Donald Trump seems to believe he is King of the World… his crackpot Gaza plan makes world far more dangerous

THERE goes Donald Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize!

Is the orange one the President of the USA or the King of the World? Trump seems to believe it is the latter.

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By what authority does Trump plan to “take over” and “own” Gaza and turn it into the “riviera of the Middle East”?

Gaz-a-Lago! Is Donald truly suggesting — as he ­certainly seems to be — that two million Palestinians will be forced to leave their homeland while he builds a blingy resort on top of the mass graves?

Trump insists the American military will not be required at Gaz-a-Lago.

So I guess the Israeli Defence Force will be staying in Gaza . . . forever.

President Trump is currently giddy with a Napoleonic hubris.

Now that even his former fiercest critics — like our laughable Foreign Secretary David Lammy — are shamelessly grovelling at Trump’s feet, the US president deludes himself into believing that the world can be remade in his own image.

As Trump’s former enemies and his long-time allies are apparently all reluctant to disagree with him, let us be bold enough to state the obvious.

The ruins of Gaza need rebuilding — not ethnic cleansing.

And how can Gaz-a-Lago please anyone except the most right-wing headbangers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet?

If I was an American citizen, I would have voted for Trump.

Give me Donald over Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or Keir Starmer any day of the week.

But Trump can’t act like a Manhattan real estate developer when facing the bloody tides of history.

In his first term as President, Trump was famously — laudably — against American military intervention. Bad for business, dude.

But turning Gaza into a beach resort for Israelis sounds like a good way of starting World War Three.

Trump seems to be totally ignorant of the history of the Middle East.

The Palestinians, the wider Muslim world and indeed anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see that the removal of Palestinians from Gaza would be nothing less than a second Nakba — catastrophe — the Palestinian term for their displacement when the state of Israel was formed in the shadow of the Holocaust.

Mr President — your dumb idea is unworkable.

President’s flunkies are already backtracking

Jordan and Egypt will never take in millions of Palestinians, many of them young, radicalised and angry after seeing Gaza pummelled into rubble following the Hamas atrocities of October 7.

If Trump believes that the mass ­murder, rape and abductions of 7/10 has pushed the long-term dream of the two-state solution to breaking point — then he is right.

But that doesn’t make Gaz-a-Lago a good idea.

Putting a smug smirk on Benjamin Netanyahu’s face is not the route to peace in the Middle East

Tony Parsons

Saudi Arabia is never going to pay for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Will the American taxpayer?

And although Trump’s flunkies are already backtracking on Gaz-a-Lago (although he’s not!), just saying this garbage out loud has already given the green light to any dictator on planet Earth keen on ­occupying sovereign nations.

If America can “take over” and “own” Gaza, then what is to stop China “taking over” and “owning” Taiwan? Or Russia “taking over” and “owning” Ukraine?

Trump’s crackpot plan does not simply violate all international law — it makes this world a far more dangerous place.

Yes, we understand that sometimes Trump bellows outrageous statements that are really just the opening gambit in the latest deal to be done.

And Trump has a deserved reputation as a peacemaker.

After more than a year of death and destruction, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was only hammered out when President Trump was heading for the Oval Office.

But putting a smug smirk on Benjamin Netanyahu’s face is not the route to peace in the Middle East.

Ironically, many Arab Americans voted for Trump because they wanted to punish the ­Democrats for supporting military aid for Israel.

But all hopes that President Trump would be a wise and even-handed peacemaker were dashed this week.

Trump appears to be advocating a one-state solution in the Middle East — the state of Israel, with millions of Palestinians exiled.

Yes, Israel has every right to defend itself.

But the Palestinian people have the right to a home.

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IF Sir Keir Starmer sounds like an I-speak-your-weight machine with dead batteries AFTER seeing voice coach Leonie Mellinger, then imagine what he must have sounded like before.

NIGEL FARAGE says he will prevent “lunatics and maniacs” from joining Reform UK, who this week edged ahead of Labour and the Tories in a poll.

If Nigel succeeds in purging Reform’s Fruitcake Tendency, I can’t see who can stop him marching all the way to Downing Street.

The polls do not lie. Reform are refreshing the parts of the British population that Labour and the Tories just can’t reach.

How to cut the Ballas-t

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“I’VE realised the body doesn’t need as much food as I keep stuffing in my face,” confesses Strictly’s head judge, Shirley Ballas.

It sounds like such a simple statement.

And yet, as we all struggle to shrug off the post-Christmas lumber, it could hardly be more profound. As a nation, we are overweight because we eat far too much.

“The first year on the Strictly Come Dancing tour, I gained 10lb in just one month,” says Shirley.

“Then I realised. ‘You cannot eat breakfast , lunch and dinner, Shirley - you are over the age of 60!’ I had oversized portions and three meals a day, plus all the treats that go with it.”

Don’t we all? And then we wonder why our trousers seem to have shrunk.

Shirley Ballas stays a trim size ten by limiting what she eats.

She follows 18-6 intermittent fasting – meaning not eating for 18 hours and restricting her one meal a day to within a six-hour window.
We hear a lot about fat jabs these days.

Head judge Shirley, 64, suggests an alternative and radical long-term solution – self-discipline.

I wonder if it will ever catch on?

One and homely George

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GEORGE MICHAEL fans make pilgrimages to his Mill House in Goring-on-Thames, Oxon, where he died of heart disease aged 53 on Christmas Day 2016.

Or to his house in Highgate, North West London – which is in the news this week because it has been allowed to fall into a state of disrepair.

But long before the bolthole in Goring and mansion in Highgate, George lived near the latter in a modern, white home on a private street in Hampstead.

And despite his impressive property portfolio – he owned a stud farm in Hertfordshire, where he had his 30th birthday party, and gaffs from St Tropez in the South of France to Santa Barbara in California – it is the white house in Hampstead that I think of as George Michael’s home.

In the last days of Wham! and early years of his massive solo success, it was his sanctuary.

His housekeeper was Lesley, his beloved mum. His roommate was Hippy, a sweet, wild Labrador who enjoyed snacking on the house’s wall-to-wall white carpet.

A new Aston Martin that George never drove was parked in the garage.

There was also a battered Range Rover outside, and every morning George and Hippy would drive to nearby Hampstead Heath for walkies.

Occasionally, a lone fan would sit outside, promising that they would go away if George gave them a kiss on the cheek (he always obliged).

Sometimes, we would have tea and biscuits looking out the back window (George always skipped the biscuits if he had a photoshoot coming up) and watch a solitary photographer crawling through the undergrowth.

But in that post-Faith era when George Michael was possibly the biggest star on the planet, the outside world largely left him alone in that white house on a quiet street in Hampstead.

I don’t know what George’s life was like in Goring or Highgate, or at any of his other properties.

But I knew the guy well when he lived in his first real-home house, in Hampstead.

And George Michael was blissfully happy there.

Build a fitting legacy

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THE residents of Grenfell Tower were working-class Londoners who came from every corner of the planet.

The devastating 2017 fire in the West London tower block claimed 72 lives – although the true number is almost certainly higher than that official figure.

They had built a community in what turned out to be a death trap. Safety standards were shoddy.

The deadliest residential fire in the UK since World War Two was started by a faulty fridge-freezer.

When Grenfell burned, a community was destroyed too.

As the Government announces plans to demolish Grenfell, the families who lived there deserve to be remembered with more than the proposed memorial.

Grenfell was a working-class community living next door to some of the most expensive property in the capital.

Honour the memory of those who died by rebuilding that community.

That would be the best memorial of all.

And if the working-class Londoners who lived and died in that tower block are forgotten, then the tragedy of Grenfell will be compounded.