Norris R. McDonald | The real estate of genocide: gas, greed and Trump’s Gaza plan

Wars are not inevitable. Neither is the systematic starvation of working-class people, the destruction of sovereign nations, or mass displacement. These are not tragic accidents of history; they are deliberate political decisions made in corporate boardrooms and government ministries.

Today, we are confronted by a profoundly uncomfortable reality: the Western political order is experiencing a terminal crisis of moral legitimacy. Lofty, foundational principles such as “universal human rights” and a “free press” are colliding directly with Washington’s and Europe’s sustained support for the systemic deprivation of human dignity in Gaza, Venezuela, and across the Global South.

Enter “god-king” Trump

The confrontation between Donald Trump and the American media establishment is symptomatic of a deeper rot within Western liberal democracy and international capitalism.

When Trump banned major news organisations such as CNN and NBC from press briefings, mainstream pundits rightly decried it as a dangerous assault on a free press. Yet, those same US media networks remained obediently silent, or served as active cheerleaders, on the issue of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and during decades of lawless military interventions across Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Venezuela, and Cuba.

Historically, Western media outlets have colluded with state power. They have functioned collectively to cover up and defend US government crimes while systematically marginalising, drowning out, and silencing domestic dissidents and anti-imperialist voices from the Global South.

Gaza and the Collapse of the Western Moral Mask

It is on the issue of Gaza that the mass media and Western political leaders have completely surrendered their political and moral legitimacy. They have either stood by in complicit silence or actively justified the wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure under the guise of “Israel’s right to defend itself”.

Meanwhile, more than 77,000 Palestinians are reported dead, and thousands more remain missing, buried beneath millions of tons of pulverised rubble. More than 1,700 healthcare workers have been killed by the Israeli military. Nearly every university and major hospital has been razed, and at least 270 journalists have been killed, all without condemnation or sanctions from Western capitals.

Furthermore, more than 90 per cent of educational facilities have been systematically demolished. This represents the deliberate erasure of an entire society, its cultural memory, and its core public institutions. Beyond the immediate slaughter and forced displacement, two million people in Gaza face deliberate starvation, severe restrictions on food aid, and the systematic destruction of their water sources.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, explicitly captured this crisis in her October 2025 report, Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime, stating:

“The ongoing genocide in Gaza is a collective crime, sustained by the complicity of influential third states that have enabled longstanding systemic violations of international law by Israel.”

Israel’s relentless bombardment of a captive population and its indiscriminate killings have exposed the complete moral bankruptcy of the so-called “rules-based international order”.

All of this is apparently trivial to Western leaders. They readily lecture the world about human rights when targeting nations such as Russia, Cuba, and China, yet unashamedly provide unconditional military and diplomatic cover for Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Blood, Gas, Real Estate, and Disaster Capitalism

Crass profit motives are hidden just beneath the surface of this tragedy. While Benjamin Netanyahu asserts that Israel will never allow an independent Palestinian state, a deeper look reveals immense financial incentives driving this geopolitical landscape.

The waters off the Mediterranean coastline hold vast mineral wealth. US marine geological surveys conclude that up to 122 trillion cubic feet of offshore natural gas lie within these maritime zones.

The historic Oslo Accords originally granted maritime jurisdiction and mineral rights to the Palestinian Authority up to 22 nautical miles from the Gaza shore, encompassing gas- and oil-rich blocks.

This territorial zone holds an estimated 1.4 trillion cubic metres of gas intended for a future independent Palestinian state.

Under UN-sponsored profit-sharing frameworks, Gaza’s maritime energy resources were projected to generate roughly US$525 billion for the Palestinian National Authority.

Instead, Israel has bypassed these frameworks and granted lucrative drilling concessions to multinational energy corporations, including Chevron, BP, and ENI, in maritime areas explicitly designated for Palestine.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has publicly spoken of transforming Gaza into the “French Riviera of the Middle East”. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, chillingly described Gaza as prime “waterfront property”, suggesting that the two million Palestinians uprooted by military operations be permanently relocated to arid encampments in Israel’s Negev Desert.

This horrifying vision echoes South Africa’s apartheid-era Bantustans. Furthermore, it represents the quintessential playbook of disaster capitalism, in which corporate elites treat atrocities as monetisation strategies and real estate opportunities.

Historical Memory and Gaza’s Suffering

My dear friends, historical memory must serve as our moral guide in understanding both the inhumane suffering of Palestinians and the calculations of their Western backers. Modern atrocities echo a deeply entrenched historical lineage:

Belgium’s King Leopold ruled as the butcher of millions of Africans in the Congo;

France slaughtered more than one million Algerians during their liberation struggle;

Germany butchered the Herero and Nama peoples in Namibia in the first genocide of the 20th century;

Britain starved three million Indians during the 1943 Bengal famine while also perpetrating brutal massacres across Africa and the Caribbean; and

The voices of Native Americans, systematically decimated by the United States, still cry out from their graves for justice.

Given this bloody history, Western nations should have been the first to halt the atrocities in Gaza. But the lure of oil, gas, and real estate profits remains far stronger than the stench of bodies mourned by grieving Palestinian women and by maimed, starving children.

Today, Trump’s predatory plunder doctrine, “to the victor belong the spoils”, is the exact lens through which the West views Gaza.

Yet, across the globe, people are demanding an end to the occupation of Palestine. Even within Israel, Jewish dissidents are being beaten and dragged through the streets by their own police as they stand up in the name of truth and justice.

They join millions of people worldwide who are demanding an immediate end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

That is the bitta truth.

Norris R. McDonald is an author, economic journalist, political analyst, and respiratory therapist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com or miaminorris@yahoo.com.