Even by his own wild standards, Donald Trump shocked the world on Tuesday evening by suggesting the US should take over the Gaza Strip, displace millions of Palestinians and turn the territory into the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’.
It was a plan casually announced by the US president and immediately denounced around the world. In particular, the idea that the Palestinians of Gaza should be resettled in neighbouring Arab countries seems to amount to a form of ethnic cleansing.
As the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, explains, it was just the latest move by Trump in a week that has rattled US allies and adversaries alike. The Trump administration has threatened trade wars with the US’s biggest trading partners. At the same time, the president has in effect frozen USAid, the largest aid organisation in the world.
As Helen Pidd hears, it is a new age of chaos that governments around the world seem barely prepared for.
