability, not by individuals compelled to leave their homes. Does it need to be an ethnic cleansing in the fashion of 1948? Not at all, voluntary exodus will work just fine with enough financial incentives, especially from the ruins, destruction, hunger and crime-infested area.
Now the author’s right, Jordan and Egypt have very limited ability to absorb 2mln Gazans, however, give a strong incentive to move them to the West Bank, simultaneously give a very strong disincentive to Israeli settlers to stay there, like removing the army, also, recognize Palestinian state and the region has a chance especially when Iranian meddling is at its low.
If only it were that simple. If the refugees of 48 had been offered that kind of deal, the hostilities in the area would have ended well before the 67 war. Instead, Israel had doubled down on its greater Israel rhetoric and no one in the region trusts Israel to do anything but “creatively interpret” any deal that is made.
— Netanyahu [..] is a sociopath with a messiah complex; he genuinely believes his destiny is to save Western civilisation from the scourge of radical Islam—
Is someone who wants to stop the scourge of radical Islam a sociopath?
Yes or no?
And if yes, based on what criteria?
Is David Patrikarakos a psychiatrist/clinical psychologist trained specifically in Cluster B personality disorders?
If yes, did he make a clinical assessment of Netanyahu based on DSM-5 and in-depth interviews?
This intellectually lazy labelling (and the wrong terminology, btw), aggravated by bundling of stopping Islam with ASPD, is all you need in order to draw your conclusions about the quality of this errr…article.
You have a point there. Perhaps we should temper our language and just refer to Bibi as a corrupt imperialist war criminal.
For goodness sake, all he wishes to do is defend his homeland. There would be peace the moment those who surround Israel stop attacking it.
You know that.
So he has no thoughts about being remembered as the chief Zionist who expanded greater Israel? Naive, lad. There are many videos of him for 30 years ago spelling out his intention to hoodwink the idiot evangelical Zionists and the U.S in general.
Unfortunately he considers his homeland to be all of biblical Israel and like Joshua he feels it’s his duty to expel of exterminate any Canaanites who live there.
Agree with you completely!
Thank you, Julia
This is a time when taking Trump seriously instead of literally is in order. He put forth an outlandish proposal with the idea that someone will step forward with a counter-measure that does not involve a US presence in that region. Second, it was a loud signal to Bibi that the fighting is done and it’s time to figure out the next step. Finally, miles of Mediterranean seafront is an opportunity only fools can screw up or ignore. Gaza has its path to prosperity in plain sight, if only some poeple’s blind hatred of Israel can be put aside.
True, but another thing that needs to be put aside is the idea that Jews have the divine right to all of Palestine even if they are atheists.
Yes! Absolutely right!
What a load of twaddle. Let’s just keep doing the same old thing shall we. See how that sorts things. There will never be a peaceful 2 state solution, particularly not now, until Hamas stop trying to kill all Jews. Hamas don’t need or want a state, they have done well enough the way things are. Money to be made from gullible foreign governments and cowardly middle eastern governments.
I believe there’s a definition for insanity as continuing to do the same thing while expecting a different outcome.
Thus, China is fiercely fighting the plan to displace the Palestinians, to nullify the (Israeli Ben Gurion Project), as it is the most dangerous secret plan that China is trying to expose its disguised methods under the pretext of war or creating a safe place for civilians to live, according to the claim of US President “Trump”, while the only intelligence truth in this dangerous strategic and international game, according to the awareness of Chinese intelligence institutions through the Chinese State Council, which is responsible for the work of the Chinese intelligence agency, is this dangerous plan, under American supervision, to seize the entire Gaza port and link it to the Israeli Ben Gurion port, as an alternative to the Belt and Road project in international trade, as an American and Israeli intelligence project in the Middle East region to confront the Chinese Silk Road project and to limit the influence of the Egyptian Suez Canal, as it connects India and Europe through railways and maritime transport across the Middle East.
https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/02/03/how-gazas-displacement-plan-could-shake-chinas-bri-and-suez-via-israels-ben-gurion-port/
An ambitious plan like the Ben Gurion Project requires ambitious thinking. Think of it as a supply side measure to kickstart global economic growth.
Wow! That is the longest single sentence I’ve seen in a long time.
Is Trump’s idea any more absurd than the idea that there’s ever going to be a two-state solution? Isn’t the definition of insanity trying the same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different outcome on the next try? All you have to know is that Jordan and Egypt don’t want to take the Gazans, their own coreligionists, because of their own bitter experience. I’m sure most of the Arab world prefers the Palestinians to be Israel’s problem in perpetuity but something is going to have to give.
