The Trump administration’s foreign policy has yet another body to lay at its doorstep.
In October, Newsweek cited a nonpartisan monitoring group, Airwars, who released a bombshell report in August on the Trump military coalition’s bodycount in the Middle East: In only 7 months since entering office, Trump’s coalition has killed more civilians than Obama’s did in 8 years--with a staggering increase in the amount of women and children killed.
But now we know that Trump’s involvement in the Middle East isn’t just causing massive amounts of collateral damage in airstrikes, it’s also causing deaths on the ground of civilians protesting against Trump’s announcement claiming Jerusalem is the rightful capital of Israel.
According to PBS, the death toll in Gaza alone had already reached 4 people only three days after Trump’s announcement. And, according to Al Jazeera, skirmishes between Hamas, who called for a third Intifada in light of the news, have resulted in air raids and rocket strikes against military and civilian targets. The Middle East is in the midst of a religiously-fueled domestic crisis unlike any seen since the beginning of the Palestinian civil war in 1947.
Amid a backdrop of carnage and chaos, a funeral was held today for Palestinian protestor Abu Thuraya who was shot and murdered while leading a protest from his wheelchair (Abu Thuraya had both of his legs severed by an Israeli air strike in 2008) by Israeli forces who were “selectively firing towards main instigators” of the protest, leading to 40 Palestinians being wounded—4 of them mortally. The Palestinian bodycount since the December 6th announcement is now at 8.
Expect this Intifada to result in much more blood to be spilled, and expect the Trump administration to ignore the pot that they just stirred and set to boil.