Aletho News

With US Or Against US? America’s ultimatum to Arab leaders

By Robert Inlakesh – Al Mayadeen – February 18, 2025

For 15 months, the majority of the Arab and Muslim World’s leaders sat back as the first live-streamed genocide took place inside the land of Palestine. Praying for a return to the status quo that once supported their rules, they have now been faced with an ultimatum. Now, it’s time to pick a side.

While US President Donald Trump presented his idea of clearing out Gaza’s civilian population, taking control of the territory, and reconstructing it, he did so using the tone of someone believing such actions would be humanitarian in nature. In reality, what was being proposed was an invasion, mass murder, and ethnic cleansing.

To be clear, the likelihood of such an invasion occurring is slim, not least because it involves an enormous amount of planning to implement correctly and there is simply no evidence that any moves are being made in this direction. However, the threat of such a monstrosity alone has proven enough to instantly mobilise the Arab and Muslim nation’s leaderships in a way we have not witnessed in decades.

Suddenly, they woke up, after behaving as if the people of the Gaza Strip were not being mass murdered on an industrial scale, on the land of the Prophets, on the land of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Holy Sepulchre. Not even the invasion of Lebanon, the murder of some 3,000 people, nor the occupation of more Syrian lands, nor the threats of annexation in the West Bank, had mobilised these leaders. The screams of Gaza’s youths, the tears of Gaza’s mothers, the honor stripped from the tortured and raped, nothing registered.

But now, for the first time, we feel a pulse. Why? Because everyone’s head is on the chopping block. A glimpse was caught of what Donald Trump’s proposed future could cause and the likes of Jordanian King Abdullah II realised they are just another Arab in the eyes of the Israeli-US alliance, nothing more and nothing less. The only reason they remain is because they capitulate. This was Trump’s true message; it was not so much as a threat but a reminder.

Without delving too deep into the issue of an American invasion of Gaza, it would prove disastrous in so many ways that it seems unrealistic on the face of things. This is not least due to the enormous costs involved in a US occupation that could travel north of hundreds of billions in US taxpayer dollars, while the US soldier casualties would be high and place enormous domestic pressure on Trump. This would likely be America’s new Vietnam, as the star-spangled coffins would trigger outrage across the States.

A US invasion would also fail to achieve the objectives set out by Trump, because Palestinians will not leave willingly and this could easily turn into a situation where the US army picks up from where the Israelis left off; inflicting Genocide. If the ethnic cleansing would work partially, the destabilizing effects would be horrific.

As mentioned above, the majority of the leaders of Arab and Muslim nations may have stood aside and allowed the Gaza Genocide to unfold, yet their populations are now more motivated to defeat the Zionist occupiers than ever before.

Opening the ‘gates of hell’

When Hamas announced that it would postpone the weekly prisoner exchange arrangement until the Israelis allowed sufficient humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, in accordance with the ceasefire agreement, Donald Trump’s reaction was to threaten opening the “gates of hell”. Despite the threats that came from Trump and Netanyahu, the Israelis caved under pressure and were quickly set to allow the prisoner exchange to go ahead as planned.

Whether the US President is truly the mastermind behind his own rhetoric or not, which is quite frankly unlikely, reading between the lines has actually helped achieve four objectives:

1.  The outrageous and illegal proposals that Trump has put forth have helped save the image of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu in front of his extremist coalition.
2. The rhetoric has therefore given the Zionist regime more wiggle room to reach the second phase of the agreement, as the more extreme elements in the regime now feel as if they will get to complete their ethnic cleansing, settlement, and occupation endeavors.
3. Upon the initial conclusion of the ceasefire agreement, the momentum in terms of popular understanding of power dynamics – manufactured as a result of the ongoing media war – had Hamas painted as the victor and the Zionist regime a loser. Trump managed to suddenly shift the conversation and manipulate popular understandings of who is in control and “winning” the war.
4. It has brought together the Arab and Muslim leaders who were previously inactive or distant from the post-war Gaza plan.

Donald Trump is actively speaking as if he is a more extreme Zionist fanatic than Netanyahu, but is yet to follow through on any of his threats. If he continues to speak in such a way, it is possible that the US will have to start following through on some of the President’s rhetoric, however, in order for Washington to maintain credibility.

The reality in the region is that the leaderships of West Asia are still trying to revert back to the status quo that existed pre-October 7, 2023. Now they are having to come to terms with the fact that this is no longer an option.

Although this may seem hyperbolic, the “Israel” that everyone knew from before is no more, it no longer exists. To those who have studied the issue closely, this was somewhat inevitable. Right now, we are living through a scenario that occurred prior to 1948, where the Zionist regime had to try and define itself. For some time, they managed through their military superiority to pacify those around them or overcome armed confrontations with brute force, all while developing their economy and pretending as if they were operating a European State in the Eastern Mediterranean.

This was never going to last, not least because the Palestinian to Jewish population inside the borders of historic Palestine had become roughly 50/50. On top of this, the fastest growing Jewish group has been the Haredim (Ultra-Orthodox), who do not serve in the army and don’t even believe in the worth of modern Nation States. Yet, all Israelis wanted the West Bank and to rule over occupied Jerusalem. With land concessions to the Palestinian Authority off the table, there were only ever going to be two options that the Zionists were going to have to choose from: Commit a genocide or mass ethnic cleansing; or both.

