It’s been a busy week for the second most annoying host in The Apprentice Cinematic Universe: he began to dismantle USAaid, banned transgender women from women’s sports and, last night, imposed sanctions on the international criminal court (ICC) for having had the temerity to issue arrest warrants for Israeli politicians suspected of war crimes in Gaza. But perhaps his most drastic decision was what he proposed to do with the strip itself.

Earlier this week, President Trump hosted Israel’s prime minister (and wanted war criminal) Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. The two men sat grinning in what can only be described as Satan’s waiting room as Trump announced his ambition for the US to take over and permanently resettle the Gaza Strip, turning it into “the Riviera of the Middle East”. Ethnic cleansing with a side of real estate? That’s the American way, baby.

It seems likely that Jared Kushner, husband to Ivanka Trump and the face of my sleep paralysis demon, played an influential role in shaping his father-in-law’s views of Gaza. In February last year, Kushner addressed the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and suggested that Israel ought to “move the people out and then clean [Gaza] up”. “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable,” he said, “if people would focus on building up livelihoods.” So luxury resorts for Gaza’s shoreline – and forcible transfer for Gaza’s people.

Kushner was a leading figure in establishing the Abraham Accords, a set of normalisation agreements between Israel and several Arab countries negotiated during Trump’s first term. These agreements, which basically sacrificed the Palestinian cause in return for closer economic ties, have been identified as one of the factors in Hamas’ all-out embrace of militancy (the logic being that If Palestinians were going to be sidelined anyway, what was the point in continuing to govern Gaza?).

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have already rejected Trump’s mooted plans for the wholesale ethnic cleansing of Gaza. But that doesn’t mean Kushner won’t be able to access Arab mega-bucks to finance the Miamification of Gaza once the dust settles.

Just how much of a policy shift does this mark from the Biden administration, though?

Neither the United States nor Israel are members of the International Criminal Court. Back in November, the then-president called the court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant “outrageous”.

In October 2023, he (or whoever was piloting him at the time) attempted to establish a “humanitarian corridor” for Palestinians to flee Gaza into the Sinai desert in Egypt. This ambition was squished by the Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, leading Biden to affirm that the position in Washington was to make sure that “Palestinians in Gaza are not displaced to Egypt or any other nation”.

So It’s a decisive change in policy – but not exactly brand-new territory for the US.