So, do the Gazans have Gaza as their home, or are they refugees? They cannot be both.
¨the Palestinian Authority described it — not incorrectly — as a severe breach of international law.¨
At this point to describe something as a breach of international law is more of a commendation than a criticism.
The so called two state solution is an illusion. However public their support of the Palestinians the reality is that Arab states know it to be an impossibility. The Palestinians are just a useful stick with which to beat Israel. They will not be consulted over their future, that is decided for them by Hamas.
The best part of this article is the last three sentences.
Amen. What many are conveniently ignoring is that the Palestinian people have lost in these battles several times now. For eons. When you poke a much larger enemy in the eye and they retaliate and win, you lose. Based on the recorded history of the world, they are owed nothing but being conquered. Yet, this time this small enclave of people, who have spent their entire existence wishing to kill Jews, are being offered yet another chance to change and live in peace. What loser of war ever gets this chance even once? This is the most generous offer given to the loser in the history of mankind. The other option is to let the cancer continue to metastasize and be dealt with, yet again, down the road. It’s time to end the insanity.
The only intelligent thought in the article is the last three sentences. And as far as I can see most thoughtful people drew that conclusion as soon as Trump dropped his dead cat…
The Husseini Clan conducted a civil war against the Nashashibi Clan in the 1920s who wanted to negotiate with the British and the Jewish settlers. Member of the Husseini Clan actually sold land to the Jewish settlers. The acts of violence by supporters of the Husseini Clan led , Order Wingate, the first Special Forces officer in the 1930s to create the special Night Squads. Palestinians rejected every deal, the Jewish settler did not. Moshe Dayan, a sergeant in it said ” Wingate trained the Jews how to fight”. f The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a Husseini, supported Himmler and the Final Solution.
Nashashibi family – Wikipedia
Many Jewish people fought in Commando/Airborne /Special Forces units in WW2, so gaining skill and combat experience:Palestinians Arabs worked for Hitler.
The Arab countries in 1948 broadcast to the Palestinians to leave their homes to better able to destroy Israel: they lost. The Palestinians murdered King Abdullah of Jordan in 1951, the only person to defeat Israel in 1948. The PLO tried to take over Jordan in 1970 and insulted the wives of Beduin Officers. They were expelled. The PLO started the civil war in Lebanon in 1975.
In 1990 Arafat support S Hussein in the invasion of Kuwait and lost the support of Saudi Arabia , Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar. Every peace settlement from the 2000 Camp David Accord under Clinton, Jeddah ,etc has been rejected by the Palestinians. Israel left Gaza in 2005 and the advanced horticultural buildings left were destroyed by the Palestinians The Saudi audited the PLO accounts and there was so much corruption they stopped the funds.
Name one Arab country which would trust the Palestinians to live in their midst and not cause conflict ?
Okay David got it, his plan would threaten the peace and stability that Gaza has historically enjoyed… have you any thoughts on a better idea? Shall we keep the Gaza population locked in the apocalyptic death spiral they’re in and keep sending them money to build bombs and dig tunnels? Yeah you’re right, that’s much better.
If Trump is so keen to ‘clean’ the people out of Gaza so that he can own it and develop it as a ‘Riviera’, why doesn’t he ship them them all to the USA and give them citizenship?
Alternatively ‘clean’ the West Bank of its 750,000 (or so?) illegal settlers, thus freeing up enough homes to start off the resettlement of the Gazans there and create the Palestinian state which should keep most of the stakeholders content. The Israeli settlers can go to Israel, which should will be happy to receive them back, and then on to the Gaza strip when Trump has rebuilt it as a seaside paradise.
It does seem as if the Roman solution maybe the only answer here.
As Tacitus put it so perfectly: “ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant”.*
*Agricola:30, The rousing speech of Calgacus the leader of the Brittunculi (Britons) before the battle of Mons Graupius. 83/84 AD or 836/837 AUC.
The article has convinced me. The only solution is to decant the so-called Paledtinians and turn Gaza into some kind of Club Med. The problem is that no Arab country wants them.
EGYPT with a population of 118 million would hardly notice another 2.
Besides it is on an umbilical cord of US Aid and could be ‘squeezed’ if absolutely necessary.
