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    The Guardian view on devastation in Gaza: the world wants to move on, but Palestinians can’t | Editorial

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    The declaration of a ceasefire in Gaza in October brought initial relief to its inhabitants. Yet officials there said Israeli strikes killed 33 people, including 12 children, on Wednesday; Israel said its troops had come under fire. Another five Palestinians were killed on Thursday. Hundreds have died since the ceasefire was declared. Even if the shelling stops, the destruction of Palestinian life will carry on as Israel continues to throttle aid, and the consequences of two years of war unfold. The World Health Organization warned last month that the health catastrophe would last for generations.Food remains in short supply. While displaced families shiver in flooded makeshift shelters, with many facing a third winter of homelessness, aid organisations say they cannot deliver stockpiles of tents and tarpaulins. Israel, which denies blocking aid, has designated tent poles as “dual-use” items that could potentially be used for a military purpose. Save the Children reports children sleeping on bare ground in sewage-soaked clothing.The Guardian last week revealed US plans for the long-term division of Gaza into a “green zone” under Israeli and international control, to be redeveloped, and a “red zone” left in ruins; a US official described reunion of the strip as “aspirational”. This vision – with international troops essentially propping up Israeli occupation, and Palestinians drawn to those areas to escape squalor and chaos elsewhere – echoes disastrous US policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.This is the grim underpinning of the UN security council resolution this week, endorsing Donald Trump’s peace proposals. The “board of peace” looks like a colonial authority overseen by Mr Trump, and perhaps anchored by Tony Blair. Palestinian technocrats, somehow both domestically credible and acceptable to the US and Israel – a notable feat – would work beneath it. All this would be possible thanks to an international stabilisation force that the US hopes to see deployed by January. That would be a stretch even if countries prove truly willing to commit troops.The resolution improved on a draft text and won backing from the Arab world – and angry rejection from the Israeli right – by including references to a Palestinian state and Israeli withdrawal. Yet those references are couched in the vaguest terms, as an unguaranteed reward for sufficiently good behaviour, rather than as a recognition of inalienable Palestinian rights. If all goes according to plan, “conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”. Israeli withdrawal would be based on standards and timeframes agreed by the military itself as well as the US and others. Countries have backed not what this text does mean but what it might conceivably mean or become.Some believe that this is the best that can be salvaged from current circumstances, given Mr Trump’s presidency; others hope that it is just possible that this unpromising start could allow something better to be forged. But it is hard not to conclude that for some governments, this is more about conscience-salving and reputation-laundering than the best interests of Palestinians. Germany has already announced that it will resume weapons exports to Israel. For Palestinians, “what looked like a forever war may be metamorphizing into forever misery”, the political scientist Nathan  Brown has warned. Countries that were complicit in a genocidal war have all the more duty to demand better. More

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      White nationalist Nick Fuentes is exposing a civil war among US Republicans: ‘We look like clowns’