With the rise of right-wing nationalist religious fundamentalism, the secular-leaning right-wing system that modelled itself off of “Western Liberal Democracies” suddenly found itself under threat. Prior to October 7, 2023, this was a dominant theme in Israeli politics, where the religious ultra-nationalists were challenging the somewhat contradictory vision that was held onto by around half of the Israeli Jewish population.

What happened here is that the secular-leaning Israelis were trying to cling onto their delusion that they could simply live in a liberal Jewish supremacist Apartheid colony forever and expect a level of stability that they had long enjoyed due to the overwhelming power of their military. On the other hand, the extremist right-wing coalition of Benjamin Netanyahu that won power in late 2022 began to present an alternative vision in a way that hadn’t been done before.

Then came the wakeup call, Hamas launched Operation al-Aqsa Flood, and the Zionists were forced to wrestle with the fact that you cannot continue oppressing the Palestinian people and expect them to simply go away or give up on their struggle for national liberation. Because of the racist collective narcissism trained into the minds of the Zionist settlers, they reacted in the most emotional way possible. This is why Zionists in the West have also been working overtime to suppress any criticism; their racism is being challenged.

The knee-jerk reaction of the Zionists was to think “how dare these people challenge our supremacy”. For the first time in its history, the Zionist Entity had been militarily torn to pieces and proven incapable of overcoming an indigenous resistance force armed primarily with light weapons and self-produced armaments. US-Israeli supremacy in West Asia appeared to be crumbling, so the occupying entity and its imperialist backer responded in the only way they know how, mass murder.

What happened in Gaza was a frenzy of racist violence that was supposed to “teach a lesson” to the Arab and Muslim peoples that they will remain forever inferior. The genocide was calculated to send a message: resist our supremacy and you will die.

Two things are now happening:

1. The “Israel” of the past died, now it is scrambling to redefine and recreate itself.
2. The US is attempting to revive its efforts to transform the region through normalisation and the construction of new trade routes, but is going to do so using maximum force in order to put down any semblance of dissent.

So where does this all fit into Donald Trump’s crazy threats? It’s simple. The United States is projecting its intention to remodel the entire region. This message is clear, yet it won’t likely come through a US invasion of Gaza, rather from putting tremendous pressure on the nations of the region to capitulate and work as slaves of the US-Israeli alliance.

If Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia do not capitulate, their leaderships will be replaced by ones that do. In the event that either a US invasion of Gaza or mass ethnic cleansing occurred, Egypt would be destabilised and likely face a limited Israeli incursion into the Sinai, while the Jordanian government could be toppled, or at the very least the nation will be totally destabilised, then, in the backdrop, Saudi Arabia could also be in the cross-hairs.

Hundreds of thousands of Gazans being ethnically cleansed into the Kingdom of Jordan would inevitably birth a new Palestinian Resistance front also, which could happen regardless at this point.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine between 1947-49 left a major scar on the Arab World as a whole, one that has never healed. What just occurred in Gaza is a much deeper wound that will inspire Resistance until the end of the Zionist regime. Although it is often not factored into the equation, the Israelis also murdered 3,000 people in Lebanon too, including the late Secretary General of Hezbollah, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah.

A mistake often made by the imperialists and settler colonialists is assuming that because a population appears pacified today, it will also be tomorrow. In reality, revolutions and resistance movements take time, with mass mobilisation sometimes occurring due to what could be perceived as mere chance when it emerges.

Meanwhile, the US is now offering the same option to the Arab and Muslim World that was presented by George W. Bush Jr. upon his announcement of the so-called “War on Terror”: “You are either with us or with the terrorists!”

It may be presented in a different way, but the truth is that there is no way to play the role of holding a middle-ground position. Now is the time, submit to being a slave, even losing your territory, pride and stability; or you decide to resist. The problem for a nation like Jordan is that if you resist, you may also be overthrown.

Donald Trump’s comments for now were designed to force the Arab and Muslim leaders to come to a joint consensus and present an alternative plan to his insane proposal, which appears to be working. Interestingly enough, it appears as if this is actually helping to allow for the Gaza ceasefire to reach phase 2.

Unfortunately for these leaders, the Palestinian issue they now face is not over with Gaza. In the event of the Israelis annexing the West Bank, this could eventually trigger the downfall of the Palestinian Authority and/or initiate a major uprising. In such a scenario, the Israeli military could then seek to ethnically cleanse large swathes of the West Bank too. The destination of these displaced refugees could also end up being Jordan.

Even former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned, in his second last address about foreign policy, of the collapse of the normalization agreements between the Zionist regime and its neighbours in Amman and Cairo. Speaking at a conference organised by the Atlantic Council, Blinken used the first part of his speech to espouse pure Israeli propaganda, before speaking candidly on a few issues towards the latter half of his address. He stressed that without a so-called “Two-State solution”, the normalisation deals with Egypt and Jordan could collapse.

If a resistance front opens inside Jordan, it could be the beginning of the end for the Zionist regime. Jordan shares the largest, mostly undefended, land border with occupied Palestine. Once a major resistance movement is rooted there, the war would expand in such a way that no one is capable of predicting. It is also clear that the Zionists seek to continue their aggression against Iran, Yemen, and to degrade Hezbollah at all costs in Lebanon.

All of what is mentioned above will not likely just unfold overnight, everything takes time. Yet there is no question that the war is far from over.

February 18, 2025 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Middle East, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment