Trump’s dangerous resettlement scheme

Donald Trump's latest gambit on Palestine is to call for a million Gazans to be resettled in Libya. A country at war with itself, Tripoli has rejected this proposal as well as millions-of-dollars-pie-in-the-sky that Libya would receive to shoulder the burden of a million restive Palestinians. To add injury to this insult, the Trump administration has closed the US Palestinian Affairs Office in East Jerusalem, the sole direct channel between the US and Palestinians, and merged the office with the US embassy in West Jerusalem which caters for Israelis.

While on his tour of the Gulf, Trump repeatedly said the US should “take” Gaza and make it into a “freedom zone." What does this mean? Freedom for whom? Not for Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians for sure. Freedom from Palestinians and, perhaps, for Israelis and wealthy international real-estate investors to transform Gaza into a Disneyland resort. Earlier this year Trump said the US would take over Gaza after the Palestinians were expelled into Jordan and Egypt, rebuild the strip with money not from the US, and turn it into a Middle Eastern riviera. Amman, Cairo and the Arabs rejected this proposition.

Trump’s delusional schemes are in line with Israel's earlier establishment of a vehicle for "voluntary" ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and sending them to war-torn Sudan and Somalia and impoverished Somaliland in Africa. Israel has backed up this scheme by preventing all food, water, fuel and medicines from entering Gaza since March 2, ending the ceasefire on March 18th, and stepping up its military campaign with the objective of occupying most or all of Gaza and confining Gazans to unsafe "safe zones." Trump has not joined the chorus of Western friends of Israel who have exerted pressure on Israel to compelled it to lift minimally its blockade and allow the entry into Gaza of some supplies to prevent starvation and famine.

Instead, on the humanitarian level the Trump administration and Israel have proposed a system of distributing supplies in southern Gaza, forcing those living in the north to leave in order to survive. This programme would be controlled by US contractors and the Israeli military and provide lifegiving aid only to Palestinians vetted by Israel. UN and international humanitarian agencies have rejected this plan as it would "weaponise" aid. Nevertheless, Israel could continue the blockade to blackmail the UN and aid agencies to accept the unacceptable plan.

The acceptable plan for Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, illegally occupied by Israel since 1967, is the two-state solution, endorsed by the UN and the international community. Last July, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion on a request made by the UN General Assembly following rulings made by the Human Rights Council.

Then ICJ President Nawaf Salam said the court had found that "Israel's... continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal." He stated. "The State of Israel is under the obligation to bring an end to its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible." This included ending illegal settlement activity and evacuating all its settlers from the affected areas and pay reparations to Palestinians for damages inflicted by the occupation. This would mean abandoning 145 official Israeli settlements and 200 settlement outposts and rehousing more than 700,000 Israeli settlers who would exit the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Trump has asked the wrong people to be resettled.

The ICJ said Israel's "policies and practices amount to annexation of large parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory", which is illegal under international law. The ICJ added by saying Israel was "not entitled to sovereignty" over any areas of the occupied territories. 

While this amounts to a comprehensive ruling on the status of the occupied Palestinian territories, no action has been taken because the West, dominated by the US, has no intention of resolving the Palestinian/Arab-Israeli crisis by insisting that Israel abide by the two-state solution. Palestinian self-determination, independence and statehood rather than ethnic cleansing, occupation and apartheid could resolve the conflict. This conflict has gripped the Arab world since Britain and France carved up and took over Arab lands ruled by the Ottoman Empire after World War One instead of granting the Arabs independence promised for joining the war against Germany and its Ottoman allies.

Nothing positive nor sensible can be expected from Trump even though he is in his second term, cannot run again, and is not a committed Zionist like his predecessor Joe Biden. During his first term when Trump was yearning for a second, he recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, shifted the US embassy to Jerusalem, declared Israeli settlements were not illegal, and defunded the UN Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA. His actions negated the terms of the 1993 Oslo peace process which said the fates of Jerusalem, Israeli settlers and Palestinian refugees were to be determined through negotiations between virtual Palestine and omnipresent Israel. Trump also closed the East Jerusalem US consulate serving Palestinians and the Palestinian mission in Washington.