Good morning. Donald Trump presented his proposal as one rooted in a concern for the safety of Palestinians: it was time to find many of the residents of Gaza somewhere else to live. “I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” he said. “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say: ‘You know, it’s over.’”
That was more than stream of consciousness: Trump doubled down on his comments on Monday. But the idea of “cleaning out” Gaza is not welcomed by the Palestinians who live there – or the countries that Trump has in mind as their new home. And if they were to be forced to leave after Gaza was devastated by the Israeli military, it would appear to be a clear case of ethnic cleansing.
In recent weeks, the ceasefire in Gaza has been seen as one positive outcome from Trump’s arrival in the White House. But his intervention has served as a reminder of the serious risk that the first phase will be followed not by further steps towards lasting peace, but by a renewed Israeli assault with the approval of Washington. Yesterday, Trump invited Netanyahu to be the first world leader to visit the White House since his inauguration.
Today’s newsletter, with the Guardian’s senior international reporter Peter Beaumont, is about why Trump’s comments have alarmed many in the Middle East and what they might tell us about what comes next. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
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Kumbh Mela festival | Dozens of people are feared to have died in crowd crushes at India’s Kumbh Mela festival, local officials have said, as vast crowds went to bathe at one of the holiest sites of the Hindu gathering. People were crushed in the early hours of Wednesday as tens of millions flocked to immerse themselves in the sacred confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.
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UK economy | Rachel Reeves is unveiling plans to create “Europe’s Silicon Valley” between Oxford and Cambridge as she stakes the government’s success on kickstarting economic growth. The chancellor will announce a blueprint to improve infrastructure across the region in the hope of adding £78bn to the UK economy within a decade.
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Extremism | Yvette Cooper will reject internal Home Office advice to widen the definition of extremism to include violent misogyny and conspiracy theorists, the Guardian understands. The home secretary is expected to reject a report saying that authorities should adopt an “ideologically agnostic” approach in favour of focusing on Islamist and far-right violence.
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Tax | Roman Abramovich, the billionaire Russian oligarch, may owe British tax authorities as much as £1bn, according to analysis of documents that suggests his companies failed to pay tax on profits made through an elaborate offshore investment scheme.
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Technology | US tech stocks tentatively recovered on Tuesday after the emergence of the Chinese DeepSeek app wiped $1tn (£800bn) in value from the leading US tech index. Nvidia recovered somewhat from Monday’s 17% drop, rising 9%.
In depth: ‘It would clearly be ethnic cleansing – it’s cynical to present it as a humanitarian solution’
After Donald Trump’s remarks on “cleaning out” Gaza, Palestinians who live there voted with their feet. Hundreds of thousands of people made the journey back to the north of the territory on Monday after Israel opened military checkpoints as part of the ceasefire deal.
That mass movement of people is all the more extraordinary when so many buildings in the north lie in ruins. As one resident, 50-year-old Osama, told the Associated Press: “Whether the ceasefire succeeds or not, we will never leave Gaza City and the north again.”
That kind of flat refusal of the idea is one of the reasons that Trump’s comments have alarmed so many people. But it is not the only one.
Does Trump’s proposal amount to ethnic cleansing?
In a word, yes. The United Nations defines ethnic cleansing as the deliberate policy of clearing out civilians from their lands “by use of force or intimidation”. If the residents of Gaza voluntarily left the territory without any threat of violence, that would not amount to ethnic cleansing. But the context of the assault on Gaza, and the fact that most people want to rebuild their lives there, is a long way from that scenario.
“It would clearly be ethnic cleansing,” Peter Beaumont said. “And it is entirely cynical to present it as a humanitarian solution when so many of the levers that could change the circumstances of civilians in Gaza are in Israel’s hands.”
Crucial to understanding why the idea is so horrifying for many Palestinians is the history of what they call the Nakba, or catastrophe, when Israeli forces expelled up to 750,000 people – the exact figures are disputed – from Arab towns and villages in the newly created state of Israel in 1948. The war since the 7 October attacks is viewed by many Palestinians as a new Nakba.
But that is not the only precedent that they will have in mind. “The history for decades has been that when Palestinian populations have been moved since 1948, they don’t get to come back,” Peter said. By the end of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, for example, hundreds of thousands had been displaced from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, mostly to Jordan.
