Reminiscent of the old colonial days the U.S. President held forth to a group of Washington news men, describing his plan for Gaza as Bibi Netanyahu sat close by grinning like a Chesire cat that has just swallowed a canary. Why colonial? Because the people whose lives were to be upended (to better them of course!) were the poor Palestinians who in the last century have been killed, ejected from their homes, wandered about the Middle East to be ejected again (as in Lebanon) or confined to refugee camps.
These camps may have an aura of temporary rest stops but are certainly not. The Palestinians have had little choice but to be there for a half-century or more. Occasionally they have been getting into scraps with the original local residents who might feel they are like guests who have outstayed their welcome. But where are they to go?
Their homes and land were occupied by alien Westerners pouring in from Europe — the reason given that they had no choice but to leave or be killed by other Westerners with whom they had lived alongside for generations. Shouldn’t they have been found a home in Europe? After all, it was Europeans who had been responsible for their plight.
No! Lord Balfour, the British leader, must have had an early premonition for he had put forward the idea of a home for Jews in Palestine, then a British mandate — a result of Turkey, which had governed it as part of the Ottoman Empire, being on the losing side in WWI.
Note, it did not occur to Lord Balfour that the Palestinians who already lived and had owned the land for centuries might have something to say. No, the rulers of colonies seldom heard the cries of the people they trampled upon — at least not until Gandhi found a way to put a spanner in the works of the colonial enterprise. By the way, there was not a single representative present from any of the Arab states that might have been expected to accept some of the Palestinians. No one from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates or anywhere else.
According to Trump, he wants to build a ‘shining city on the hill’ after first flattening Gaza. Imagine how you would feel if someone promised to build you a new home after destroying your present one? A home is a repository of memories as a house can never be.
To someone who is not averse to new ways of making money, the Gaza situation may be mouth watering. Anyhow, Trump dispatched his buddy Steve Witkoff (also a real estate billionaire) who read Netanyahu the riot act. Not given much of a choice he accepted meekly a deal he had rejected for the prior eight months.
It is rumored Trump is angling for a Nobel Peace Prize like Jimmy Carter for bringing peace to the Middle East.