On Sunday, Trump again expressed his intention to “own” Gaza, telling reporters on board his presidential plane: “I’m committed to buying and owning Gaza. As far as us rebuilding it, we may give it to other states in the Middle East to build sections of it… Other people may do it through our auspices, but we’re committed to owning it, taking it, and making sure that Hamas doesn’t move back. There’s nothing to move back into.”
Since Trump made his bombshell remarks outlaying his bizarre plan for Gaza, all parties concerned and experts on the nearly eight-decade Arab-Israeli conflict found it hard to comprehend what he was talking about. It was even hard to determine which questions to start asking on how this plan would ever be carried out.
First of all, who “owns” Gaza right now so that they could transfer that ownership to the United States? It is certainly not Israel. Gaza belongs only to its Palestinian residents living under Israeli occupation. Meanwhile, at least formally, Israel has officially ended any of its claims to Gaza when it fully withdrew its troops from the narrow strip in 2005. True, Israel had since turned Gaza into the largest open prison in the world, suffocating Gazans with a tight siege and indirect occupation, but it no longer claimed that it “owned” Gaza.
Meanwhile, since the 1993 Oslo Accords were signed between the PLO and Israel at the White House in Washington, the entire world recognised Gaza as part of occupied Palestinian territories that should be part of the future Palestinian state, along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem. That understanding was backed by series of UN Security Council resolutions, all affirming the status of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as Syria’s Golan Heights as illegally occupied territories. In their recent rulings, both the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court have dealt with Palestinians as an independent people, noting the observer status that Palestine maintains at the UN General Assembly. Moreover, more than 145 world countries already recognise Palestine as an independent state.
Thus, there is certainly no way there could be a legal framework upon which any party, other than the Palestinians and their leadership, that could provide Mr Trump with a new “ownership” contract that would allow the United States to take responsibility of that land and even give contracts to others to take part in reconstruction projects that would turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” yet empty of its own Palestinian people.
Meanwhile, Trump has already started holding meetings with key Arab allies who have maintained a strategic relation with the United States for decades, starting with Jordan’s King Abdullah this week. On Sunday, Trump said he also planned to meet soon with Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman.
Those are the Arab allies that he has suggested would be partners in his plan for Gaza: Egypt and Jordan through accepting nearly two million displaced Palestinians, and Saudi Arabia who is supposed to fund building new housing for the forcibly removed Palestinians, as well as reconstruction projects in Gaza itself, along with wealthy Arab Gulf nations, namely the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
All the above-mentioned Arab countries have openly and clearly rejected Trump’s plan and any effort to forcibly remove Palestinians from their own land. The US president has repeatedly stated that perhaps those countries were hesitant because they haven’t spoken to him directly. Yet, this issue in particular is not a matter to be solved with Arab leaders in person because the entire Arab peoples are vehemently opposed to a new colonial project that reminds them of very dark days that they thought were forever gone.
For Arab peoples, the ongoing suffering of the Palestinian people is no different from decades in which they also lived under brutal and racist occupation by the world superpowers at one time, Britain and France, claiming they were more superior to the original owners of the land. Yet, for Palestinians the matter was much worse because they do not only suffer a racist occupation, but a project aimed at forcibly removing them from their land to be replaced by strangers coming from all over the world with claims that no one accepts except themselves.
After living through the first Nakba, or Catastrophe, of 1948 when Israel was created, forcing nearly one million Palestinians to flee their homes through brutal massacres and terror, there is no way either Palestinians, or neighbouring Arab countries who have paid a heavy price in blood and treasure to support their liberation would accept taking part in a second, more vicious Nakba entailing the forced removal of Palestinians.
However detached from reality Trump and his team of hard-line Zionists are, they are certainly aware of this historic background, and that the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel is not about economic prosperity or chances to make a better life. The conflict is about basic rights of an entire Palestinian population whom the Zionists want to uproot from their ancestors’ land. It is about the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to enjoy equal rights as human beings on their own land.
Thus, whatever incentives Trump or anyone would offer Palestinians, they will never leave their land, even if it is a “demolition site”. Instead, they would continue fighting for their freedom, and right to have their own state like other peoples in the world. Moreover, and with widespread backing, they would insist on holding accountable those who have carried out bloody war crimes against them because they are equal human beings, and not children of a lesser standard.
However, the worst fear is that the recent hubbub caused by Trump’s proposal is a smoke screen to cover up more dangerous plans concerning the future of the occupied West Bank. In his joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington recently, Trump said he would announce in four weeks his stand on Israel’s annexation of parts of the West Bank.
The fear is that to give up his outlandish plan for Gaza, Trump’s offer would be to accept Israel’s annexation of large parts of the West Bank, igniting further the chances of violence and more bloodshed in the region. Other experts also noted that Trump might be laying out his bizarre plan for Gaza in order to put pressure on key Arab countries, namely Saudi Arabia, to accept normalising ties with Israel without agreeing first to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Yet, both scenarios would also be met with strong rejection by the Palestinian people and key US Arab allies.
Top Trump aides have responded to Arab rejection of his plan for Gaza by claiming that those who maintain that stand should offer other alternatives. Well, the Arab alternative has long been there, represented by the Arab peace plan adopted in 2002 and sponsored by Saudi Arabia. The basic formula of that Arab plan remains the same: peace for land, not peace for the sake of peace, or peace through Israel’s use of brutal force.
That’s the message Trump and the whole world will hear loud and clear when Egypt hosts an emergency Arab summit in Cairo at the end of this month, and in international conferences Egypt plans to hold with other world countries on the reconstruction of Gaza without the displacement of its people.
Arab governments are not seeking any confrontation with the new US president, and have all issued statements welcoming his inauguration, applauding his pledge to become a world “peacemaker”. A colonisation plan for Gaza or giving Israel approval to annex the West Bank will certainly not place Trump anywhere close to peace, but more violence and bloodshed for years to come, exceeding his short, four-year term in office.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 13 February, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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