Hamas blundered badly on 7 October 2023. Not only did it fail to anticipate Israel’s all-out military response against the two million Palestinians who live in Gaza, it also failed to anticipate its worldwide condemnation.
It gave Netanyahu the excuse to hammer Gaza with unimaginable brutality, using US weapons and munitions. In the months that followed, he succeeded in rendering it uninhabitable for Palestinians, hoping that it would trigger an exodus to neighbouring Arab countries. His enemy was not Hamas. It was all the Palestinians in Gaza. That’s why he killed men, women and children ruthlessly, claiming that they were either affiliated with Hamas or collateral damage.
Like Hamas, Netanyahu failed to anticipate how his war of mass destruction would bring umbrage on Israel. Nor did he realise that he would be charged with genocide by the International Criminal Court.
Yet President Trump honoured Netanyahu by inviting him as the first foreign guest of his current tenure. This was Netanyahu’s sixteenth visit to the White House, exceeding those by any foreign head of state.
At their joint press conference, Trump talked about how Gaza has become unliveable for Palestinians, without once mentioning Netanyahu’s role in making it unliveable. Netanyahu felt exonerated. He stood there, beaming.
Then Trump laid out a plan for “cleaning out” Gaza by moving the Palestinians out of there to neighbouring Arab countries. This was a plan that even Netanyahu had not dared to mention. Trump mentioned Jordan and Egypt as countries that should take them, since they were beneficiaries of large amounts of US aid. But he also dropped a hint that Saudi Arabia, which has the largest amount of barren (and uninhabitable) land in the Middle East, might wish to take them as well.
Trump went on to say that the US would simply “take over” Gaza. It would not pay for it, since there was nothing left there to be owned. After cleaning it out, and removing any unexploded bombs, it would build the world’s greatest Riviera on it. He seemed to echo the words of his son-in-law, who on visiting Gaza, had said that it was tailor-made to be a great waterfront resort.
When asked who would live there, Trump said “the world’s people, including Palestinians.” But a day or two later, he walked back that statement and said that Palestinians would not be allowed to return to Gaza.
When asked to comment on the idea, an exhilarated Netanyahu said: “President Trump has taken it to a new level.” He added that Trump was the greatest friend of Israel.
Netanyahu had always dreamt of a greater Israel. At the UN, just two years ago, he showed a map of Israel that included the occupied territories. It was a deliberate action, not even a Freudian slip.
Even before he was elected prime minister, he was opposed to the creation of a Palestinian State. He had supported the notion of Israel remaining a single state that spanned the boundaries that were granted to it by the United Nations in 1949, at the urging of President Truman and the British Government, which had first put forward the idea in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. But, deep down, he wanted to create a Greater Israel, which includes the West Bank, since it was the Judea and Samaria of the Bible.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal commends Trump’s plan and says that history is full of people being relocated. Perhaps the time has come to apply that philosophy equally to Palestinians and Israelis
Throughout his career, he has played to the ultra-right-wing elements in Israel, some of whom are devout Jews, but many are simply Zionists who don’t practice the tenets of the Torah. Indeed, many don’t even believe in God but feel that they have a God-given right to live on the land on Palestinian land.
Thus, when Israel won the Six Day War in 1967, it occupied the West Bank, the Sinai, and the Golan Heights. In 1979, when the Camp David Accords were signed, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt but kept the Gaza strip.
Life in the occupied territories, especially in Gaza, has been very constrained, and not just politically, but also culturally and socially. Many observers, including former US President Jimmy Carter, termed it apartheid. For the past two decades, life in Gaza has been akin to living in an open-air prison.
In the West Bank, violence by Israeli settlers is rising. President Biden imposed sanctions on the most extreme settlers, but Trump has lifted them. He has also resumed shipments of 2,000-pound bombs which had been suspended, saying Israel had paid for them, overlooking the billions of US aid to Israel had made the purchase possible. To further cement his ties to the Jewish state, Trump also decided to give $7 billion of aid to Israel.
Trump’s plan for Gaza has been criticised worldwide, and not just in the Arab world. China and Russia have been its strongest critics. Yet a recent article in the Wall Street Journal commends Trump’s plan and says that history is full of people being relocated. Perhaps the time has come to apply that philosophy equally to Palestinians and Israelis. There is no doubt both have suffered at each other’s hands. Violence is endemic to the region.
Before 1949, the area that forms Israel was Palestine. Jews were brought in from Europe in the hope that they would lead a better life. They could have lived with the Palestinians in peace, but they oppressed them and created enmity. The resulting violence harmed both.
If Palestinians will be relocated to neighbouring countries, how about relocating all Israelis to the US? There is plenty of open land in the US which could be used to create the 51st state in the US. It could be named Israel. That is much more feasible than acquiring Canada as the 51st state, something no Canadian has requested.
Indeed, this resettlement scenario would be analogous to the US offering immigration status to white settlers from South Africa. All of Gaza, the West Bank and Israel would be turned into the world’s biggest Riviera.
Of course, in the Middle East, such a 'Zero State' solution to the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio is completely unlikely. It is time to seriously take steps to implement the Two State solution that many US presidents going back to Carter have supported. Furthermore, such a solution is supported by 146 of the 193 member states of the United Nations.
Failing which, the US should insist that Israel implement the One State solution, which gives equal status to all citizens, regardless of ethnicity and religion.