Egypt and Jordan have rejected Trump’s idea that they could take in Palestinians forced to leave Gaza. “Public opinion tends to be much more pro-Palestinian rights than either King Abdullah’s regime in Jordan or that of Sisi in Egypt,” Peter said. “So it is politically hugely problematic for them.”
Who in Israel shares Trump’s view?
The idea that Palestinians should be “transferred” to other countries, or into the Gaza Strip from Israel, has “floated around in Israel for decades” across the political spectrum, Peter said. But in the current crisis, the idea that Palestinians should be forced out of Gaza has been coupled with proposals for new Israeli settlements in Gaza. “That combination has definitely emanated from the far right.”
It has been pushed by Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the ultra-nationalist members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government whose votes are crucial to its survival: in October, both spoke at an event supporting the idea. Smotrich said that “without settlements, there is no security”.
Some advocates of moving Palestinians out of Gaza have explicitly called on Trump to support their cause. Eugene Kontorovich, head of the international law department at the Kohelet Policy Forum, a conservative Israeli thinktank, wrote after Trump won the election that the Biden administration was guilty of “keeping [Palestinians in Gaza] trapped in Gaza” and that “now Trump can flip the script”.
He also criticised sanctions against “Jews living in Judea and Samaria”, a reference to settlers and would-be settlers in Gaza and the West Bank. On his first day in office, Trump rescinded those sanctions. During his first term, the US reversed decades of policy and said that it did not consider settlements illegal under international law.
Who are the voices influencing Trump on Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank?
Many people in Trump’s orbit appear to be sympathetic to the views of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. Last year, Jared Kushner – Trump’s son-in-law and former senior foreign policy adviser – said Israel should “move the people out [of Gaza] and then clean it up”, in part because “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable”.
Trump’s pick to be the US ambassador to the United Nations, Elise Stefanik, said recently that she agreed with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich that Israel has “a biblical right to the entire West Bank”.
And his pick as ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, told CNN in 2017: “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighbourhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”
What does all this mean for the prospects of lasting peace?
It is foolhardy to make predictions about what happens next in the Middle East – but the far right’s refusal to back down suggests they believe that Trump will support their cause as the first phase of the ceasefire ends. In this opinion piece, Ben Reiff of +972 magazine notes that sources present in discussions between Smotrich and Netanyahu expect the fighting to resume. Trump has said he is “not confident” that the ceasefire will hold.
“Perhaps the war carries on in some low-level way,” Peter said. “When you look at Syria, where Israel now has an open-ended occupation in the buffer zone, or Lebanon, where there has been backsliding on an Israeli withdrawal – the notion that we should expect Netanyahu to bring the war to a complete end seems unrealistic.”
The consequences of an emboldened far right would not be limited to Gaza. Last week, a new Israeli crackdown began in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, causing hundreds to flee. The Palestinian health ministry said at least 10 people had been killed; Israel said it had killed eight militants. The Israel Defense Forces presented the operation as an attempt to prevent militants regrouping and attacking Israeli civilians; NGOs and the UN accused Israel of using indiscriminate and disproportionate force.
Meanwhile, as Bethan McKernan and Sufian Taha report in this piece, at least six Palestinian villages in the West Bank have been targeted by violent settler attacks.
Some have viewed the increase in activity in the West Bank as part of the price exacted by the far right for not bringing down the government over the ceasefire deal. “The big bet from Ben-Gvir and Smotrich is to make a lot of noise about a lot of issues – but it’s the US allowing Israel to annex the West Bank that they really want,” Peter said. “The question is: if Netanyahu survives all of his legal travails and wins re-election, how far will he go to keep the far right on side?”
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What does Trump really want to happen in Gaza?
There is an apparent contradiction in Trump’s policy goals in the Middle East: on the one hand, advocacy of removing Palestinians from Gaza; on the other hand, the aim of a normalisation deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
“He has approved the reshipment of 2000lb bombs to Israel,” Peter said. “But he is ultimately much more interested in relations with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states than he is in the fate of Gaza, and they would not accept the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians there.
“The mistake to be careful of is to join all of this up into some sort of master plan. His statements about Gaza and the idea of a deal with Saudi Arabia are not consistent, but perhaps this is someone who echoes pieces of the ideas of whoever he’s been talking to. It doesn’t look like a game of three-dimensional chess. It just looks like two entirely contradictory ambitions.”
