Trump’s second experience of high office has already revealed a destructive geopolitical creativity, and an imperialist cast of mind, that will have surprised some of his most dedicated supporters. But his latest pronouncement on the Gaza Strip is in a league of its own, so outlandish that one has to wonder about the state of the president’s mind. Trump, channelling his former profession as a real estate tycoon, has proposed that Gaza’s two million inhabitants be expelled en masse so that the Strip can, like some all-inclusive resort, be transformed into a “Riviera of the Middle East”, adding for good measure: “We will own it.” This isn’t some gag about annexing Greenland. Trump proposes nothing less than ethnic cleansing on a colossal scale. Gazans won’t just be driven from their homeland. It will cease to be their homeland and become an appendage of the United States.
Who could possibly endorse this scheme? For one, Israel’s far right, both religious and secular. It dreams of inflicting upon Gaza what has been going on in the West Bank for decades, and which has accelerated to a feverish pace under the governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu: the building of settlements and the appropriation of land. This is the vision for Gaza shared by the likes of Itamar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu’s former national security minister, who quit to protest Israel’s ceasefire agreement with Hamas, and his finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who remained in the cabinet only after Netanyahu promised him that the ceasefire would not actually mean the end of the Gaza war. Israelis of their political persuasion don’t want to just re-establish the 21 settlements in Gaza that then prime minister Ariel Sharon dismantled in 2005. They want to build many more settlements, and much deeper inside the territory, as a prelude to annexation.
Trump has, somehow, managed to outdo the Israeli far right in ambition and brutality. But a moment’s reflection shows that his proposal is as preposterous as it is unworkable. Does Gaza need a massive, multi-year reconstruction? Certainly. About two-thirds of its structures – including apartment buildings, schools, mosques, hospitals and shops – have been either demolished or destroyed, reduced to 42 million tons of rubble. Without an ambitious, long-term rebuilding plan, Gazans will never be able to live even a minimally adequate life. But resurrecting their homeland doesn’t require expelling them from it. On the contrary: involving them in a rebuilding project would provide them jobs and incomes, while also harnessing their intimate knowledge of Gazan society.
Author
Rajan
Menon
Non-Resident Senior Fellow
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