Yeah, just like no European country wanted the Jews!! History eh?? Bloody hell.
I also wondered about the choice of Jordan and Egypt.
The gulf states would seem a far more obvious option – culturally close, with shared religion and language. They are affluent, sparsely populated, and have a continual need for labour. It would also remove hamas from the Israeli border.
The gulf monarchies may be understandably wary of a psychopathic death cult, although Qatar seems to be fine with this.
Interesting thought. Maybe that’s where this negotiation is headed. I suppose at this point what’s not being said might be as important as what is.
The Palestinian Christians are part of the death cult? Define sneaky cult. How about killing thousand of innocent children and women? Death cult? How about naming creepy operations “daddy’s home” and “mowing the lawn.” Death cult?
Why would Bibi make sure that Hamas got all this money. He likes death cults?
You’ve taken the propaganda to heart haven’t you? You are totally de humanising 7 million people as death cultists. Same thing that Hitler and other “civilised” Europeans did not too long ago.
Where to send the Jews? Funny eh?
Calling Trump’s statements on Gaza a plan is too much; they were a tactic to try and achieve something else. Which hopefully the countries of the Middle East will work out among themselves. Anything has got to be better than the current situation or hanging on – literally for grim death – to a solution we fancied would sort things out but which is already dead.
But, yes – by all means feel free to indulge in Trump derangement for two weeks before considering this. I’ve started to look at the repeat bouts of hysteria over Trump and Musk and wonder whether there isn’t some kind of erotic dimension to it. The way people throw themselves into it so gaily at every opportunity, there must be some primeval urge driving it.
“I know from multiple sources that the Saudis don’t actually care about the Palestinians…”
I don’t have any sources, and I could have told you that. None of the Arab states care about them.
“But such an unthinkable suggestion might actually kickstart the sort of unorthodox, disruptive thinking that has eluded more measured, knowledgeable and sharper minds for almost 60 years — and which has helped to keep peace so tortuously at bay for so long.”
The last sentence is the most important. Trump will disrupt fossilized failure and force actual progress. Most of this article excuses that failure. More knowledgeable and sharper minds? What’s the test?
“Netanyahu . . . is a sociopath with a messiah complex.”
No he’s not. There is too much of this kind of thing on UnHerd these days. It’s getting to be like Substack, a place I rarely go anymore to avoid the superficiality and glibness that is swamping any serious thinking.
I don’t like Donald Trump’s Gaza-viera plan either but he’s not proposing ethnic cleansing and he is just throwing his plan out there for thought. It has as much heft as a practical plan as Elon Musk’s plan to put men on Mars. Both are wispy and pleasant pipe dreams that have no chance of happening in real life.
How is removing all the Palestinians from Gaza not classed as ethnic cleansing?
Donald Trump did not say that he would remove all the Palestinians from Gaza.
What’s so odd about ‘ethnic cleansing’?
It’s what human beings do and have been doing since Day 1.
And after WW2 we got together and determined that there were principles we should as humans being aspire to, you know, the Nuremburg Convention and all that. That we should become more civilised. But you do you
I strongly agree with the first part of your comment. I am particularly fed up with the epithet “narcissist”. Big words for lazy minds.
Absolutely! That was such a cringeworthy bit in the article. (I wrote a comment on this)
You’re right: “narcissist” and “sociopath” (non-existent as a medical term, btw) have become lazy and empty labels, just like “f___ist” or “r___ist”.
Usually their use means “I don’t agree with X./I dont like X., therefore X. is a narcissist [and/or other words from the list above]”
Recently have read a complaint from someone calling their boss a narcissist because the boss wanted the complainant to come to work on time (oh horror! ;-))
Carlos, the plan he is “throwing out there” is ethnic cleansing! I’m starting to think you are a bot Carlos. With some gnarly bugs.
Yes, I also cringed when reading this bit and wrote a comment on this before I saw your post.
Some lazy labelling, apparently to make the article more dramatic is really a cheap trick.
Changing the subject: thank you very much for replying in detail to my question about breaking up big companies. Highly appreciated! I wrote a reply to you in the BTL comments to the article in question, don’t know of you have seen it.
Basically, it was to thank you for the very interesting and eye-opening explanation
The fact that Trump is actually creating dialogue between warring nations is a win. For a brief second it reminds one side that the other side is human. He thinks out loud with absurdly high aspirations. Better to have high aspirations and not meet them than put your expectations at the floor.
