Trump has a point on Gaza

Why the US president’s seemingly crazy suggestion is the only viable solution to the Palestinian problem

THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | For one and a half years, the world has watched in utter helplessness the merciless genocidal campaign Israel is conducting in Gaza to cleanse it of Palestinians. South Africa’s attempt to seek international justice was not based on hope but desperation. With America and her Western European allies backing Israel to the hilt, there is not a chance in hell that the court will rule against Israel in a substantive manner. Even if it did, Israel will just ignore it. The ICJ has not army or police to enforce her decisions. That is the reality of international law, it is also the reality of all power.

So, what is the solution for the long-suffering Palestinians? Only one man, Donald Trump, has made a bold, realistic and practicable even though partial solution to the problem. He has suggested that the USA should take over Gaza and turn it into a Riviera of the Middle East. He has suggested that Arab neighbors of Israel, to wit Egypt and Jordan, take the Palestinians and make them citizens. I would add to his suggestion that even the West Bank be emptied, at least significantly, to create room for Israel.

I am aware that such a solution of ethnic cleansing of Palestine offends the moral sensibilities of the world. It is sadistic and cruel to the extreme. But what is the alternative? For 70 years, the alternative has been to keep Palestinians in refugee camps and/or under Israel military occupation. It is the most brutal, sadistic and inhumane rule human beings have endured in history. In contemporary history, it only rivals America’s genocide of native Americans and enslavement of black people, Josef Stalin’s rule in the USSR, Adolf Hitler’s concentration camps and Pol Pot’s rule in Cambodia. As many of its victims have testified, South Africa apartheid did not reach the levels of barbaric proportion as Isreal in Palestine.

The continued subjugation of Palestinians in their land must end. Yet the morally acceptable solution of a two-state solution is unworkable. It is neither feasible nor politically practicable given Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the international balance of power. The second morally acceptable solution is a one liberal-democratic state of both the Jews and the Palestinians. Such a solution cannot work because there is no trust between the two peoples. Instead, there is deeply entrenched bitterness, grievance leading to hate, especially among the Palestinians, for democracy to work.

Israel is backed to the hilt by a greatest power on earth, America. The US has given Israel a blank cheque to do as it wishes. This has allowed Israel to trample the Palestinians under its feet through sadistic cruelty that man has not experienced since barbarian times. The aims of the state of Israel are clear: to control the entire land from the Jordan river to the sea to create what they call “Greater Israel”. The Palestinians obstruct that aim because they form 50% of the population. That makes it difficult for a state defined in religious and tribal terms “the Jewish state” to have democracy especially because Palestinians are breeding faster.

The only alternative to such a religiously and ethnically defined state is to reduce the percentage of Palestinians to 20% in Greater Israel. This is not a random number I picked from the blue. It is stated in the founding documents of Israel. However, Israel has been timid to pursue this policy to its logical conclusion – a massive genocidal campaign to kill and/or starve to death a humongous number of Palestinians in a barbarian campaign forcing the rest to flee the land. It has been trying it in Gaza for one and a half years, but it has clearly failed because international eyes are on it.

Gaza has been occupied by Palestinians 100%. It is a small strip of land, too small and surrounded largely by Israel and a small border with Egypt. Many (if not most) people in Gaza are refugees from Israel proper. They are entitled, under international law, to return to Israel proper. They still have dreams of repossessing their homes and lands taken away during the Arab-Israel wars of 1947 and 1967. Therefore, Palestinians in Gaza, for as long as they live in Gaza, will remain a thorn in the feet of Israel. This means these episodic eruptions of barbarian violence will not stop between the two sides will not stop – ever.

The West Bank has over 800,000 Israeli settlers. If you look at the map of the spread of the settlements, they make the creation of a Palestinian state there practically impossible. If such a state is created what happens to these settlers? Can they be evicted and returned to Israel proper? Only a naive idealist can say that Israel, knowing its internal politics, can evict all of them to create this mythical Palestinian state. Jewish settlers have strong allies inside Israel proper and form a powerful voting bloc. Can they stay in the West Bank as citizens of Palestine? They and Israel would never allow that. So, Israel would be forced to provide them security using the very same military occupation it has today.

This is what makes Trump’s solution, if extended to the West Bank, the only viable one even though morally repugnant. Massive displacement of populations has happened throughout human history. At the end of World War Two, millions of Germans were forcefully chased out of many parts of eastern Europe like Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc. their homes burned, their cattle and belongings taken. During the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, similar massive displacement of Hindus and Moslems took place on both sides. It was brutal and inhumane, but it has worked.

Trump’s proposal should be taken seriously and can be done humanely. Many Africans take high risks to cross the sea in small boats to get to Europe. Many Latin Americans walk through jungles to enter the USA. America, Europe, and rich Arab states can offer citizenship to rich Palestinians to settle in their countries. They can put up a $300 billion fund to provide $300,000 to each of the one million poor Palestinian households in Gaza and the West Bank willing to migrate to Europe, the USA, or other Arab countries. If 80% can accept (and I think they would; besides there are more Palestinians in the diaspora than in Palestine) the problem would be solved, and the world would be saved the horrors of Israel’s occupation.

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amwenda@ugindependent.co.ug