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| Condemnation of Trump's Gaza proposal (NBC) |
In what has to be the most radical departure from American foreign policy in my lifetime, President Trump has proposed that the U.S. take control of Gaza, which would be handed over by Israel after Gaza’s refugees are resettled in neighboring countries.
Going from the creation of a Palestinian state (consisting of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza) to what seems like a Ben-Gvir solution to the conflict is about as radical a departure from previous policy as one can get. It has drawn ridicule and condemnation from foreign leaders worldwide, including from the Democratic side of the congressional political aisle.
That was also reflected in the shock and thinly disguised horror expressed by mainstream media personalities and their so-called left-leaning or Arabist experts they found. They expressed outrage at what some of them termed ethnic cleansing akin to what Nazi Germany did to the Jews before implementing the Final Solution. In any case, just about all of them said that it would never be accepted. Not by the refugees in question nor by any of the possible nations that could, in theory, take them in.
Republicans - even members of Trump's own administration - were caught off guard and seemed just as shocked, although most of them put as positive a spin on it as possible.
It is worthwhile to take a deeper dive into this out-of-the-box proposal to see what it is actually about and to analyze whether it is as horrific and unfeasible an idea as those reactions have indicated.
As I understand the proposal, Trump wants to transform Gaza from a pile of rubble into the Riviera of the Middle East. However, contrary to what all the Trump-hating cynics claim, he does not intend this to be a playground for the wealthy of the world. Whether rich Israelis, Americans, or Gulf State Arabs. While one part of it will be like that (which would produce decent revenue for Gaza), much of it will be developed for residential living, serving Palestinians across a variety of income levels, from modest to wealthy. It will be a planned community specifically designed for Palestinians, both culturally and religiously.
When completed, it could serve as a model community for a future Palestinian state (should they ever manage to stop trying to eradicate Israel). In the meantime, Palestinians would be housed in comfortable homes among their co-religionists in other countries for a few years. Knowing that when Gaza is fully revamped to its projected glory, they would live as well or better than their neighbors in other Muslim countries.
Why not just let them live there and build around them? Imagine a major remodel of your house while you’re living in it. A remodel that would require shutting off all utilities, with no working sewers. The logistics of rebuilding Gaza with a million and a half people milling around with no water, no toilets, no heat, and no electricity would make it nigh impossible for construction to take place.
To me this idea seems like the best possible solution for a people who have for decades lived in conditions that were less than fully hospitable. Long before Hamas caused their current catastrophe, turning barely livable conditions into an unlivable hellscape.
By way of comparison, consider victims in this country who have lost their homes and neighborhoods due to natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, or fires. They have nowhere to go and cannot live in the rubble that was once their homes. Imagine if FEMA told them they could move into comfortable homes in nearby towns until their homes and neighborhoods were restored - at levels far better than they were before their tragic losses.
How many of them would turn that down? My guess is that all of them would embrace that generous offer immediately, with tremendous gratitude to their benefactors. The world would applaud the American government's amazing generosity toward its people.
I see no practical difference between the two scenarios, and yet, this same offer has been vehemently rejected by Palestinian refugees and condemned by the world. Even though the alternative for now is to live in a virtual hell that is unsafe from debris and possible unexploded bombs scattered all across Gaza. This is what they prefer over a most generous offer.
What this proposal also amounts to is what Israel’s intent was when it handed over Gaza to the Palestinians. The hope was that they would build the city into the kind of paradise similar to what Trump now envisions. But they did not do that. Hamas took over and, with the support of Gaza’s Palestinians, decided to build hundreds of miles of terror tunnels from which they would attack Israel. That was their thank you for being handed self-determination in one city as a model for a future state.
There was another strategy behind not building up Gaza when they got it: They wanted to live in substandard conditions so that the world would see it and blame Israel. Just as they celebrated when ‘innocent’ Palestinians were killed in airstrikes against Hamas targets embedded in densely populated civilian areas. (Many of whom were not civilians at all but Hamas terrorists dressed in civilian clothing.)
Looked at this way, I don’t see how anyone can condemn this proposal. It is the most generous and humane option for Gaza’s refugees that anyone could imagine. The world should be endorsing it and helping the U.S. implement it.
To say it is implausible is one thing—and that may, in fact, be true. But it should not be condemned any more than the Marshall Plan to rebuild Germany after the Allies bombed major cities into the same kind of rubble that Israel did to Gaza.
If this idea were supported by the rest of the civilized world as it should be, there is a chance that it could even be implemented. If world pressure were brought to bear who knows. But the world remains stubbornly married to the two-state solution. Anything else is seen as a distraction.
The history of Arab hatred toward the Jewish people, the entitlement to all of Palestine that Palestinians feel, their refusal to accept anything less than full victory, and the length they have and will go to achieve it - are all fundamental truths that we must all realize. At least if we are ever going to find a solution that will achieve the desired end we all want: Peace in the Middle East.