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      View image in fullscreenFive days a week, thousands of fans gather online to watch Nick Fuentes hold court about the dangers of non-white immigration, feminism and “organized Jewry”. Usually dressed in a dark suit and tie, he lectures to his far-right followers, known as “Groypers”, about what he argues is the insufficient radicalism of Donald Trump’s Republican party and what he describes as the perfidies of the state of Israel and its American supporters.Fuentes’s fixation with Israel is not rooted in concern about the war in Gaza but a belief, in his telling, that Jews are responsible for most of society’s problems. Fuentes, who is 27 and lives in Illinois, has called Adolf Hitler “really fucking cool” and compared the Holocaust to the baking of cookies.Despite that – and despite having said that the Republican vice-president, JD Vance, is a “race traitor” for marrying an Indian American woman – Fuentes has ascended in recent weeks from the influential but unacknowledged outer dark of the American right to a position within striking distance of the mainstream Republican party. He has been interviewed on several major platforms in rapid succession, culminating in a friendly, two-hour chat last month on Tucker Carlson’s popular online talkshow. He and Carlson discussed a variety of subjects, including their shared dislike of Christian Zionists. Fuentes also said, casually, that he was a fan of Joseph Stalin.The result of that interview has been a bitter and widening civil war within the American right that has exposed longstanding fissures – between conservatives and populists, Zionists and Israel skeptics, mainstream Maga right and far right – as well as revealed the extent to which a Republican party that has been flooded in recent years by extremists now seems unable to contain them, or even agree if it should. A power struggle already under way inside many rightwing organizations, people familiar told me, has now spilled into the open.After Carlson interviewed Fuentes, some Republican politicians, including the senators Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz, condemned his decision to do so. Pressure also built on the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank with personal and commercial ties to Carlson, to distance itself from him. Instead, the foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, issued a video statement which noted that while antisemitism “should be condemned”, “conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class”. A “venomous coalition”, he said, was trying to “cancel” Carlson.This delighted Fuentes. The Heritage Foundation was “the brain of the conservative movement”, he correctly told his viewers on a recent evening, whose policy ideas and talking points are “sort of like gospel for [Republicans] in the US Congress. It’s a big deal.” Staff from the Heritage Foundation often go on to work for Republican legislators and draft federal law; Groyperism, he argued, was now “inside the institutions”.View image in fullscreenRoberts soon backtracked. He issued a second statement more explicitly condemning Fuentes. He has also apologized for using the terms “venomous coalition” and “globalist class”, saying he did not realize their antisemitic connotations.But a civil war broke out at the organization, in the form of information leaks, anguished meetings, and fighting on social media. Many current or former employees expressed horror at Roberts’s seeming initial reluctance to distance Heritage from the far right. “I gave my soul to that place …” someone told me, choking up. (Like some others I spoke to, this person asked for anonymity to speak freely and to avoid drawing online harassment.)Not everyone sees it that way, however. Under the slogan “No enemies to the right”, some populists have fiercely defended Carlson, or argued that the controversy is being exploited by “BoomerCons”, “Reagan zombies” and “right liberals” trying to protect a dying conservative establishment from a new right populist tide.The turmoil has engulfed more and more of the right. Earlier this month, two board members of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), another influential conservative group, resigned; in a public letter, they alleged that a “cadre” hostile to liberal democracy – with an agenda different from, and more radical than, Trump’s – have “worked together, behind the scenes, to wrest control of conservative institutions from actual conservatives”, in the process infiltrating “white supremacy, antisemitism, eugenics, and bigotry”.They noted that ISI recently unveiled a new podcast whose first guest, Curtis Yarvin, has defended slavery, said that white people have inherently higher IQs than black people and called for the American republic to be replaced with a dictatorship. Conservatism, they argued, was in an “existential” crisis.Coming shortly after Politico revealed that a number of prominent young Maga activists had a racist and antisemitic group chat, and in the aftermath of a poor Republican election showing and rising Maga disappointment in Trump’s second term, this internecine battle has become a referendum on the future of the right – as well as a vivid illustration of how conservative institutions anxious to prove themselves radical enough for the age of Trump are now squeezed between a strident Maga mainstream and a naked far right.No one wants responsibility for creating the monster. Yet everyone I spoke to, when pressed, agreed on at least one thing: that the Fuentes-Carlson-Heritage scandal has exposed a deep schism in the right that will explode open when Trump departs the White House. So far, the person most pleased about that is Fuentes.If you are young, male and spend a lot of time online, you have probably encountered clips of Fuentes – somehow square-jawed and baby-faced simultaneously, and usually either grinning wolfishly or leaning at the viewer with a news anchor’s seriousness.Although Fuentes is banned from YouTube and other platforms for violating hate-speech policies, Elon Musk allowed him back on X last year on freedom-of-expression grounds. Since then, Fuentes’s posts and video clips seem to have become algorithmically turbocharged; on election night, 2024, he took to social media to deride pro-choice women: “Your body, my choice. Forever.” His post was viewed more than 90m times; some schools reported boys taunting female classmates with the phrase. (Fuentes could not be reached for comment.)In October, before it was removed, his podcast briefly became the highest-trending on Spotify, ahead of the podcasts of Joe Rogan, Amy Poehler and Carlson himself. In recent months, Fuentes has appeared on popular shows including Red Scare, the PBD Podcast and System Update with Glenn Greenwald.Fuentes grew up in a middle-class, mostly white, suburb of Chicago, in a Catholic family. Neither of his parents attended college. (His father is of Mexican American descent, hence his Hispanic surname.) He was a debating star in high school and the student body president. His parents – though not his twin sister – may partly share his racist views, according to Patch and Mother Jones.As a teenager, Fuentes adored talk radio, particularly Mark Levin, a rightwing and staunchly Zionist commentator known for his outraged tone and for arguing with callers. Fuentes listened to him “every day” in high school, he told Carlson: “I actually liked how he was kind of obnoxious and mean to his callers, vicious … I thought that was funny. But I’ll never forget one show … he says: ‘America is becoming a majority non-white country. Does anybody think that’s a good idea?’ And I was thinking to myself, yeah, that actually doesn’t sound so good.”When he arrived at Boston University, in 2016, he shocked liberal classmates by wearing a Maga hat and telling a video interviewer that he was voting for Trump. “People were threatening to find him and beat him up,” a student who led a libertarian group at BU at the time told me.The libertarian group decided to hold a public debate between Fuentes and a leftwing student, two days before the presidential election; 400 students turned up. Fuentes attacked multiculturalism, according to a campus newspaper, but denied he was racist. “It has nothing to do with race, everything to do with culture,” he said. “Asia has taken our culture and done well for themselves. The Middle East? Not so much.”View image in fullscreenDespite a hostile crowd, Fuentes was “articulate and confident, and had that air of somebody good at public speaking”, the libertarian-group leader recalled. Fuentes’s politics at that time seemed to be “standard Maga. I mean, there was nothing that Trump himself hadn’t said.”Impressed by his debate performance, some fellow young conservatives got Fuentes a slot on Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN), a startup that aspired to be unapologetically Maga at a time when Trump was still polarizing within the right. This would be a pattern: seeing Fuentes’s oratorical gifts, conservatives would elevate him, then regret it.Fuentes soon alienated his new friends by bucking the pro-Israel line standard at many conservative publications. He also exhibited more unsettling behavior. RSBN was forced to apologize when Fuentes, during an anti-Islam rant, called for the “globalists … that run CNN” to be “deported or hanged”. Soon after, a conservative social media account leaked a candid video in which Fuentes described interracial sex as “degenerate” and said that he was harmed in daily life by Jews.The leaker hoped to discredit Fuentes, but only half succeeded. Drummed out of the Maga mainstream, he embraced a new and potent audience. After he was seen in 2017 at the notorious Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, he dropped out of college and became a full-time white nationalist.Fuentes cultivated himself as a suited-and-tied pundit dedicated to the Maga-adjacent slogan “America first”. In 2021, he held the inaugural America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC) as a far-right response to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which he is barred from attending. He was also present at the 2021 riot at the US Capitol, though he did not enter the building.Fuentes also began embracing the rhetoric of Christian nationalism, casting himself as a traditionalist Catholic, decrying feminism and using crucifixes as props – although a rival white nationalist who lived with Fuentes for a time has said that he rarely attended mass and loved HBO shows such as Euphoria and The Sex Lives of College Girls. Fuentes has also argued that many women “want to be raped” and has claimed, perhaps facetiously, that “the only really straight heterosexual position is to be an asexual incel”.Around 2022, Fuentes became friendly with the rapper Kanye West, whose own views had grown antisemitic and conspiratorial. That relationship climaxed, that year, with Fuentes and West dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. (Trump later said he did not know who Fuentes was.) Trump’s agreement to meet them was widely criticized, but did not incite nearly the outrage on the right that Carlson’s interview has now.That is because Trump is “he-who-must-not-be-critiqued”, David French, the conservative New York Times columnist, told me. “We’ve seen this a lot in the second Trump term. People feel free to get angry at Pam Bondi over the Epstein files, or at Pete Hegseth, or at Robert F Kennedy Jr, but Trump is always left out of it.”Yet Fuentes’s mainstreaming is forcing open a bloody ideological divide that only Trump’s cult of personality has so far kept scabbed over. “This anger,” French said, “is a preview of the fractiousness we’re going to see when Trump is no longer the superhero of the new right.”Today, Fuentes’s main media outlet is his nightly live stream on Rumble, an online broadcasting platform. He is often hours late to his own show. While they wait for “Nicker”, fans with usernames such as “CruiseBasher”, “ShekelSnatcher” and “BadGoy74” argue with each other and trade racist jokes. Sometimes users spam the chat with false information that the evening’s program has been cancelled, leading others to wonder if they are spies of the Mossad.Once he’s on air, Fuentes’s show is much the same each night. He attacks the Maga right from the further right – forcing mainstream populists to either engage with him, thereby letting Groyperism into the tent, or refuse and be painted as centrist sellouts. The late Maga activist Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, was one of his biggest quarries; in 2019 Groypers began harassing Turning Point events and heckling Kirk for supporting Israel.“My job,” Fuentes said in 2021, “is to keep pushing things further … We’re going to get called racist, sexist, antisemitic, bigoted, whatever. When the party is where we are, two years later, we’re not going to get the credit.” But “that’s OK … We are the rightwing flank of the Republican party.”Part of Fuentes’s power is that he is also a free agent – an enfant terrible who can react to events in a way that others on the right cannot. He can criticize Trump (“tired”, with an administration that “is cooked”), or Vance (“a dork”), or mock Maga conspiracy theories that others are reluctant to acknowledge are silly. And he can attack what was until recently one of the right’s last true sacred cows: Israel.For years modern conservatism was defined by rules set down by its intellectual architect, William F Buckley. Starting in the second half of the 20th century, the right “fused” three seemingly unrelated tenets – social conservatism, foreign policy hawkishness and free-market libertarianism – into the united front of the Reagan revolution.That coalition endured for decades. It also came to adopt a reflexively pro-Israel stance, particularly as evangelical Protestants, some of whom believe that Christians are biblically required to support modern Israel, became a key Republican voting bloc. Rightwing Israelis also cultivated a close relationship with the American right because they believed that conservative evangelicals would prove more reliable Zionists than liberal Jewish Americans.In the eyes of many conservatives, Buckley’s equally important legacy was practicing “hygiene” by ejecting cranks and bigots from the movement. He exiled a number of writers – such as Peter Brimelow, Sam Francis, John Derbyshire and Joseph Sobran – for racist or fringe thinking, and in 1991, he accused the conservative writer and politician Pat Buchanan, who was known for fulminating against Israel and its US supporters in terms that seemed to single out Jews, of rhetoric “amount[ing] to antisemitism”.Buchanan was also a hardline immigration restrictionist, isolationist and advocate for tariffs to protect American workers – views that were out of step with the right of the 1990s, but which now look like an uncanny prediction of Maga populism.Today a critical mass of people at conservative organizations, including many younger staff, are more sympathetic to Buchanan’s vision than to Buckley’s or Reagan’s. Many view US institutions as irredeemably decadent and corrupt, and are less interested in “conserving” them than burning them to the ground. In some cases they are hostile not just to progressivism, but to liberal democracy itself.This turn has been more radical than many older conservatives “have been willing to admit to themselves, and a lot more radical than I think the American electorate really understands”, Laura K Field, a political theorist and the author of Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, told me. Her book charts how the ideas of a small group of reactionary intellectuals influenced the Trumpian right.In the process of this turn, she said, Buckley’s cordon sanitaire against the far right – which some skeptics say was overstated to begin with – ha “completely broken down”. Parts of the new right are eager to rehabilitate Buchanan and others expelled from conservatism decades ago, as well as mainstream newer figures such as Fuentes and Yarvin.At the same time, populist Maga views that were once controversial in the Republican party – on tariffs or immigration, for example – have become standard positions, meaning that firebrand pundits who like to frame themselves as radical outsiders (Carlson, Steve Bannon) are keen for new ways to differentiate themselves from the establishment.