Trump points the way to a future for Israel and the Arabs
Trump, who noted there have been centuries-long conflicts in the region, said Saturday, “You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing.” He continued: “I don’t know, something has to happen, but it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished, and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change.” The president, a former property developer, said the potential housing “could be temporary” or “could be long term.”
In one short statement president Trump has opened the door to a future settlement of the Israel/Palestine conflict which in the long term has more chance of creating a peaceful future than the fantasies perpetrated currently by some western leaders in the form of a two state solution,
The possible implications of Trump’s statement are far reaching. Taken to their conclusion they imply that the whole postwar programme for Palestine statehood should be dismissed and replaced by a peaceful dispersal of Palestinians who do not wish to live in Gaza and the West Bank into other Arab countries.
It would mean an end to the ‘right of return’ which has applied since the UN backed creation of the state of Israel in 1948. It would mean an end to the permanent refugee status of not only the original Arabs who left or fled from Israel in 1948, an event Arabs refer to as the ‘Nakba’ or ‘catastrophe’, but also their descendants. The granting of refugee status to the descendants of refugees is an anomaly, as it does not apply to any refugees anywhere else in the world.
The Palestinians in Gaza, led by Hamas, and the majority of Arabs living in the West Bank who support the Hamas led offensive against Israel on October 7, through their barbarism and intransigence, their desire to eliminate Israel and all the Jews who live there ‘From the river to the sea’, and their threats to attack Israel ‘again and again’ in the future have forfeited any claims they may have ever had to statehood. How should we expect Israel to think of allowing a state to exist on their borders which threatens their very existence?
In all the various peace talks since 1948 the Palestinians have rejected any of the various forms of statehood offered to them. Since 1948 the closest thing Palestinians have ever had to a state has been Gaza, after the Israeli military and civilians pulled out in 2005, albeit that it could only function with the aid and support of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA), itself heavily infiltrated by Hamas supporters. During that time, under the leadership of the elected Hamas government instead of focusing on the wellbeing and economic development of the people of Gaza, the Hamas government instead used its resources to build a vast underground infrastructure to support a war against Israel.
Hamas through this war on Israel has wrought death and destruction, a true ‘catastrophe’, on its own people and left only the ‘demolition site’ Trump referred to. The streams of Gazans currently wandering from south to north in Gaza to find what is left of their homes are doing so because of Hamas’s war on Israel. It is extremely unlikely that this will be the end of their travails while Islamism continues to reign as the supreme ideology in Gaza and the West Bank.
There will be Gazans who want to escape the destruction and the likelihood of further conflict, Whether Trump can find the means and the resolve to get Egypt to open its currently closed borders to Gazans or to get Jordan and other Arab countries to grant citizenship to them, something they have always refused to do, remains to be seen. But it is heartening that some realism is entering the discussions about the future, rather than the magical thinking of the two state solution.