I understand Peace through Capitalism is a stain on the Socialist Global Revolution but maybe just consider it.
How is he creating dialogue? To that requires both sides to be talking to each other. All he has achieved is for the Israelis to cheer and the rest of the world to condemn the plan as idiocy
This kind of dialogue is normal in mediations like this. I’ve been a mediator, and I’ve been mediated. It’s often a messy process, but with a good mediator it can work well. And Donald Trump is a great mediator — a master of the art of the deal.
The problem in the Middle East is the Palestinians. The Israelis want peace and would give up a lot for it, as they have been willing to do for generations now. But the Palestinians won’t give up their dream of a state stretching from the river to the sea, and they are never going to get that.
And Israel is not going to wait patiently on the Palestinians. Israelis can be selfish and grasping themselves. They too dream of a state stretching from the river to the sea, but for them, the state is Israel. Meanwhile, most Palestinians are not jihadists like Hamas, or corrupt like Fatah. They just want to live in peace, but they are caught between their fanatical leaders and their avowed enemy.
So the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza has been brutal. Israel’s actions even before the Gaza War violated international law, as do the inexorable Israeli settlements and the almost casual and cruel persecution the settlers and the Israeli defense forces inflict on Palestinians. Myself, I am not surprised that Hamas launched its terrorist attack when it did. The provocation had been building and the lid was clamped too tightly onto the pot for it to let off steam. An explosion was inevitable.
But it was absolutely the worst thing that Hamas could have done for their own cause. No one could hold Israel back from bombing the hell out of Gaza and committing war crimes in the process. Now Gaza is destroyed, and it needs to be rebuilt. That will take 15 to 20 years, a generation, just to get it back to where it was before the first bombs fell.
Some people don’t seem to realize what a hell hole Gaza is now. There’s no electricity, no Internet, no water, no toilets, no schools, no hospitals, no housing. Nothing but rubble as far as the eye can see. I say none even though there is some because there’s not enough structure and infrastructure left to build around. The entire place has to be leveled so it can be rebuilt from the ground up.
So what do the Gazans do while that is happening? You can’t live in a house while it’s torn down and rebuilt. And who pays for the rebuilding? No one has a plan but Donald Trump, and his plan is a pipe dream. But at least he has people talking seriously about the problem, even if in angry denunciation (the Arabs) or barely hidden glee (the Israeli right), and that’s a start.
That’s dialogue, isn’t it?
(I wrote a lengthy reply to your comment but it got caught in UnHerd’s gizzard and won’t be coughed up until tomorrow.)
I don’t believe it is to be honest. Creating dialogue would be serious suggestions that both parties could use as a starting point.
If Hamas says they want to drive all the Jews from the Middle East thats classed as ethnic cleaning and terrorist, so why is Trump jabbering on about driving the Palestinians from Gaza any different?
No, I’ve done a lot of negotiation and mediation and the worst way to start out is with serious suggestions that both parties could use as a starting point. Then you get into a zero-sum game, or worse a negative-sum game, rather than a positive-sum game, a win-win scenario.
You can see the problem with the way JD Vance approached the question of Ukraine. He jumps in with a proposed plan that locks him into a poor negotiating position while Russia and Ukraine are both still far apart with unrealistic proposals and not talking.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, approached it perfectly. He proposes no plan, and when asked if he wants Ukraine wants to win, says he doesn’t think in terms of winning or losing but he wants to stop the dying. He’s not locked into any position, and can explore a lot more ground.
Negotiations need to proceed at their own pace. You can’t rush them. They need not necessarily take a lot of time, but there does need to be several rounds of back and forth, a lot of disagreement and shouting, a lot of smoothing over and conciliating, before a deal can be struck. The process is very important. The substance, not so much.
So it was the right first step is to get people talking even if the dialogue is not in the least productive. Everyone weighed in. Israel, Hamas. Egypt. Jordan. Saudi Arabia. They all said their piece. Now things can go from there.
And Donald Trump never said anything about driving the Palestinians out of Gaza. You need to stop putting words in his mouth that he didn’t say.
Excellent. A most intelligent reply.
I’m going to save it to pass on to my children.
.
You condemn every plan as idiocy. It’s not like your mind isn’t fixed. Trump could declare the fax machine an outdated form of communication and you’d attack it.
Developing Gaza is a brilliant, common sense idea, separating the problem from the drama, creating an opening for solution(s) . . . Brilliant on so many levels:
-Motivating assistance from neighboring countries.