What else we’ve been reading
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After the terrible news that dozens are feared dead in crowd crushes at India’s Kumbh Mela festival, Michael Safi’s piece from the 2019 edition gives a sense of how unimaginably vast an event it is. That year, around 220m people attended the festival over 45 days to bathe at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers; this year, the number is expected to be more than 400m. Archie
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There are 12 million millennial carers in the US looking after relatives. Andrew Rahal, 33, is one of them. He cares full-time for his grandmother Elo, who has vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s. Photographer Isadora Kosofsky, who spent four years documenting their relationship, provides a poignant glimpse into their lives. Nimo
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One idea that has gained currency after Donald Trump’s election win is that we now live in an age in which attention is a more significant political currency than money. In this extract from his new book, the US journalist Chris Hayes anatomises “a collective civic mental life that permanently teeters on the edge of madness”. Archie
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The US market panic over artificial intelligence companies after the emergence of the Chinese DeepSeek app has important lessons about the technology’s future, writes James Vincent – but also about western neuroses about AI: the mood surrounding the technology, he says, is “febrile, unpredictable and overly reactive”. Archie
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Residents of Dhayra, a village on the Lebanese-Israeli border, are finally returning home as Israeli soldiers withdraw. Not a single building is left standing. William Christou reports, speaking with locals as they grapple with the immense task of rebuilding their homes and lives while mourning loved ones. Nimo
Sport
Cricket | Adil Rashid (above) was instrumental as India failed to chase down 172 to give England hope in their T20 series. Rashid conceded just 15 runs in his four overs as India finished 26 runs short of England’s 171-9.
Football | Ruben Amorim’s relationship with Marcus Rashford has broken down to the extent that Manchester United’s head coach only speaks to the player when addressing the squad. Rashford, who last played for United in mid-December, could still leave on loan before the transfer window shuts on Monday.
Rugby | Steve Borthwick has said he is taking a selection gamble with his surprise decision to pair Tom and Ben Curry in the same back row to face Ireland. The Currys will make history as the first twin brothers to represent England as Borthwick begins a Six Nations campaign that promises to make or break his tenure as head coach.
The front pages
“Reeves pledges to create ‘Europe’s Silicon Valley’ in push for growth” says the Guardian, while the Telegraph has “Reeves: I will fight for growth” and the i goes with “Electric vehicle charging boost – as Reeves drives for UK growth”. “PM invokes Thatcher in promise to cut red tape” is the line taken by the Times. The Daily Mail gives no credit, telling Reeves to “Tear down barriers to growth YOU created”. “Go Wynne go Wynne gone” – Wynne Evans departs the Strictly live tour on the front of the Mirror. “King said ‘non’ to Agincourt” – Charles didn’t want a new submarine’s name to upset the French, according to the Express. “Abramovich, superyachts and a tax avoiding scandal” is the top story in the Metro, following up on an investigation by the Guardian and partners. In the Financial Times it’s “Trump freeze on hundreds of billions in federal grants and loans stirs alarm”.
Today in Focus
Rachel Reeves’s plans for the UK: all growth, no green?
The chancellor is keen to strike a more business-friendly note, but will it come at a cost to the environment? Heather Stewart reports
Cartoon of the day | Martin Rowson
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
For more than four decades, the Lazraq family in Morocco has built one of Africa’s most significant collections of contemporary art. Much of this private collection, spanning 2,500 works, has remained unseen – until now. From February, the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (Macaal) in Marrakech will unveil its newly revamped space, featuring seven galleries dedicated to the permanent collection and an eighth for solo exhibitions.
The inaugural exhibition, Seven Contours, One Collection, aims to challenge stereotypes about African art, showcasing a rich diversity of mediums, from photography and sculpture to textiles and installations. Highlights include works by Moroccan and African artists such as Farid Belkahia, Malick Sidibé and Billie Zangewa. Macaal’s mission extends beyond exhibitions, offering cultural boot camps designed to inspire and democratise access to African art and reaching out to local communities. “Our goal is to make art accessible and spark creativity, especially among the youth,” says Othman Lazraq, the president of the museum.
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.