“There’s a constant yearning for something more and more radical,” Field said. “Rightwing support for Israel is almost like the last thing standing.”And cracks are showing in that support. The most radical and influential rightwing intellectuals today tend to be Catholic, not Protestant, without older evangelical Protestants’ historical investment in Israel. At the same time, younger evangelical Protestants increasingly regard Christian Zionism as a bizarre and embarrassingly dated tic of their boomer parents.Those demographic changes coincide with rising public anger, across the political spectrum, at the US’s role in a grinding foreign war that has killed thousands of civilians to no apparent end, and with the rise of a Christian nationalism that has replaced the earnest philosemitism of older Christian conservatives with a religious fervor that views Jews with polite distance or even suspicion.All of which contributed to the Heritage Foundation – caught between a historically pro-Israel, hawkish older right and a radical new one – walking right into disaster. Founded in 1973, the thinktank is a fundraising powerhouse with a staff of 400 and a budget of $100m. Among the major right-of-center thinktanks, it is known as the most political and perhaps least intellectual, and as a wobbly weather vane that has often, in recent years, seemed to be trying to “catch up” to Maga populism and prove a slavish loyalty to Trump.In 2023, the Heritage Foundation released Project 2025, a 900-page manifesto for the incoming second Trump administration that proposed, among other things, criminalizing pornography and loyalty-testing civil servants. Democrats successfully seized on the document as a talking point. Angry at the fallout, and at Heritage’s presumptuousness, Trump temporarily distanced himself from the organization.In 2021, Kevin Roberts became the new president of the Heritage Foundation – taking over from Kay Cole James, a black woman and former George W Bush official whom Carlson had attacked on Fox for being too sympathetic to the George Floyd protests.In contrast, Roberts is an ardent culture warrior who wears cowboy boots, drives a diesel Ford F-150 with a “Don’t Tread on Me” license plate, and idolizes Buchanan. He was previously the president of a tiny conservative Catholic college in Wyoming whose students learn Latin and horseback riding and can attend Byzantine mass. The stageplay Heroes of the Fourth Turning, shortlisted for a 2020 Pulitzer, is set at a thinly fictionalized version of the college. (Roberts and Heritage did not respond to requests for comment.)Roberts is part of a circle of radical new right intellectuals who call themselves “post-liberals”, Catholic integralists or “national conservatives”. Many are traditionalist Catholics (or Eastern Orthodox), often converts, and, like Roberts, have ties to Opus Dei, the ultraconservative Catholic order. They believe that the consensus that Buckley upheld was not true conservatism, but merely a right-leaning liberal capitalism that sacrificed America to globalization, mass immigration, consumerism, foreign misadventure and secular decadence. The group are close to Vance, who has described himself as post-liberal. (Vance did not respond to a request for comment.)“I think you’ll never get on the board of Heritage, ISI, or whatever unless you’re part of this true believer circle – a real post-liberal, and a hardcore traditionalist Catholic or Orthodox,” someone close to those organizations told me.View image in fullscreenRoberts is indulgent of friends and allies. In 2022, the Dispatch exposed a young conservative writer who had previously criticized Groyperism, Nate Hochman, for participating in a private online debate with Fuentes in which he had criticized Fuentes’s tactics but told him: “I respect some of what you’re doing.” (“In an attempt to get him to engage,” Hochman said at the time, “I said some really stupid things, which I don’t actually believe.”) Roberts later had Hochman on his podcast, in what seemed like an effort to rehabilitate someone he considered unfairly treated. Hochman then got a job with the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, before being fired in 2023 after creating an unauthorized campaign video containing Nazi symbolism. (Hochman, who now works for Senator Eric Schmitt, could not be reached for comment.)Despite Roberts’s bona fides, some observers told me, he has a fatal flaw common to leaders on the new right: he is ideologically insecure, and anxious to be perceived as sufficiently hardcore in a movement where moderation is viewed as cowardice and transgression signals that one is strong enough to battle for civilization.“We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Roberts said last year. On another occasion, he said: “The future won’t belong to soft men chasing comfort. It will belong to those who risk safety to defend their homeland, their families, and their faith.” (Roberts has denied that his views are extreme, suggesting elsewhere that international elites who “erase borders, criminalize faith, and preach globalism” are the extremists.)In a scathing essay, Oren Cass, a policy commentator whose economic ideas have been popular in some Maga circles, recently described Roberts as someone who had tried to hold a day job as a “credible conservative leader” while moonlighting as a “cheerleader for fever-swamp extremism”.Roberts plays with “divisive, nonsensical gasoline, aimed at impressing a narrow constituency”, Cass argued – and last month that gasoline finally met “a sufficiently hot and prominent surface that it blew up in his face”.Since being fired from Fox News in 2023, Carlson has started an independent online talkshow that has quickly become one of the most popular in America. Embracing a longform conversational format similar to Joe Rogan’s, he has interviewed a variety of guests that would have been outre at Fox, including the podcaster Darryl Cooper, who argued that Winston Churchill, not Hitler, was the “chief villain” of the second world war. As a source for his claims, Cooper later cited the work of the Holocaust denier David Irving.Carlson’s show has also devoted an extraordinary amount of coverage to the US’s relationship with Israel – raising legitimate concerns about US foreign policy and the war in Gaza, but with a fervor and unevenhandedness that made some conservatives uneasy.When Carlson’s Fuentes interview debuted, on 27 October, it hit the conservative world like a meteor. Speaking on Megyn Kelly’s show, Carlson said that he was trying to gently moderate Fuentes’s views. A piece in the Federalist argued, similarly, that Carlson was trying to “offer Fuentes some fatherly correction and redirection”. (Carlson declined to comment for this article, saying in a text message that he gave his “full views” to Kelly.)Many conservatives were less persuaded – and the Heritage Foundation was in the meteor’s blast radius. Roberts was well-known friends with Carlson, and until earlier this year Heritage sponsored episodes of Carlson’s show. Soon after the Fuentes interview, a blurb from Carlson disappeared from the Heritage website. Staff wondered if Roberts would do anything to draw further distance, or simply take the prudent course of saying nothing. Instead, he issued the video defending Carlson.The situation exploded. Angry staffers began posting the phrase “NAZIS ARE BAD” on social media. Robert George, a Princeton legal scholar on Heritage’s board of trustees, tried to build a board majority to oust Roberts, according to the New York Post, and has since resigned. A number of conservatives on a Heritage antisemitism taskforce also quit in protest.“Any tent that’s big enough to include Groypers and neo-Nazis shouldn’t be called conservative,” Mark Goldfeder, who resigned, told me. “It’s something else entirely.”On 5 November, Heritage had a long, emotional, all-hands meeting, footage of which leaked online. Roberts apologized for his handling of the controversy. “I made a mistake,” he told staff, adding: “You can say you’re not going to participate in canceling someone … while also being clear you’re not endorsing everything they’ve said, you’re not endorsing softball interviews.”Roberts also said that he had not understood who Fuentes was. Although he is the leader of one of the most important political thinktanks in the US, and paid more than $800,000 a year, he said that he mainly watched “sports”, and did not “consume a lot of news”.After he spoke, staff gave questions and remarks. These exchanges illuminate a fascinating generational divide at the organization; at times the meeting seemed like a rightwing answer to the kinds of confrontations that swept left-leaning institutions around five years ago, when older liberals at newsrooms, non-profits and educational organizations seemed to speak a different language from their more radical younger colleagues.Many of the most veteran employees spoke first, some with voices trembling with emotion, to decry antisemitism and white nationalism. Asking why now would be any different, a staffer who had worked at Heritage for 47 years invoked Buckley’s purging of the far right: “Did we ‘cancel’ David Duke? Yes. Did we ‘cancel’ the John Birch Society? Yes … Because they were harmful. Because if they’re in your movement, you look like clowns.”On the other hand, “a handful of young colleagues and I had no issue with the points you made in the original video,” a young female staffer said. “Gen Z has an [increasingly] unfavorable view of Israel, and it’s not because millions of Americans are antisemitic. It’s because we are Catholic and Orthodox and believe that Christian Zionism is a modern heresy.”Referring to a proposal by some Jewish conservatives to host Shabbat dinners for Heritage staff as an intercultural exercise, Evan Myers, an adviser to Roberts, said: “For many Christians, Friday is a special day of prayer and abstinence to commemorate the death of Christ … I assume that no staff will be required to attend the Shabbat dinners.” He was concerned, he said, that the dinners might be a “litmus test”.During the meeting, Roberts said that his chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, had ghostwritten the video defending Carlson, and implied that Neuhaus had misled him into thinking that other staff had approved it. (Neuhaus, who has since resigned, could not be reached for comment.)Around the time of the video, Neuhaus also began retweeting posts on X defending Carlson and arguing that the right would be better off today if conservatives had never “cancelled” Pat Buchanan, John Derbyshire and Sam Francis. One was a photo of Buchanan holding an antique revolver, captioned: “Slowly but surely he will be vindicated.”On 7 November, two days after the Heritage Foundation meeting, the board of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) convened for its own tense meeting.In August, ISI unveiled a new podcast, Project Cosmos, whose first guests were Patrick Deneen, a post-liberal political theorist, and Yarvin, the neo-monarchist. Although there had been two ISI board meetings since Project Cosmos entered production, two members of the board, Christopher Long and Thomas Lynch, have alleged that they were never told the podcast existed.At the meeting, they confronted the other members with things Yarvin has said – such as, “If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator-phobia” and “Although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff” – and argued against platforming him.They were overruled. When they called a vote of no confidence in John Burtka, ISI’s president, they lost 13-2. Lynch and Long then resigned. They were replaced on the spot by Jordan Teti, a Los Angeles attorney, and Susan Hanssen, a professor of history at the University of Dallas. (Hanssen’s father appears to be the FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who pleaded guilty in 2001 to spying for the Soviet Union and Russia.)“This group … don’t care about the law, and don’t believe in restraints on power,” a person familiar with ISI said. Some “are self-proclaimed ‘neo-monarchists’. It’s hard to believe, right? But that’s what they say they are.”ISI and Burtka did not respond to interview requests, though some activists and intellectuals on the new right have disputed the characterization of recent events. They argue that Reaganite conservatives unhappy at the direction of the right are trying to use the Carlson controversy to smear isolationism and Israel skepticism by associating them with Fuentes’s antisemitism – thereby hindering Vance, who is considered sympathetic to the new right, from succeeding Trump as the leader of the Republican party.The old right are “panicking [about] losing their once total monopoly on conservative institutions”, Chad “CC” Pecknold, a professor of theology at the Catholic University of America, said in an email. They “want to demonstrate that they still have power, and have chosen the run-up to the midterms as the time to do maximum damage on new right opponents. They are looking for scalps, and will take any opportunity to smear leaders who have usurped what they regard as their rightful place.”Even conservatives on the other side acknowledge that they do not represent the zeitgeist. People like Fuentes and Yarvin, French said, “are extraordinarily popular – far more popular, in many ways, than the people critiquing them”.View image in fullscreenTrump and Vance have mostly remained out of the fray so far, though Trump told a reporter on Sunday that “you can’t tell [Carlson] who to interview” and on 5 November Vance wrote on X that “infighting is stupid.” Vance is in a difficult spot: Carlson helped get him selected as Trump’s running mate, and Carlson’s son, Buckley Carlson, works for Vance.Vance spoke at a Turning Point event in Mississippi, two weeks ago, where a man in the audience had a question for him: “I’m a Christian man, and I’m just confused,” the man said. “There’s this notion that we … owe Israel something, or that they’re our greatest ally, or that we have to support this [foreign aid package] to Israel to cover … ethnic cleansing in Gaza. I’m just confused why this idea has come around, considering the fact that not only does their religion not agree with ours, but also openly supports the prosecution of ours.”The man’s reference to “prosecution”, or persecution, may have been describing recent attacks on Palestinian Christians, but Vance’s answer was also odd; he seemed to discuss Judaism with the conciliatory tact with which an American vice-president might normally describe a foreign nation: “Jews do not believe that Jesus Christ is the messiah; obviously, Christians do believe that,” he said. “There are some significant theological disagreements between Christians and Jews. My attitude is, let’s have those conversations.”Some of the conservatives I spoke to seemed like they were grappling with a dissonance – that they had spent so long in political battle with the left that they were having trouble, psychically, coming to terms with the idea that the call might be coming from inside their own house.“Perhaps Roberts made a bad leadership decision – he shouldn’t have released the video, or they shouldn’t have had a relationship with Tucker,” someone tied to Heritage said despairingly. “But if we look at the root, underlying thing, is it really about Tucker? About Fuentes? About the video? Or is it about this” – the speaker searched for the right word – “undercurrent that’s pushing all of this?” More