-Opening the door to imagining a future free of ideological struggle and victimization.
-Planting a seed for hope . . .a seed which might divide the Palestinians . . afterall, the pressures of group conformity will make it excruciatingly hard for any Palestinian to speak in favor of such a plan. But the idea may yet grow into something over time.
I am beginning to wonder if Trump may be a genius, after all.
Notice that in this archaic screed from Patrikarakos that, as usual, there is no mention of the people of Gaza, and what might be the humanitarian thing to do, considering that their homes are ruble and they continue to be ruled by a homicidal, terrorist death cult. The entire purpose of the “Palestinian” refugee camps, such as Gaza, was to ensure a perpetual torment for the Israelis, thus satisfying the structural antisemitism of the West’s Left and also providing a useful distraction for the region’s autocrats.
Notice also that neither Patrikarakos nor any other establishment pundit has any solution (other than endless terrorist ferment on Israel’s borders). Trump made the only reasonable, practical suggestion in my lifetime. Thus Trump’s message to the people of Gaza – entirely moral and justified in my view: Live in peace with Israel, or go into the desert.
That is a useful focusing message for the brainwashed denizens of Gaza to absorb – and may lead to something actually positive,
Live in peace or go to the desert?
You just said that. It’s forever recorded.
Are you aware that the Israeli fascist right have said? They have called for this all along? Ever wonder how the totally superior and “moral” IDF, with all their AI and teenage dork operation naming, have actually increased the numbers of Hamas? Ever think that it wasn’t about that? Obviously it was ethnic cleansing all along. God bless President Homer Simpson for continuing to say the quiet part out loud.
You are aware that the Arabs have been engaged in ethnic cleansing for over a thousand years now?
Like the British, or worse?
Just like the Romans, make a desert and call it peace!
If the best that can be said about this latest bit of Trumpian mouth-garbage is ‘Well, it might be crazy, but gee it could get the grown-ups thinking laterally…’ then it’s not worth paying the price: which is destroying any last shred of US credibility – which means bargaining power – that remains under this fool. The point about playing Jester to disrupt a corrupt Court is that as a Jester, ‘crazy talk’ is all you have. When you’re the King, with real power, but you start spit-balling farcical lines as your primary strategy, too…boy, are you in the wrong job.
But Americans knew that of Trump – natural-born reality TV C-lister – already. Yep, it’s sure gunna be a loooooong four years having Alan Sugar as President.
So your opinion is that John Biden or Kam Harris project more strength to the world than Trump?
Or are you saying strength is a liability in negotiations?
Did I say either? Um, no. Are you a simpleton who can only think it binaries? I will assume not.
It is possible to think that Biden, Harris and Trump are all equally incompetent, weak and destructive to American interests.
Biden was a hypocritical creep, Harris a walking woke punchline,…and Trump is a colossal ass clown. Already he has blown every wad in his miserably weak arsenal. He has shown the world he is, yes after all, a loud mouthed blowhard and a fraud. A Lame Duck President after three weeks! Quite the anti-achievement, MAGA.
Israel is insane if it thinks Trump’s America is its champion.
I stopped reading at the word “simpleton”. Many others will have done the same and just registered a down tick. If you want your comments to be read, then I’d suggest a change of approach.
I’m sure we’ll both survive your non-readership of me, Ian. Chrs.
The recent Gaza solution did not work.
The two state solution will not work
What would you suggest?
Why not have America buy every Palestinian a puppy! By golly, that would shorely flood Gaza with rainbows and fairy floss farts in a trice!
Why won’t the two state solution work?
Because two dogs can never share the same bone.
Because, as has been obvious for some time, the Palestinan Arabs do not actually want a state of their own except as a launchpad to achieve what they really want, which is the destruction of Israel and the mass genocide of the Israelis.
Which is not to say that every single Palestinian Arab wants this, but that their collective will, as refracted and crystallised in their political and paramilitary institutions like the PA and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, still nurtures this as its overriding end.
There will be no peace until the morale of the Palestinan Arabs, as well as their conception of what is possible, is reduced to something like that of the Germans in May 1945. They are nowhere near there yet.
I would suggest a one state solution.
Secular. No ethno nationalist Jewish state. Y know, kinda like Palestine was before, but better. 7 million Jews. 7 million Palestinians. Let the breeding wars begin!!
Oh, so the sharp thinking liberals have kept the peace in Israel and Gaza for the last 60 years have they?
