During his recent visit to the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu gave President Donald Trump a rather bizarre gift: a pair of pagers. One of the pagers was reportedly gold, while the other was a normal one. The gift appears to have been a reference to the recent Israeli operation that used pagers and walkie-talkies rigged with explosives that Israel claimed were targeted at operatives of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.
The “pager attack” killed 42 people, including two children and two healthcare workers, while wounding another 2,800 people. The attacks targeted public areas, including cars, streets, and supermarkets, and many of the wounded suffered eye, hand, and brain injuries. Many survivors needed surgery, and some victims went blind or had to have their limbs amputated. One of the attacks killed an 11-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl, along with a nurse. At a funeral for some victims, another electronic device attack was carried out by Israel, wounding more people. It’s unknown how many Hezbollah operatives the attack actually killed.
“That was a great operation,” Trump reportedly told Netanyahu, after being given the morbid gift.
Netanyahu was in Washington this week to congratulate Trump on his electoral victory, and to discuss upcoming collaborations between the U.S. and Israel on how they might carve up the Middle East to ostensibly mutual advantage. The first foreign leader to be granted a meeting with the president, Netanyahu said that he looked forward to working with Trump to “redraw” the region “for the better.” During a press conference featuring the two of them, Trump gave more specifics on what that actually meant, announcing that the U.S. would “take over” Gaza and forcibly “relocate” the native population. “We’ll own it … We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal … the Riviera of the Middle East,” Trump said, during the press conference.
What does Trump want to do with Gaza? It would appear that his top priority is, predictably, to build a bunch of hotels on it. The Telegraph recently reported on the ambitions to convert Gaza into a series of luxury real estate developments, noting previous comments made by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
The effort to remake Gaza is being led by Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate developer and friend of Trump’s, who will serve as a special envoy to the Middle East. Assisting will be Trump’s ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who is an evangelical and the former governor of Arkansas. (There has long been an alliance between the zionist movement and evangelical Christians, who believe that Israel is the holy land and an important component in ushering in the apocalypse.) During a recent interview with Fox, Witkoff justified the forced removal of Palestinians from Gaza thusly: “Peace in the region means a better life for the Palestinians. A better life is not necessarily tied to the physical space that you are in today,” he said. “A better life is about better opportunity, better financial conditions, better aspirations for you and your family. That doesn’t occur because you get to pitch a tent in the Gaza Strip.”
Prior to Netanyahu’s meeting with Trump, the Israeli prime minister and his son, Yair, actually met with the person that some onlookers have dubbed America’s “real president”—Elon Musk. “So grateful to spend time with these two geniuses,” Yair posted to Instagram, appending a picture of the three of them together. Through his DOGE initiative, Musk is currently leading an effort to investigate government spending and “waste,” though it doesn’t appear that he’s ever looked at federal spending on Israel, which typically involves at least $3 billion a year but which, in the twelve-month period after the October 7th attack, reportedly skyrocketed to over $22 billion.
Netanyahu’s visit and Trump’s “Riviera” comment have drawn the ire of commentators on both sides of the political aisle, some of whom seem to feel that Israel has effectively hijacked U.S. foreign policy. Cenk Uygur, of the Young Turks, recently tweeted: “Netanyahu is playing with fire. He humiliated America today. He made Trump look like his servant. Mainstream media can spin it all they like, but the American people are waking up to the fact that no matter which party wins, Israel stays in charge.” Meanwhile, over in rightwing land, influencer Candace Owens retweeted another rightwing account, saying: “You’re just missing the part where we say Gaza is America so American sons and daughters are willing to sign up and die for Israel’s expansion.”