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      Saudi Arabia releases US retiree jailed over critical tweets

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      Saudi Arabia has agreed to allow US citizen Saad Almadi to return home to Florida, five months ahead of the scheduled lifting of travel restrictions and a day after Saudi crown prince and prime minister Mohammed bin Salman met Donald Trump at the White House.Almadi, 75, was sentenced to 19 years of incarceration in the kingdom in 2021 after he wrote 14 tweets critical of the Riyadh government. Two years later, the charges were reduced to so-called “cyber crimes” and he was sentenced to a 30-year ban on leaving Saudi Arabia.The announcement that Almadi, a dual citizen and retired engineer who had lived in the US since the 1970s, would be free to leave the country came after the US president delivered a speech touting US-Saudi ties, including arms sales and investment deals, during a second day of public events in Washington.“Our family is overjoyed that, after four long years, our father, Saad Almadi, is finally on his way home to the United States!” the Almadi family said in a statement.“This day would not have been possible without President Donald Trump and the tireless efforts of his administration. We are deeply grateful to Dr Sebastian Gorka and the team at the national security council, as well as everyone at the state department,” it added.The statement by Almadi’s son, Ibrahim Almadi, also thanked various non-profit organizations, including the James Foley Fund and Hostages America, and House speaker Mike Johnson for supporting the elder Almadi’s cause. He later posted on X that his father was on his way to the US.Almadi is one of a handful of American dual citizens facing exit bans from Saudi Arabia following a crackdown on online dissent. His son has previously claimed that Almadi was pressured to sign papers renouncing his US citizenship.The case against Almadi centered on social media posts in which he was alleged to have urged Saudi citizens to seek Lebanese citizenship and faulted the kingdom’s defenses against Houthi rocket strikes.More controversially he expressed approval for the renaming of a street in the US capital after Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist and Washington Post columnist killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.US intelligence reports released by the Biden administration later assessed that the crown prince had approved of a plan to “capture or kill” Khashoggi.Asked about the killing on Tuesday, Trump said the crown prince “knew nothing” of Khashoggi’s kiling. The Saudi crown prince has denied any wrongdoing. He said at the White House that Saudi Arabia “did all the right things” to investigate Khashoggi’s death, which he called “painful” and a “huge mistake”.US pressure to release Almadi and allow him to return to the US has been building since Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia in May. Many appealed to Trump claim that he is uniquely successful in repatriating US citizens detained overseas.When asked by a reporter in May about the case, Trump said he didn’t know about it but promised to take a look. A few weeks later, one of his national security aides, Gorka, met the younger Almadi at the White House.Johnson also met Almadi’s son. Johnson said: “President Trump is the president of deals and he loves to do business with the Saudis and we will win your father back.” More

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      The Saudification of America is under way | Karen Attiah

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      The first time I ever used the words “alhumdulilah”, which translates to praise be to God in Arabic, was the night of 16 November 2018. A Friday night news alert came through on my phone: “CIA concludes Saudi crown prince ordered Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination.” I collapsed into my couch, repeating the words.I am not Muslim. But Jamal, in life and death, has taught me a lot about faith and looking for hope in all the wrong places. As a writer with a history of criticizing America’s meddling in weaker countries, in normal circumstances, I should have been loath to celebrate the CIA.But given that, a month before, a group of Saudi hitmen not only kidnapped my friend and writer from a consulate in Istanbul but allegedly cut his body into pieces, I might have been forgiven for looking for any hope that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, would face consequences – cutting off leaders who think nothing of cutting up human beings should be a basic tenet of any healthy country’s foreign policy. (Prince Mohammed has denied any involvement or responsibility for Khashoggi’s killing.)This week, seven years almost to the day since the CIA announced the crown prince’s responsibility in the murder, Mohammed bin Salman returns to Washington, invited for an offical visit by America’s Temu pharaoh, Donald Trump. The reconciliation between Trump and MBS was perhaps inevitable, given that even before the first Trump presidency, Trump spoke often of his love for the Saudis and their wealth. (“I get along great with all of them; they buy apartments from me. They spend $40m, $50m,” he quipped in 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much!”)In 2016 Saudi Arabia banned Jamal Khashoggi, a longtime editor, journalist and royal adviser from writing. His crime? He published an op-ed warning about the rise of Trump in 2016. He remained silent for a year, until Prince Mohammed unleashed a crackdown on businessmen, writers, and mild critics – imprisoning many of them. Jamal fled to the US in self-exile.In September 2017, while I was the editor of the Washington Post’s global opinion section, I asked Jamal to write for us. He published “Saudi Arabia was not always this repressive, but now it’s unbearable”, breaking his year-long silence. I hired him to continue to write for the Washington Post.A year later, Saudi Arabia had Jamal killed. In the aftermath of Jamal’s murder, Trump administration officials worked overtime to launder Saudi Arabia’s blood-stained image. Jared Kushner was advising Prince Mohammed on how to “weather the storm”. Last year, Kushner’s equity firm received $2bn from Saudi Arabia’s private equity firm.There’s much to say about the Saudification of western cultural spaces through the sheer sums of money the kingdom is so obviously throwing into what it sees as soft power. Writers and observers have commented for years about Saudi Arabia’s “sportswashing”, like the kingdom’s sponsorship of LIV golf tournament and the purchase of the Newcastle United soccer team.The kingdom invested heavily in tourism campaigns for Saudi Arabia, paying online influencers hefty sums to post pictures of their heavily curated trips to the country.Jamal warned about these hollow visions of Saudi Arabia. He warned that behind the glitz and glamour of the Saudi royal family, and promises of futuristic cities, there was poverty and discontent. He often told me how proud he was to have his words in the Washington Post, and he hoped the Post could be a model for voices like his to be heard. I still admire Jamal’s relentless optimism about media and America.In death, Jamal’s faith would prove to be misplaced. The Washington Post’s erasure of Jamal’s memory and the freedom he stood for has been brewing in the background.The global opinion section that Jamal wrote for was dismantled. The Jamal Khashoggi fellowship – which was offered to writers speaking out against authoritarian regimes – was left to fade away. Jamal used to tell me about his days as an editor chairing newspaper editorial meetings in Saudi Arabia, where editors were given marching orders from the top about the “red lines”, or what the royal regime wanted and did not want published.Today, the Washington Post opinion section is going through an increasing Saudification – imposing harsh red lines on who and what can publish. Under owner Jeff Bezos’s edict to write only about “free markets” and “personal liberties”, the Washington Post opinion section, the first major US paper to publicly impose such heavy censorship, purged nearly all its full-time voices that wrote against censorship, political violence and repression at home and abroad, myself included.To date, the Washington Post editorial board has not mentioned Jamal’s name ahead of Prince Mohammed’s visit. The Saudification of the mainstream news media means that other US media outlets and institutions are bending the knee to Trump, agreeing to multimillion-dollar shakedowns in exchange for eliminating diversity. He has sued outlets he claims were not fair to him. He has begun attempting to prosecute his political rivals. Pro-Saudi voices would argue that moralizing about chopped-up journalists does us no good, shouldn’t get in the way of the US-Saudi partnership, that there is too much money at stake, and that in order for the west’s colonial management of the Middle East, we need our friends in Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. They are effectively asking Americans to believe that America and Saudi Arabia will make the world a better place, together.This narrative only helps the billionaires and the deal brokers. The average American gains next to nothing from these elite arrangements. Rather, Jamal’s plight and murder was a warning sign for America, of the impending loss of freedom and censorship that would sweep the country.

      Karen Attiah is a writer and educator whose work focuses on race, global culture and human rights More

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      in US Politics

      Trump defends Saudi crown prince over Khashoggi killing, threatens ABC News in White House meeting – as it happened

      by

      Donald Trump welcomed crown prince Mohammed bin Salman to Washington on Tuesday, in the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia’s first White House visit since the 2018 killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul. The shocking murder caused global outrage and appeared to set the Gulf kingdom on a path to international pariah status. In 2021 US intelligence concluded that bin Salman had approved the capture or killing of Khashoggi, a fierce critic of the Saudi regime. The crown prince has denied ordering the operation but acknowledged responsibility as the kingdom’s de facto ruler. Seven years on, that shocking murder seemed a distant memory, as MBS arrived to a lavish display including fanfare, a US Marine band and a military flyover as he stepped onto the South Lawn of the White House to meet Trump.

      Talking to reporters in the Oval Office, the US president brushed off questions from a reporter about MBS’s role in Khashoggi’s killing, saying “things happen”. “You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial,” Trump said of the murdered columnist, before going on to contradict US intelligence on the Saudi crown prince’s role in the affair. “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him, or didn’t like him, things happen. But he [bin Salman] knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that.” While Trump castigated the reporter for the question, a calm MBS said:“It’s painful and it’s a huge mistake, and we are doing our best that this doesn’t happen again.”

      The crown prince announced Saudi Arabia was raising its planned investments in the US to almost $1tn, up from $600bn that the Saudis said they planned to invest when Trump visited the kingdom in May. MBS said the kingdom has “huge demand” for computing power and desires US AI chips. Trump also said he “can see” a deal happening to transfer American nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, but didn’t specify a timeline. Against a backdrop of subdued oil prices and MBS’s high spending on megaprojects at home, that figure is likely very unrealistic, but Trump seemed thrilled nonetheless.