I must have missed that. Or maybe they are talking about a different middle East…
Patrikarakos is brilliant, as ever. Are there shades here of Idries Shah’s book, “Wisdom of the Idiots”? Should we bring to bear, the teachings of Sufi mysticism? It would be fresh thinking, that’s for sure.
That short character-sketch of Netanyahu is masterly. It says so much with so few words.
Is Wisdom of the Idiots just Gnosticism?
Oh and peace is possible under the current regime?
I wonder how many Palestinians wouldn’t rather spend their threescore-and-ten building their lives somewhere other than the rubble that Gaza now is, and wouldn’t jump at the chance to move elsewhere for the chance of a better life.
Maybe they do all desire to return to penury and destitution, living in the ruins of what used to be their houses, ruled by Hamas and seeing their children go off to pointless deaths in a jihadi cul-de-sac. They get bonus payments, apparently, for dead kids. And Heaven awaits, sultanas and all.
So tough choices.
But is it really so absurd that Trump is pushing a plan that would at least give individual Palestinians that choice? Or is it absurd that Western liberals would deny them that choice?
Is it not absurd, in fact, that the UN, and geniuses of similar ilk, has spent decades financing a terrorist government of a quasi-state, seen the consequences, and decided that somehow a return to this situation is in everyone’s best interests.
Trump’s thinking on this is way outside the Overton window, sure. The author claims that as policy the plan is a ‘disaster’. Take a good long look at Gaza, and tell me what current bien pensant policy is then. Trump’s plan has at least the advantage of looking like good sense at the outset.
As a thought experiment, it is absurd only to those incapable of seeing beyond the bounds of an Overton window that will leave their lack of imagination behind as it moves.
One could add to that a slightly different angle.
Progressives who’d throw their hands up in the air at the idea of ‘allowing’ those in Gaza who might wish to migrate to another land to escape the constant turmoil inflicted upon them by their leaders, or who might balk at the idea of neighbouring states being unsettled by the arrival of Palestinians from Gaza, are the very same progressives who take pride in the influx of migrants into western democracies, and balk at those who object on the grounds that such influxes result in an unsettling of local populations.
In other words, it’s one law for the plebs of Gaza, and another for the plebs of their own democracies. For progressives, hypocrisy not only knows no bounds, it’s compulsory.
Its an Ouroboros. A snake eating its own tail.
How many Palestinian’s we taken in as refugees in UK LL?
You’ve indicated it’s compulsory, but let’s just test the reality. How many?
My dear watson, it’s not “how many Palestinians” it’s how many migrants, irrespective of race, nationality, skin colour. You know the answer is: far too many, already.
In fact, your comment displays the very.mindset i’ve just described. Thankyou!
Hundreds of thousands of incompatible Muslims. So we need to start deporting the ones we have not importing more. Palestinians must stay in Muslim majority countries. I know the UK will be one soon enough but let’s not try and accelerate the process.
Ironically I bet you love the blueberries those migrants pick, so instead of rotting on the ground, they can be served on your table. Even the US Chamber of Commerce has staunch reservations about Trump’s emigrant idiocy.
As thought experiments go, here’s one for you, Mr. Dakin.
Suppose a bunch of rioters burned your neighbourhood to the ground. Then some bright spark wanted to pack you off to another country, so your neighbourhood could be turned into a theme park and golf course. How would you feel about that?
I would want the rioters to be dealt with by the authorities, but when the authorities are the rioters and stop someone else from dealing with them as well and others naively support them then I would want to leave because it will go on forever and ever.
No it wouldn’t. A Palestinian state would stop it. As everyone on the world has said.
Not true. The Arabs would see it as weakness and start attacking Israel all over again. Remember this is about way more than land.
It is? Like what?
Well if I voted the cause of the rioters actions into power (Hamas) and understood that the bright spark and the rest of the world had had enough of us and our 7c Death Cult I might at least understand where they were coming from.
Fair enough. Here’s what I honestly think.
I’m living in a neighborhood that’s been taken over by a gang. Outsiders send money in, but it’s hijacked by the gang. A lot of the neighbours broadly support the gang, most are just scared. The gang has taken over the schools too, and my kids are coming home talking about the glory of dying for the gang, and full of hatred.
I’d already want to leave.
