Good morning, Gaza
Get up, drink my coffee and rise.
Our funeral has arrived—Mahmoud Darwish.
The two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is dead; the 53 state solution is on the cards. After Canada and Greenland, it is Gaza’s turn to attract the covetous gaze of President Trump; not unlike the proverbial spider speaking to the fly, he has offered to take over Gaza and “do a job with it, too”, whatever that means. Since then, analysts have been scratching their heads wondering whether this was a serious proposal, or whether anything will come of it or whether it is even possible.
None of these ‘whethers’ matter. What matters is that this brazenly arrogant intent was voiced and since repeated from the world’s most powerful pulpit and there was no ‘just joking’ emoji hanging over Trump’s head. In one go, naked land-grab, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity were put out as US foreign policy. No amount of walking back by White House spokesmen will help; historians will recall this as the moment when all pretence of morality—and legality—in international relations was thrown to the winds.
Having scratched their heads to bleeding point, some analysts have found a silver-lining in the proposal. It’s a bold challenge, they say, to the Arab states to step up to rebuild Gaza, a masterly googly by a president intent on being a “peacemaker and a unifier” and so what if he is taking the scenic route to that destination. These analysts are fooling themselves.
This was neither an off-the-cuff remark, nor a provocative negotiating stand. This is the deeply ingrained instinct of a real estate developer coming to the fore. He sees the blue Mediterranean lapping at the Gaza strip—all the more visible now after relentless Israeli bombing has removed offending buildings—and the vision of a Riviera of the Middle East presents itself, complete with blubbery billionaires in dark glasses and flowery shorts sprawled under beach umbrellas. The ruins of Gazan homes can always be levelled out. And the people? Oh, they are poor, needy, and non-white. They will be happy to be moved out to “far safer, more beautiful places”.
This idea was no sudden inspiration. Last June, this column reported that Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, saw the devastated Gaza strip as “very valuable”, very hot “waterfront property”. He had advised Israel to “finish the job… move the people out and then clean it up” and even offered to “bulldoze something” in the Negev to dump the Gazans. The president has gone a step further: throw them into Egypt and Jordan. Trump’s current Middle-East man, golf partner and another real estate type, Steve Witkoff, shares this approach. For Netanyahu and his messianic rightwing supporters, all this is manna from heaven: annexation of Gaza (and hopefully the West Bank), expulsion of the debilitated Palestinians, all done by the Americans, would be a dream finish.
Imaging: Deni Lal
But even the slickest real estate honcho needs a land title, and thereby hangs this tale: the Palestinians are not on the market. Besides, this is not just about land. It is about identity, national memory, religion… obliterating all this amounts to what the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe calls ‘memoricide’ and yes, it rhymes with homicide.
Besides, there’s something called home, and it’s not a building. Home is where the bones of your ancestors lie, where a familiar wind caresses you, where the silences speak to you. If the powerful of the world continue to see Gaza as just land to be levelled, then in the words of Darwish, Gaza “will continue to explode. It is neither death, nor suicide. It is Gaza’s way of declaring that it deserves to live”.
The writer is former ambassador to the US.