      Trump also pushed back on the notion that there was a conflict of interest, given his family’s strong personal interest in the kingdom. “I have nothing to do with the family business,” said Trump, adding that his family has relatively little interest in the kingdom. In September, London real estate developer Dar Global announced that it plans to launch Trump Plaza in the Red Sea city of Jeddah. It’s Dar Global’s second collaboration with the Trump Organization, the collection of companies controlled by Trump’s children, in Saudi Arabia. Last year, the two companies announced the launch of Trump Tower Jeddah.

      Trump confirmed that he had agreed to sell the Saudis F-35 fighter jets despite some concerns within the administration that the sale could lead to China gaining access to the US technology behind the advanced weapon system. The agreement will be similar to the one the US has with Israel, which is significant as until now Israel has been the only country in the Middle East to have the jets. The move has the potential to alter the military balance in the region. As Politico noted earlier: “A major arms deal would signal a sea change in the US approach to Saudi Arabia: No longer would deeper ties between the two countries be so dependent on Saudi Arabia normalising relations with Israel.”

      On that subject, MBS made clear that normalisation with Israel (i.e. Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, which Trump really wants) could not happen without first securing a clear path towards a two-state solution. The crown prince said he wants Israelis and Palestinians “to coexist peacefully” in the region. Trump has been trying to nudge the Saudis to join the accords for some time and said today he felt he’d had a “positive response”. But it’s worth remembering that Israel, meanwhile, remains steadfastly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state.

      Trump will return to the South Lawn later, with first lady Melania, to welcome the crown prince when he returns for the evening East Room dinner. In addition to today’s White House pomp, the two nations are also planning an investment summit at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday that will include the heads of Salesforce, Qualcomm, Pfizer, the Cleveland Clinic, Chevron and Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s national oil and natural gas company, where even more deals with the Saudis could be announced.
      And I’ll leave you with my colleague Julian Borger’s report on the visit:

      Donald Trump welcomed crown prince Mohammed bin Salman to Washington on Tuesday, in the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia’s first White House visit since the 2018 killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul. The shocking murder caused global outrage and appeared to set the Gulf kingdom on a path to international pariah status. In 2021 US intelligence concluded that bin Salman had approved the capture or killing of Khashoggi, a fierce critic of the Saudi regime. The crown prince has denied ordering the operation but acknowledged responsibility as the kingdom’s de facto ruler. Seven years on, that shocking murder seemed a distant memory, as MBS arrived to a lavish display including fanfare, a US Marine band and a military flyover as he stepped onto the South Lawn of the White House to meet Trump.

      Talking to reporters in the Oval Office, the US president brushed off questions from a reporter about MBS’s role in Khashoggi’s killing, saying “things happen”. “You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial,” Trump said of the murdered columnist, before going on to contradict US intelligence on the Saudi crown prince’s role in the affair. “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him, or didn’t like him, things happen. But he [bin Salman] knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that.” While Trump castigated the reporter for the question, a calm MBS said:“It’s painful and it’s a huge mistake, and we are doing our best that this doesn’t happen again.”

      The crown prince announced Saudi Arabia was raising its planned investments in the US to almost $1tn, up from $600bn that the Saudis said they planned to invest when Trump visited the kingdom in May. MBS said the kingdom has “huge demand” for computing power and desires US AI chips. Trump also said he “can see” a deal happening to transfer American nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, but didn’t specify a timeline. Against a backdrop of subdued oil prices and MBS’s high spending on megaprojects at home, that figure is likely very unrealistic, but Trump seemed thrilled nonetheless.

      Trump also pushed back on the notion that there was a conflict of interest, given his family’s strong personal interest in the kingdom. “I have nothing to do with the family business,” said Trump, adding that his family has relatively little interest in the kingdom. In September, London real estate developer Dar Global announced that it plans to launch Trump Plaza in the Red Sea city of Jeddah. It’s Dar Global’s second collaboration with the Trump Organization, the collection of companies controlled by Trump’s children, in Saudi Arabia. Last year, the two companies announced the launch of Trump Tower Jeddah.

      Trump confirmed that he had agreed to sell the Saudis F-35 fighter jets despite some concerns within the administration that the sale could lead to China gaining access to the US technology behind the advanced weapon system. The agreement will be similar to the one the US has with Israel, which is significant as until now Israel has been the only country in the Middle East to have the jets. The move has the potential to alter the military balance in the region. As Politico noted earlier: “A major arms deal would signal a sea change in the US approach to Saudi Arabia: No longer would deeper ties between the two countries be so dependent on Saudi Arabia normalising relations with Israel.”

      On that subject, MBS made clear that normalisation with Israel (i.e. Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, which Trump really wants) could not happen without first securing a clear path towards a two-state solution. The crown prince said he wants Israelis and Palestinians “to coexist peacefully” in the region. Trump has been trying to nudge the Saudis to join the accords for some time and said today he felt he’d had a “positive response”. But it’s worth remembering that Israel, meanwhile, remains steadfastly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state.

      Trump will return to the South Lawn later, with first lady Melania, to welcome the crown prince when he returns for the evening East Room dinner. In addition to today’s White House pomp, the two nations are also planning an investment summit at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday that will include the heads of Salesforce, Qualcomm, Pfizer, the Cleveland Clinic, Chevron and Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s national oil and natural gas company, where even more deals with the Saudis could be announced.
      If you’re just joining us, Donald Trump has welcomed Mohammed bin Salman to Washington, as the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia seeks to rebrand himself as a global statesman in his first White House visit since the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents.Trump warmly received the crown prince when he arrived at the White House this morning for a pomp-filled ceremony that included a military flyover and a thundering greeting from the US Marine band.The US-Saudi relationship had been sent into a tailspin by the operation targeting Khashoggi, a fierce critic of the kingdom, that US intelligence agencies later determined MBS likely directed the agents to carry out.But seven years later, Khashoggi was an afterthought as the two leaders unveiled billions of dollars in deals and Trump brushed off questions to the crown prince about the journalist’s gruesome murder.“Whether you like [Khashoggi] or didn’t like him, things happen,” Trump said, referring to the murdered Washington Post columnist as “extremely controversial”. “But he [bin Salman] knew nothing about it,” he said of bin Salman.Trump chastised the reporter for “embarrassing our guest” with the question and went on to commended the Saudi leader for strides made by the kingdom on human rights without providing any specific detail.“I’m very proud of the job he’s done,” Trump said. “What’s he done is incredible in terms of human rights and everything else.”Trump lashes out once again at a reporter’s question, calling her a “terrible reporter” and saying he believes ABC News’s broadcasting license should be revoked.The reporter had asked him why he wouldn’t just release the Epstein files rather than wait for Congress to do it. He says.
      I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein.
      It’s worth noting that MBS, in comparison, has remained calm and confident in the face of tough questions.Trump says he “can see” a deal happening to transfer American nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, but doesn’t specify any sort of timeline, adding it’s not urgent.Trump says he spoke with bin Salman about the Abraham Accords, adding that he believes he got a positive response.The crown prince adds that while Saudi Arabia wants to be part of the accords, which normalises ties with Israel, it also wants to make sure it secures a clear path for a two-state solution.He says he wants Israelis and Palestinians “to coexist peacefully” in the region.Trump says the US would sell F-35 stealth fighter jets to Saudi Arabia in a similar arrangement it has with Israel.“As far as I’m concerned, I think they are both at a level where they should get top of the line [F-35s],” he says, referring to Saudi and Israel as great allies. Israel and Saudi Arabia have never had formal diplomatic relations but have engaged in covert cooperation on issues such as Iran.Trump says the United States has reached a defense deal with Saudi Arabia.As the Trump Organization and a Saudi developer look to open the latest Trump hotel in the Maldives, Trump is asked about a possible conflict of interest for the Trump Organization to do business with Saudi Arabia while he is president. He replies:
      I have nothing to do with the family business. I have left, and I’ve devoted 100% of my energy. What my family does is fine. They do business all over.
      They’ve done very little with Saudi Arabia actually. I’m sure they could do a lot, and anything they’ve done has been very good.
      An ABC reporter then addresses the elephant in the room, asking whether why Americans should trust bin Salman given that US intelligence concluded that he orchestrated the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.Trump blasts ABC News as fake news, before contradicting US intelligence on the Saudi crown prince’s role in Khashoggi death:
      You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman [Khashoggi] that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen. But he [bin Salman] knew nothing about it. And we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking something like that.
      As I noted earlier, US intelligence concluded in 2021 that bin Salman approved the capture or killing of Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. The crown prince denied ordering the operation but acknowledged responsibility as the kingdom’s de facto ruler. Here’s our report on that from the time:Asked by a reporter whether Saudi Arabia can really continue to invest as much as $1tn in the United States given the reality of lower oil prices, bin Salman says the kingdom was not “creating fake opportunities to please America or please Trump” and that Saudi Arabia has “huge demand” for computing power and desires US advanced chips.Trump says he is working to approve the sale of advanced US AI chips to Saudi Arabia, signalling a major shift in export policy and deepening tech ties with the kingdom.“We’ve been really good friends for a long period of time,” Trump says of the crown prince.“I want to thank you because you’ve agreed to invest $600bn into the United States, and because he’s my friend, he might make it a trillion, but I’m going to have to work on him,” Trump says, referring to bin Salman.Bin Salman then says in response that Saudi Arabia “believes in the future of America” and is going to increase its pledge to almost $1tn of investment in the United States.Talks in the Oval Office are underway, albeit somewhat behind schedule. I’ll bring you any key news lines here.Bearing in mind that, while this is not a state visit – Mohammed bin Salman is not technically the Saudi head of state, though he is the kingdom’s de facto leader – that ceremony was definitely more lavish than your average state visit arrival, including the Marine band and officers on horseback flying the Saudi and US flags.The two men have been speaking as they walk along the row of presidential portraits on the colonnade at the White House, which Trump recently unveiled as the “Presidential Walk of Fame”.Here are some more pictures capturing the pomp and circumstance Donald Trump has put on for MBS.Mohammed bin Salman arrived at the White House to fanfare and a jet flyover moments ago, as he seeks to further rehabilitate his global image after the brutal 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and deepen ties with Washington.Making his first White House visit in more than seven years, the crown prince was greeted with a lavish display of pomp and ceremony presided over by Donald Trump on the South Lawn, complete with a military honour guard, a cannon salute and a flyover by US warplanes. More