Even before said gang went on an ill-advised hate-filled assault which brought down such retribution on the whole neighborhood that my house is a ruin, and likely to remain so, and there’s no water, no electricity, and as before, the food and money that’s being sent by well-meaning outsiders is being once more grabbed by the gang.
At this point, there is nothing, no reason whatsoever for me to want to stay, or to want my children to stay. My neighborhood is rubble, it’s my ‘home’ only inasmuch as it’s the same map coordinates as my home used to be.
I would jump at the chance to go get a job, live in safety, save some money and maybe, if those map coordinates ever do become liveable again, the kind of place they build hotels, golf courses, swimming pools, cinemas, other enjoyable or even luxurious things, then maybe I can go back and retire there.
Either way, I would remain forever grateful to the bright spark, and providence in general, that got me out of there, and no doubt my children would thank me too.
The un are busy setting up another martyr doom genocide.
Hey, everyone gets paid.
It’s the perfect big government gig.
I think Trump generally thinks out loud, makes an absurdly aspirational proposition and then achieves like 10-25% of it.
Better than going backwards. He’s so progressive!!
One problem is that the Palestinians in Gaza have no place to go. No one is going to take them in. No one is going to build them safe, beautiful homes in thriving communities. If they leave they have lost what little they had.
Yeah Carlos, you sound like Europeans talking about the Jews early let century. Poor Jews, no one wants to take them. I know, why not create a homeland for the Palestinians!!
What?
Martin, Why recreate what they already have had for centuries????
What about sending them all to Greenland?
It will soon be a US state with all the ‘goodies’ that entails.
Don’t they say “A change is as good as a rest”?
I think it is a great idea. Lots of space, no Jews. Dig in (pun intended) through the tundra land!
Quite. Trump’s suggestion neatly emphasises how all Israel’s neighbours see the Palestinians as trouble and want nothing to do with them. Making any objections they might have to whatever Bibi’s next move might be self-evidently self-serving.
Israel’s existence shows that the Europeans saw the Jews as nothing but trouble and wanted nothing to do with them after the war
That’s right. Freud would understand Israel’s actions very well.
You seem to have not read the paragraphs outlining why the majority of Palestinians can’t relocate to other adjacent Arab nations whether they’d like to or not. Imagining a fairytale and claiming it as grand strategy is infantile.
That does not mean there is an easy alternative. The Palestinian Leadership have 3 times in 60 years rejected deals that gave them a significant proportion of the land they covet. Each time though the proportion offered was reduced, in part through their own failure to grasp peace and accept they could not have it all. Whether one can blame all the people or just the leadership for these historic missed opportunities a separate debate, but IMO this point is not made often enough by western supporters of the 2 State solution.
Nonetheless to believe the solution is mass ethnic cleansing and then we all live happy ever after is for the simpletons. Perhaps though more could be done to broker a deal with likes of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi, managing Gaza as a Protectorate guaranteeing security for Israel and some form of civil society for Palestinians without Hamas. The difficultly here is the Turkey-Egypt tension where Hamas have been part used by Erdogan too as he has more sympathy with the Brotherhood than Sisi. But nonetheless somewhere here perhaps a deal the US could help broker…if it had someone with real ability and awareness in the White House.
To you point “to believe the solution is mass ethnic cleansing ……is for the simpletons”:
I would only observe most countries that we view as stable democracies were formed precisely by this ethnic cleansing. It’s the only system thats proved to work -hopeever much people throw their hands up in horror. E.G post WWII, countless millions were forcibly migrated all over Europe/Middle East/Asia. Churchill negotiated much of the transfers and noted that to have a significant ethric minority in any country would make it unstable – hence why ethric Ukraines were expelled from Poland, et c
Also the separation of India and Pakistan
Say China bombs England. You return to Coventry or wherever. Many buildings left, albeit ruined. Someone says to you, wouldn’t you rather live away from all this dastardly rubble old chap? Yr ancestors all lived on their land, or nearby. What say you?
Yup – we could split up and go to Denmark, Germany, Italy, Normandy, France etc, because that’s where our ancestors came from so we have a god-given right to do so!
Martin, Did I miss something or didn’t this already play out in recent history
Trump’s vision should inspire people in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East to think of how a transformation from war-ravaged hell-hole to prosperous vacation spot could be accomplished. It shouldn’t be an American territory, but it could be a territory of Egypt under the auspices of a pan-Arab governing body. Imagine Saudi, UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco getting together to help the Gazans by offering them a choice of moving to one of those places or participating in the construction of Club Gaza. And then funding the reconstruction, ensuring jobs and futures for the people who remain.
