JD Vance skirts question about whether Israel informed Trump of Gaza City plans
US Vice President JD Vance has been asked whether President Donald Trump was informed in advance of Israel’s plans to fully take over Gaza City.
“I’m not going to speak to private conversations between the Israeli government and our government,” Vance answered, adding that he expected Trump to address Israel’s announcement.
“But our goals are very clear,” the US vice president told reporters during a meeting with his British counterpart, David Lammy.
“We want to make it so that Hamas can’t attack innocent people. We want to solve the humanitarian problems in Gaza. We’re working incredibly hard, the president and the entire team, to make sure that happens.”
Vance also said that the US will not be recognising a Palestinian state, a move some of its major allies, including the UK, have announced plans to make.
The US has provided Israel with unwavering support since it launched its war on Gaza in October 2023, funnelling billions of dollars to the Israeli military and blocking efforts at the UN and other international arenas to end the conflict.
Experts say Israel would not be able to move forward with its plan to take total military control of Gaza without that backing from Washington.
Trump also previously said he wants the US to “take over” Gaza and turn the enclave into the “Riviera of the Middle East” – a proposal that was firmly rejected by Palestinians and widely condemned as amounting to ethnic cleansing.
No timeline for Israel’s military takeover plans
We don’t have an exact timeline, but we do know several stages that need to happen. As things stand, Israel says that it’s preparing for a ground incursion, and there is troop movement along Israel’s southern border with Gaza.
That could indicate that this renewed ground incursion could happen … but you need to evacuate the civilians from Gaza City. Up to 900,000 Palestinians are there. That is going to take weeks, and according to Israeli media, the prime minister would like that to be done by October 7, 2025, as a symbolic date for Israel. It’s only after that, that the occupation of Gaza City can start.
There’s also the humanitarian issue at the same time. The US is looking to increase the food distribution centres of the notorious GHF from four to 16. That also needs to happen before you move 900,000 people in an area that is devastated and where hunger and starvation is very, very real and is costing lives on a daily basis.
Now for the final [Israeli goal], which is imposing Israel’s security control over the Gaza Strip, military experts say that could take years.
Netanyahu’s goal is ‘annihilation of the Palestinian people’
Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, says the Israeli prime minister aims to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip and kill all the Palestinians who live there.
“In reality, the goal of this war has been the same since the very first day: it is the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population of Gaza, the whole population,” Barghouti told Al Jazeera from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
He said Israel’s push to forcibly displace Palestinians will not end in Gaza City, but rather, all Palestinians will be pushed to a concentration camp in the south of the enclave before being forced out of the Strip entirely.
“In reality, what I have to say [and] what many Western leaders don’t want to listen to, is that this is the beginning of a terrible second Holocaust – caused by the same people whose ancestors suffered from another Holocaust in the second world war,” Barghouti said.
He added that Netanyahu “would not have dared” to go this far in his plans for Gaza without the unwavering support of the United States.
“His goal is the annihilation of the Palestinian people. His goal is a Second Nakba,” said Barghouti, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine when Israel was created in 1948, which saw about 750,000 Palestinians forced out of their homes and communities.
“Now he wants to push them out of Palestine completely. That’s the reality: They’re trying to repeat what they have done in 1948.”
An Israeli flag stands in Gaza, as seen from Israel on August 7