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      in US Politics

      This Palestinian human rights group was sanctioned by Trump. Its chief wishes US allies would take a stand

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      Al-Haq, a leading Palestinian human rights organization based in the West Bank, is not new to adversity. But since the group was sanctioned by the Trump administration in September, its world has shrunk.Today, staff work without pay because their banks closed their accounts. US-based funders have pulled away. YouTube has pulled hundreds of the group’s videos documenting Israeli forces’ human rights abuses against Palestinians. Perhaps most upsetting, US-based groups that had long collaborated have gone quiet, fearful that communications with Al-Haq may draw the attention of an administration that has made clear they are a target.“I feel a deep, deep pain in my heart,” said Shawan Jabarin, Al-Haq’s director, of the silence from US-based organizations in the human rights and social justice sector. “Most of them – if not all – they stopped working with us or engaging with us formally and openly.”Speaking to the Guardian, Jabarin called on US-based rights groups to take a more defiant stance against the Trump administration. “Standing on the side of human rights and justice doesn’t mean that you have to respect draconian orders or laws,” he said. “You have to fight back with all means.”The Trump administration announced sanctions against Al-Haq over the group’s support for investigation of Israeli crimes in Palestine by the international criminal court (ICC). The sanctions marked an early strike in a broader campaign against civil society, a campaign disproportionately focused on groups championing Palestinian rights that also threatens to sweep up climate, democracy and racial justice groups.View image in fullscreenIn a statement announcing the sanctions, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that “the United States will continue to respond with significant and tangible consequences to protect our troops, our sovereignty, and our allies from the ICC’s disregard for sovereignty, and to punish entities that are complicit in its overreach”.Israel and the US – which are not members of the ICC – have long attacked the court and maintain that it has no jurisdiction over them. But the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian groups is hardly limited to their connection to the ICC.Last month, the administration instructed US attorneys across the country to investigate the Open Society Foundations (OSF), the philanthropic network founded by liberal billionaire George Soros, over unfounded allegations that it has sponsored groups promoting political unrest and suggesting charges as severe as material support for “terrorism”. In a presidential memorandum signed in September, Trump also instructed law enforcement to “disband and uproot” organizations and networks that the administration says promote “domestic terrorism” and “organized political violence”.Groups and individuals critical of Israel, both in the US and abroad, are under particular scrutiny. The Trump administration has also detained foreign nationals for pro-Palestinian speech and sanctioned the UN special rapporteur for the occupied territories and senior ICC officials.Palestine-based groups like Al-Haq, which do not enjoy the constitutional protections their US-based peers do, are among the easiest targets. But as a Palestinian, Jabarin said, he knows something about standing in defiance of a repressive regime.“Maybe it’s our nature and our essence as Palestinians, because we are fighting for every aspect of our life,” he said. “Our culture is not to give up, and to continue fighting for justice. Maybe other societies haven’t reached this point yet.”But the group’s continued advocacy has come at a steep price.Since the sanctions were announced, Al-Haq and its roughly 45 staffers have lost access to their bank accounts as three banks the group works with dissolved their accounts in October. (Even banks overseas not explicitly affected by sanctions are often jittery about working with people and groups sanctioned by the US.) The group is currently unable to receive donations or pay its employees, and two American funders have stopped their donations. US staff had to resign. Other staff have continued to work for free, Jabarin said, aided by former colleagues and supporters abroad. In addition to YouTube, Meta and Mailchimp have restricted or pulled their services. (The three companies did not immediately respond to request for comment.)Al-Haq has lost allies, too.Among the organizations now fearing Trump’s crackdown are scores of US-based non-profits. While more draconian efforts to silence civil society with so-called “non-profit killer” legislation have so far failed, and experts say Trump’s efforts against Soros will struggle to stand up in court, such groups have for months been on high alert, fearing attacks on their tax-exempt status and the prospect of costly litigation.US-based human rights and Palestinian advocacy groups that have collaborated with Al-Haq in the past are now afraid to do so. (Jabarin declined to name them.) The sanctions the US imposed on Palestinian rights groups – one of the only measures available to the administration in the absence of congressional action – make working with them a liability for their US peers. US-based organizations that worked with Al-Haq in the past declined to speak on the record about their relationship with the group when contacted by the Guardian, but some noted that maintaining professional communications with a sanctioned organization exposed them to significant risk.Coordinated advocacy with sanctioned organizations could expose US groups to civil and criminal enforcement, some noted, with possible consequences ranging from loss of fiscal benefits to jail time. Some US non-profits are so risk-averse they avoided public criticism of the sanctions altogether.Leena Barakat, a co-founder of the Block and Build Funder Coalition, a network of funders she described as “committed to resisting authoritarianism”, said that US-based groups and donors who support the work of sanctioned Palestinian organizations find themselves in a “devastating” position.“We should be fighting back and I think right now there’s absolutely the desire and the will to do it. The question on the table is what is the best and the most strategic fight,” she said. “We’re thinking about that every day.”Al-Haq has documented Israel’s human rights abuses in Palestine for half a century. Alongside other organizations that the US has also sanctioned – Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, and Addameer, which is focused on the rights of Palestinian prisoners and detainees – the group played a key role in demanding and later supporting the ICC’s investigation.In 2021, Israel designated Al-Haq and five other Palestinian rights groups as “terrorist organizations”, alleging links between the groups and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a leftwing political party the US and other countries consider a terrorist organization. Reporting at the time revealed that Israel had no concrete evidence to back the designations, and the CIA was unable to corroborate Israel’s claims about the groups. Months later, Israeli soldiers raided Al-Haq’s office.View image in fullscreenThe designations and raids were widely condemned by international rights groups and the Biden administration distanced itself from them. But Jabarin always feared the possibility the US might at some point follow Israel’s lead and seek to punish the group.Jabarin dismissed the latest US sanctions as a “political attack” and pledged that Al-Haq would continue its documentation of human rights violations and its work with the ICC.“They want to silence any voice calling for accountability, calling for ending the culture of impunity, anyone speaking about the rights of Palestinians and justice for Palestine,” he said. “We will continue doing our work, we will continue fighting for justice and for human rights, and we will continue going after the criminals and holding the criminals accountable.” Al-Haq’s submissions to the court, he added, are “legal” and “peaceful”.Jabarin says he understands the constraints imposed on his US colleagues but is frustrated by what he views as a reluctance to more openly defy Trump beyond issuing statements. What Trump wants is for organizations to comply without putting up a fight, and how global civil society responds to this moment will have lasting implications, Jabarin added.“Palestine is the test” for all people of conscience, he said.“The US administration, they are supporting the rule of the jungle, not the rule of law,” he said. “And what’s going on, globally speaking, is a war between the rule of the jungle and the rule of law.” More

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      in US Politics

      Jared Kushner is back – and so are big questions about his financial ties | Mohamad Bazzi