I shudder at how easily westerners refer to those in the Middle east as nothing more than chess pieces that they can move about at whim. The historical reality is uncontestable: Israel exists because the West wanted nothing to do with Jews fleeing Hitler in WW2 and, after the war ended and the Holocaust was revealed in all its horror, the British came up with a clever plan to assauge their guilt and ‘deal’ with the problem – let’s ‘give’ them Palestine and completely and conveniently forget that it is already inhabited. (As an Australian I am more than familiar with the Brits foisting those it does not want on populations far out of sight, and claiming that the original inhabitants had no claim to their homeland, or indeed, even existed).
It amazes me that so many who will argue against immigration on the grounds of maintaining cultural integrity (generally of white westerners) again see no problem with it when it comes down to brown or black people and their culture. Pack their bags for them and send them off to somewhere else. Who wouldn’t want that?
We should all know of course that Trump’s ‘Riviera’ is all the more disgusting as before the latest destruction of Gaza, it was indeed akin to a Riviera of the middle east. He speaks as if it was some sort of Third world shanty town that never had any value or sophistication, much as the world viewed Iraq and Iran before the disaster of western ‘intervention’ . It was a beautiful and sophisticated place, as a google of Gaza before and after will attest
TBF it WAS an Egyptian territory. How’d that work out?
This is of course how Trump operates, moving the Overton window on any issue by throwing out apparently outrageous ideas which would previously have been unthinkable. Journalists and academics have still not understood this modus operandi, and so once they’ve finished throwing up their hands in horror the idea starts to become part of the acceptable discussion. Whether it eventually happens is irrelevant, the frozen consensus has been smashed and outside-the-box thinking becomes the norm.
You could ask that exact same question to those in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans and get the exact same answer. It is their home. I am wondering who vetted this comment. “Trump’s plan has at least the advantage of looking like good sense at the onset.” I am guessing more than 60 percent of Americans were shocked and mortified by this ragingly Trumpian solution to everything. Making money for Emperor Don. What is scripted on the back side of the rock you crawled out from to make you possibly think that?
You can’t understand what motivates the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank without understanding history. Many on the WB and almost all in Gaza, were ethnically cleaned from their homes in what is now “Green Line” Israel, (i.e. the pre 67 borders), during 47-48. What the Palestinians call the Nakba, (Literally catastrophe). These were villagers who had lived in these villages for generations. Many fled for their lives in the wake of the massacre at Deir Yassin, those who tried to stay were often expelled. (See the story of Elias Chacour, Melkite Archbishop, who along with his brothers and father were rounded up and escorted across the border by the IDF in 48-49). These people were not allowed to return after the ceasefire in 48. (A major reason why the proto-IDF assasinated Count Bernadotte in 48 as he was pushing for the “Right of Return”). At any rate, most of those in Gaza have been living in exile from their native villages for the last 75 years. The have no intention of being removed a second time.
Why not let the Gazanians vote to decide if they would like US investment to redevelop their region? They are free to decline.
It wouldn’t be their region though would it, because Trumps plan involves forcibly removing them and annexing the territory, presumably to give to the Israelis
That’s for them to decide.
What are the options? Another martyrdom operation on their children?
How many more will you sign off on?
As I said, Trunps plan isn’t a choice. It involves forcibly removing them, which means they don’t get to decide
Like always he probably wants to negotiate. And in negotiations you don’t start where you want to end up.
Unless you’re Obama with healthcare…
Why should Palestinians have a choice? The only moral course of action, the only way this century-old war to exterminate the Jewish homeland will be brought to an end in a just way, is to say to the Palestinian Arabs that it’s all over. Things can’t go back to a status quo. They will never get a state; they don’t deserve a state; they proved to us they never wanted a state, other than as a springboard to destroy Israel. If they are defeated, they don’t get to choose.
It is never a good idea to lose a war. It is even worse to lose two wars, and it is a disaster to lose as many wars as the Arabs.
At some point this will have consequences. Ask the losers of world history (Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Turks, Finns, Poles, Italians, Japanese, Serbs, etc). The Gazans are finding that out now.
Any plan that doesn’t curtail Israel’s aspirations to control the whole Palestinian region is a sham. That is why the two state solution has never gotten up…Israel repeatedly breached resolutions about Palestinian territory and the world sat it on its hands and let it happen.