Trump’s plan to “ethnically cleanse” Palestinians in Gaza is absurd, says Hassan Mneimneh, a scholar and analyst with the Middle East Institute.

“It is obscene. But in terms of it being proposed, we’ve witnessed more than a year of impunity on the part of Israel, enabled by the United States,” Mneimneh tells Al Jazeera.

“The Biden administration was somehow shy in this enablement and participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza because it pretended that there were higher purposes at play. With the Trump administration, the pretension and claims are not there,” he said.

Mneimneh said Trump’s comments are an abject display of force that ignores and bypasses any law and speaks of Palestinian territory in a trivial fashion as if the US is entitled to claim Gaza the way he has made claims on Greenland and Panama.

The difference, he added, is that tens of thousands of people have been killed in Gaza and their way of life has been destroyed by Israel’s invasion.

“Can he actually take action? Evidently, because in support of Israel, he would do that. There will absolutely be resistance. It’s not a done deal but it’s a passing from the rules-based order towards a new reality in which the US and Israel present themselves as being right.”