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      In Donald Trump’s first term, his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner was omnipresent. He worked on criminal justice reform, Covid-19 vaccine development and modernizing technology across federal agencies. His portfolio extended to foreign policy, as he brokered a new North American trade agreement and negotiated peace deals in the Middle East. But when Trump returned to the White House in January, Kushner stayed out of the limelight and declined to take a formal role in the administration.A few weeks ago, Kushner re-emerged as a central player behind Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, which so far has achieved a ceasefire, an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners and a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territory. Kushner took a victory lap, as Trump and others in the US administration gave him significant credit for helping negotiate a ceasefire after two years of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza. Kushner is being hailed as the consummate deal-maker, a private citizen whose business acumen succeeded where career diplomats failed.But as in Trump’s first term, Kushner’s diplomatic work often overlapped with his business dealings, raising questions about financial conflicts. In fact, his potential conflicts are even more conspicuous today. Kushner’s key role in brokering the Gaza deal, which includes a framework for the territory’s postwar redevelopment, cannot be separated from the investment firm he owns, Affinity Partners, which is overwhelmingly financed by the very Arab petrostates critical to the agreement and potential reconstruction – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Together, these three states provided crucial support to Kushner after he left the White House in January 2021, investing billions of dollars that allowed him to launch and expand his private equity firm.Six months after the end of the first Trump administration, Kushner’s newly created company secured a $2bn investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. It was an unusually large stake, considering that Kushner and his firm had little experience or track record in private equity. In fact, the kingdom’s crown prince and de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, overruled a group of advisers who had objected to investing in Kushner’s new project. The advisers warned that due diligence conducted on behalf of the Saudi Public Investment Fund had found the firm’s early operations “unsatisfactory in all aspects”. But leaked internal documents published by the New York Times showed that Prince Mohammed dismissed those concerns, and he was more focused on using the infusion of Saudi cash to cultivate a “strategic relationship” with Kushner.It’s no surprise that the prince would want to reward Kushner for his steadfast support during Trump’s first term – and hedge the kingdom’s bets in case Trump returned to power. Throughout his first term, Trump tried to shield Prince Mohammed from blame for the 2018 assassination of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was ambushed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a 15-member hit team. Despite a CIA assessment that concluded, with “high confidence,” that the prince had ordered the killing, Trump and Kushner offered the Saudi regime continued political support and billions of dollars in US weapons sales.The scale and timing of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund’s commitment to Kushner suggests its $2bn in funding wasn’t driven by market forces, but rather a bet by the crown prince on continued goodwill from a future Trump administration. A subsequent congressional investigation revealed that the Saudi leader did not earn a traditional return on his investment.In September 2024, as Trump was running for president, a US Senate committee found that Kushner’s firm had been paid $157m in management fees from foreign clients since 2021 without returning any profit to its investors. The Senate investigation, which was launched by Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon who chaired the finance committee at the time, showed that Affinity Partners had collected $87m in fees from the Saudi wealth fund. In a letter to Kushner’s company, Wyden questioned why the firm had not generated any profit for its investors, despite charging hefty management fees – and he raised concerns that the entire venture was a way for foreign powers to buy influence in anticipation of Trump returning to power. “Affinity’s investors may not be motivated by commercial considerations, but rather the opportunity to funnel foreign government money to members of President Trump’s family,” Wyden wrote.In December 2024, Kushner revealed that he had raised an additional $1.5bn for Affinity Partners from investment funds controlled by Qatari and UAE government officials. In a podcast interview, Kushner said he had “pre-emptively tried to avoid any conflict” by securing new funding from his existing investors before Trump won the presidential election. The added funds brought the firm’s total assets to $4.8bn by the end of last year, nearly 99% of it from foreign sources. The increase in management fees raked in by Affinity has also boosted Kushner’s personal wealth, and turned him into a billionaire, according to Forbes.After Republicans regained control of the Senate in January, Wyden lost the finance committee chair position and his investigation into Kushner’s company foundered. With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, and a supreme court ruling last year that gave Trump broad immunity for official acts, Trump and his family are facing little scrutiny in Washington for exploiting the presidency to promote their business interests.Aside from being the primary funders of Kushner’s firm, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE also have deals at various stages of development with Trump’s family business. Those Trump-branded real estate projects, hotels and golf resorts are worth billions of dollars. And like most foreign deals negotiated by the Trump Organization, the company won’t put up any capital but will earn millions of dollars in branding and management fees once projects are operational. As he’s done throughout his career, Trump continues to sell his name to make easy money.The Trump administration insists that Kushner’s diplomatic work in the Middle East – while he manages an investment firm funded by three Arab monarchies – poses no conflict of interest. When a reporter asked about the appearance of self-dealing at a press conference on 1 October, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, snapped back: “I think it’s frankly despicable that you’re trying to suggest that it’s inappropriate for Jared Kushner” to help Trump negotiate the Gaza ceasefire deal. She added: “Jared is donating his energy and his time to our government, to the president of the United States, to secure world peace, and that is a very noble thing.”Trump also praised his son-in-law’s diplomatic skills, telling a cabinet meeting on 9 October: “I put Jared there because he’s a very smart person and he knows the region, knows the people, knows a lot of the players.”It’s true that Kushner leveraged his relationship with Arab leaders, along with a family friendship with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to finalize Trump’s 20-point peace plan. And Kushner helped persuade both the Israeli government and Hamas to accept a ceasefire and hostage-prisoner swap, while delaying thornier questions to later negotiations.But even as he brokered the fragile ceasefire agreement, Kushner continued to negotiate business deals that benefit his firm and foreign partners – including Saudi Arabia, which the Trump administration was consulting as part of its emerging Gaza deal. On 29 September, the same day that Trump and Netanyahu revealed their Gaza agreement at the White House, Kushner and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund announced that they had reached a $55bn deal to acquire the video game publisher Electronic Arts. The game maker is dominant in sports gaming, and Saudi Arabia has made a push in recent years to buy soccer teams and other sports franchises.The Electronic Arts deal will require approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, a panel of federal regulators that evaluates large foreign deals which could raise national security concerns. In 2023, members of Congress launched an investigation into the Saudi fund’s investments in US sports, especially the Saudi-backed LIV Golf, a rival to the PGA Tour.Will the Saudi interest in Electronic Arts face similar scrutiny by the Committee on Foreign Investment under the Trump administration? That’s highly unlikely, considering that the president’s son-in-law will be one of the deal’s beneficiaries. The Financial Times reported last month that Kushner’s involvement could ease the sale’s path with US regulators.Unlike his central role during Trump’s first term, Kushner now seems to prefer serving as a powerful deal-maker behind the scenes in the Middle East. And with no formal job in the current administration, Kushner has avoided most previous criticism of his business dealings. He has no White House title, and far less oversight this time around.But he will probably remain at the center of negotiations about rebuilding Gaza, and reviving a potential diplomatic agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, a longtime goal of the Trump administration. And with little resistance from Congress, Kushner and the rest of Trump’s family will continue to reap the financial benefits of dominating the US government.Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University More

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      ‘Trump is like a juggernaut’: how the Gaza ceasefire deal was done

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      It is a well-known adage in politics that success has many parents, but failure is an orphan. Except when Donald Trump is involved, in which case there is only one parent.Nevertheless, many countries and individuals have a right to step forward to claim an authorial role in the deal that it is hoped will bring an end to the two-year war in Gaza.But it is a sign of the collective nature of the effort of the past few months that so many can credibly claim a role, including the US president, who after many false starts was finally persuaded to focus, end the fantasy of driving tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland and instead spell out to Benjamin Netanyahu the versions of victory the Israeli prime minister could and could not have.The turning point was a meeting in New York on the sidelines of the UN general assembly chaired by Trump, soon after his baroque speech to the gathering. Trump described the sidelines chat as his most important meeting at the UN. In the encounter organised by the United Arab Emirates, he set out for the first time his then 20-point plan for peace in front of a group of Arab and Muslim states that could form the backbone of any stabilisation force that entered Gaza in the event of a ceasefire.By then Trump, with the help of his son-in-law Jared Kushner and the former British prime minister Tony Blair, had been convinced to change his mind on two critical issues. First, Palestinians should not be driven from Gaza and Israel should not rule the territory. “Gaza should be for Gazans,” one said.That meant Trump dropping the displacement rhetoric he deployed earlier in the year, when he triggered widespread alarm by speaking of plans to develop a “Gaza Riviera”.View image in fullscreenSecondly, Trump was persuaded a “day after” plan for the future of Gaza would not complicate the negotiations on a ceasefire-hostage release agreement by adding new contested ingredients, but was the precondition for success. A UK diplomat explained Blair’s thinking: “Hamas was not going to give up unless it knew the Israelis were going to get out and the Israelis were not going to get out and stop occupying Gaza unless they knew Hamas were not going to be in government. Unless you resolved the question of who governs Gaza you cannot bring the thing to an end.”That in turn made it easier for the Arab states to put political pressure on Hamas to negotiate since they could point to a route towards Palestinian statehood, something that has always been their precondition for reconciliation with Israel. The Arab states had also put their names to demands that Hamas stand aside and disarm.One of those involved in persuading the US president said: “People don’t want to hear this but the advantage of Trump is that once he decides to do something he is like a juggernaut. And he really did put pressure on the Israelis.”Trump’s mood towards Israel was clouded by Netanyahu’s unilateral decision to bomb Doha on 9 September in the hope of wiping out Hamas negotiators. Trump had not been consulted, but the US assurances were met with scepticism. As a result Netanyahu, not a man prone to contrition, was ordered to apologise and say he would respect Qatar’s sovereignty in future.View image in fullscreenTo repair relations fully with Qatar, the host of main US airbase in the Middle East, Trump issued an extraordinary executive order saying any future attack on the emirate would be treated as an attack on the US. All this meant the US leader was better disposed to the Gulf states’ vision of a new Middle East. In a sign he was prepared to push the Israeli government hard, in a way Joe Biden had not, Trump told Israel there would be no further annexations in the West Bank.From the very start of the sidelines meeting at the UN in September, the aim of the Arab states was to bind Trump personally into the process. Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, said: “We count on you and your leadership … to end this war and to help the people of Gaza.” He said Israel’s real objective was “to destroy Gaza, to render housing, livelihoods, education, and medical care impossible, stripping away the very foundations of human life”.The concept that Trump personally was central to a solution – indeed its guarantor – flattered the US president who offered himself up as the chair of the peace board, the body that would oversee the reconstruction of Gaza.In one sense, he would be just a name plate, but to the extent he has a hinterland, it is construction. That means there is a possibility he will remain engaged, for the moment at least.Those observing him said Trump began to feel he had a serious opportunity to solve a conflict he variously said had lasted 3,000 or 600 years, in contrast to his failed attempt in Ukraine. The prospect of winning the Nobel peace prize, Trump’s obsession, hovered once more into view.View image in fullscreenThat meant that once his plan was published Trump did not let go, but kept the pressure up on Hamas, warning of the group’s annihilation if it did not release the hostages in return for 250 Palestinians. But neither did Trump let Israel backtrack. Speed and momentum became of the essence.It was the seniority of the negotiators who went to the talks in Egypt that revealed the stars were finally aligning and Hamas would be forced into releasing all the hostages it held, even though Israel would not immediately leave all of Gaza. The scenes were extraordinary enough in that the Hamas negotiators were – albeit through mediators – holding talks with a government that had tried to assassinate them a month earlier. By the time they started the participants sensed a deal was unavoidable.The arrival of Kushner, the head of the intelligence office of the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, İbrahim Kalın, and the prime minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, confirmed a breakthrough was imminent.During the talks, Hamas negotiators led by its leader Khalil al-Hayya, Mohammad al-Hindi, the deputy secretary general of Islamic Jihad, and Jamil Mezher, the deputy secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, sought to clarify the names of the Palestinians to be released, the mechanism of the release of the Israeli hostages and the “day after” aspects of the agreement, poring over the maps showing a withdrawal of Israel’s forces.But Hamas was told while the critical “day after” principles stood, the details would have to wait for a second linked negotiation. The risk for Hamas now is that it loses its leverage upon handing over the hostages – and that fears Israel will then refuse to engage with the plans for Gaza’s future or find a pretext to restart the fighting will be realised. The domestic brake on Netanyahu resuming the fighting – the demand to save the hostages – would have gone.Here Trump’s continued willingness to keep up the pressure on Netanyahu was critical, and is acknowledged by Hamas in its statements referring to the US president as guarantor of the plan. On Fox News, Trump said he had told Netanyahu that “Israel cannot fight the world”, adding: “And he understands that very well.” He said: “You will see people coexisting and Gaza will be rebuilt.”By contrast Amit Segal, a journalist close to Netanyahu, said: “There’s no phase two. That’s clear to everyone, right? Phase two might happen someday, but it’s unrelated to what’s just been signed.”Many elements of Trump’s 20-point plan are being addressed by diplomats from the US, Europe and Arab states at a separate gathering in Paris on Wednesday.View image in fullscreenOn the agenda are issues such as the Hamas handover of weapons; its exclusion from future administrations; the mandate of an international peacekeeping force; the delivery of resumed aid flows; and the future relationship between Gaza and the West Bank as the nucleus of a future Palestinian state. On almost all these, there have been deep differences between Israel on the one hand, and Europe and the Arab states on the other.But in a promising sign, US officials will attend this meeting, suggesting Washington does not favour an armed status quo.At the centre of these discussions is Blair, who is to sit on the peace board or interim government that will oversee the Palestinian technocrats that help implement reconstruction plans. Blair will have to convince the Palestinian Authority that he is not offering a colonial-esque arrangement, as the former prime minister says it fears. But he is unlikely to do the job unless he has real powers, something he feels was not given when he was Middle East special envoy to the quartet.Arab leaders are seeking assurances that the international stabilisation force that eventually enters Gaza has a UN security council mandate, and that there is a clear plan to treat Gaza and the West Bank as one political entity.One of the most difficult issues unresolved in the rushed talks in Egypt is the timing of the Hamas weapons handover. The group may be willing to deliver its arms to an Arab-run authority, or a Palestinian civil police force, but not to Israel. Some diplomats even believe Hamas may feel the need to take a new political course, something it has been close to doing before. “Gazans are going to demand to know what the past two years were about,” one diplomat said.One diplomat involved in the talks said: “The tragedy is that this could have all been agreed 20 months ago, all the elements were there. The key Israeli objective – which is why it is a tragedy this war has gone on so long – was the removal of Hamas from future rule, and that was obtainable a long time ago.” More

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      Why Tony Blair just can’t kick the habit of imperial interference in the Middle East | Oliver Eagleton

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      “There are two types of politician,” Tony Blair observed in 2012. “Reality creators and reality managers.” While postwar politics was generally a matter of steady management, he claimed, the emerging order called for more creativity, “both in the economy and foreign policy”. Only a particular type of visionary leader was fit for the task.More than a decade later, Blair has now joined forces with the pre-eminent reality-creator, Donald Trump, to draft a hallucinatory 20-point plan for Gaza. It aims to turn the devastated Strip into what seems to resemble a colonial protectorate: cleansed of armed conflict, buzzing with development projects and a “special economic zone” through which foreign capital can flow, and overseen by an international “board of peace” with Trump himself as chair.The authors of the programme have not explained how they intend to impose it on a resistant population, or how they will persuade Hamas to disarm and concede defeat. So there is a high likelihood that the Blair-Trump fantasy will remain just that. Whatever its fortunes, though, it is a clear reflection of our historical moment, representing the most recent mutation of an imperial worldview that has already left a trail of destruction across the Middle East.For Blair, “the economy and foreign policy” have long been entwined. His military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan tried to spread the virtues of the market to supposedly backward nations. The privatisation of resources created new investment opportunities, while a wide range of profiteers, from weapons dealers to security contractors, made a killing off the wars themselves.Upon leaving office in 2007, Blair immediately took up a post as Middle East envoy for the so-called Quartet: the United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia. His work in Palestine displayed the same unerring faith in free enterprise. He proposed a series of “industrial parks” to attract foreign investment, advocated eccentric agribusiness and tourism schemes, and promoted other ventures that raised questions about possible conflicts of interest: while being paid £2m per year as a JP Morgan adviser, for example, he was accused of using his Quartet role to advance the interests of JP Morgan clients. (Blair denied the claims, insisting he did not know about the links between the bank he worked for and the companies it served.)As envoy, Blair often bypassed or rejected political solutions – fighting vigorously against Palestinian attempts to win statehood at the UN – and instead treated economics as the route to progress. His diplomatic activities seemed to be based on the notion that peace would naturally follow prosperity. If securing the latter was the task of the intrepid statesman, then strong ties to the business sector could perhaps be framed as an asset.Yet Blair’s tenure in the Middle East brought no diminution of the conflict. In 2012, a senior Palestinian official gave a succinct assessment of his record: “Useless, useless, useless.” Still, undeterred by failure and fond of dramatic political comebacks, the former prime minister now appears to be seeking to apply the same logic to Gaza. Since the early months of the war, he has reportedly been crafting his plan for the “day after”.Staff from his thinktank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), participated in a project that appeared to endorse ethnic cleansing in the territory and outlined what could be built atop its mass graves: a “Trump riviera”, an “Elon Musk smart manufacturing zone”, “regional datacentres”. Although Blair’s organisation claimed it had no meaningful involvement in the plan, and rejected the idea of displacing Palestinians, there are a number of continuities with his own blueprint, details of which were soon leaked to the press.Drawn up with the help of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the 21-page document suggests reconstructing Gaza through “public-private partnerships”, forged by a “commercially driven authority, led by business professionals and tasked with generating investable projects with real financial returns”. Hamas would be demobilised and a small unelected executive would be installed. This would include Blair himself in a prominent role, plus “leading international figures with executive and financial expertise” and “at least one qualified Palestinian representative (potentially from the business or security sector)”. An international stabilisation force would meanwhile put down “threats to public order”.View image in fullscreenBlair met Kushner and Trump in the White House on 27 August and his proposals got a warm welcome from the president. They have since been refined and repackaged as the Trump “peace plan”. As with previous versions of the initiative, the emphasis is on creating a Gaza that is “conducive to attracting investment”, and in which Israel will continue to reign supreme. Blair is primed to take charge of governing the Strip until some unspecified future point when day-to-day administration may be returned to a “reformed” Palestinian Authority.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe practical issues are glaring. Which states would be irresponsible enough to send troops to serve this novel dictatorship? How can it hope to sustain itself with no mandate nor legitimacy? Even more striking, however, is the extent to which the plan signals the overlap between Blair’s ethos and Trump’s.It is not unreasonable to suggest that Blair might see a business opportunity beneath the rubble of Gaza. To figure out who may benefit, we can look at his network of paymasters. Since 2021, Larry Ellison, founder of the tech company Oracle, has donated or pledged £257m to the TBI. The thinktank has, in turn, transformed into what one commentator has called an “Oracle dealership”: promoting the company’s software around the globe, including in impoverished countries where it has been criticised for potentially “trapping” and “indebting” users. Ellison is also a prominent supporter of Israel who has given millions to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces and, according to Haaretz, once offered Benjamin Netanyahu a seat on the Oracle board. Were Blair to rule over Gaza – perhaps establishing “regional datacentres” in line with the TBI-linked plan – it is possible that Ellison could wield major influence.The TBI has also received huge sums from the authoritarian regimes of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, while Blair has been given a lucrative advisory contract by the UAE state-owned investment firm Mubadala. All three states have readily endorsed the plan for Gaza. Once the besieged enclave is opened for investment, they may well be first in line. Blair’s work for these petro-monarchies tallies with his involvement in the fossil fuel industry, having taken cash from a BP-led consortium, the oil company PetroSaudi and the South Korean UI Energy Corporation, which has interests in the Middle East. Given that Israel has recently granted new licences to explore for oil and gas off the Mediterranean coast, such connections could prove significant later down the line.In one sense, then, this “peace plan” could simply be read as an extension of Blair’s belief in market-led development. Yet this chapter in the annals of colonialism also has a uniquely Trumpian twist. Visions of a new world order that underpinned earlier regime-change projects are gone. Here politics is reduced to dealmaking, grand strategy to crude self-interest. The fusion of public power and private profit is complete. Blair may be creating new realities, but few would want to inhabit them.

      Oliver Eagleton is an associate editor at the New Left Review and author of The Starmer Project: A Journey to the Right

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