By Ameer Ali –

Dr. Ameer Ali

“Extreme violence has a way of preventing us from seeing the interests it serves” ~ Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Megalomaniac Donald Trump virtually hijacked the 56^th World Economic Forum in Davos which was meant to discuss global economic and social issues to advertise his Board of Peace charter, which in essence provides pseudo-legitimacy to illegal occupations of foreign lands beginning with Gaza. It is aimed at legitimizing his proposed colonial administration over Gaza in the name of rebuilding it. Jonathan Cook the author of three books on Israel-Palestine issue aptly described it as a “nail in Gaza’s coffin”.But more broadly, Amnesty International views that charter as a “brazen disregard of international law and human rights and … represents a stark new manifestation of the escalating assault on UN mechanisms, international juridical institutions and universal norms”.  Trump’s US, having withdrawn already from sixty international organizations including thirty-one UN entities and having made the UN an ineffective world organization, he is now trying to supplant it with the BOP and not to supplement as he claims. And Mark Carney the Prime Minister of Canada was spot on when he remarked that BOP marks the “death of a rule-based world order”.

Although BOP is particularly meant for Gaza nowhere in that document the name Gaza or Palestine appears which perhaps may be the reason why Times of Israel was happy to publish that document in full. Trump has invited nearly fifty countries to join in and so far, thirty-five including Turkey, Egypt, UAE, Qatar, Indonesia, Pakistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Bahrain had joined.  Since there is a fee of one billion dollars for permanent membership in this board there is no doubt that it would end up as a billionaire club. But to serve whose interests?        

Rebuilding Colonial Gaza

Rebuilding Gaza after more than two years of genocide and destruction heralds the second phase of Trump’s one-sided ceasefire. Israel continues to kill Gazans and has extended the killings into Occupied West Bank also. Israel still occupies more than 50 percent of Gaza’s territory. Neither Trump nor those eight Muslim signatories to the ceasefire had said a word of protest about these breaches.   

Israel has destroyed seventy years of human development in Gaza in just over two years and almost 2.1 million Gazans have been left homeless. UNDP expects that it would take at least seven years to clean up the 60 million tonnes of rabble left by that destruction before any reconstruction begins. But Trump seems to think that the task of rebuilding Gaza would be completed miraculously in five years. Even so who is going to pay for the reconstruction? Certainly not Israel the destroyer and not even those who backed Israel. Instead, it is Gaza that will be forced to foot the bill by selling its natural assets, oil and gas.

According to an UNCTAD’s study of 2019, area C of the West Bank and the Mediterranean coast of Gaza Strip have a wealth of 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil worth around $524 billion. The Palestinians were denied the right to profit from their own assets, because of their political dependency. And it was to exploit this asset commercially and profit from it that in 2015 Trump engineered his infamous Abraham Accord and got Israel, Bahrain, UAE, Morocco and Sudan to join in. Before he could enlarge the membership of this company to include Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others he lost his presidency. He would now be resuming this enterprise with a vengeance under his colonial administration of Gaza. The committee of technocratic experts and the Executive Board would be entrusted with the task of commercialising Gaza’s natural assets in the name of reconstruction. But to whose benefits?

Realizing the Riviera Dream

Even before the ceasefire Trump was planning to evacuate the Palestinians and settling them in neighbouring countries like Egypt and Jordan so that Gaza could be rebuilt into a Middle Eastern Riviera. Egypt and Jordan came out with an alternative plan without evacuation and took their plan to the Arab League, and that was the end of it. That plan is now dusting in their archives. Now, having joined Trump’s BOP these leaders have no alternative but to go along with Trump. The reconstructed Gaza would be a paradise for Zionist and pro-Israeli entrepreneurs and holidaymakers from all over Global North and even from Arab and Muslim countries. Article 6 of chapter VI of BOP states that members of the Executive Board “shall have such legal capacity as may be necessary to the pursuit of their mission (including but not limited to, the capacity to enter into contracts, acquire and dispose of immovable and movable property” in the interest of Gaza’s renovation. Whose property would be acquired and who would enjoy it? Certainly not Gazans. They would be given a choice either to emigrate or live in ghettos as the Jews were once forced to live in antisemitic Europe. To accommodate those Gazan expatriates there are thirty-five or more member countries in Trump’s BOP. They would be enticed to accept them. Naomi Klein’s quote from her book cited above captures the essence of what is going to happen in Gaza under Trump’s colonial administration.

Iran the Enemy 

One of the key arguments in Klein’s Shock Doctrine is that political and entrepreneurial elites under Disaster Capitalism need to create an atmosphere of common fear or trauma among the public to make radical solutions to issues arising from within the system acceptable and which would otherwise face public resistance. This is exactly what Donald Trump, and his companions are trying to achieve in the Middle East. Their plan to take over the governance of Gaza from Hamas is a radical solution amidst Israel’s bloody campaign to acquire Gaza and eventually the entire Palestine in the interest of Eretz Israel. But to make Trump’s solution acceptable Iran’s commitment to an independent state of Palestine and the support for Hamas and other armed resistance groups need to be portrayed as a mortal threat to Middle East peace. It is this portrayal which is underway now by means of Global North’s corporate media propaganda.

Iran like every other country has its own domestic issues. Currently the rising cost of living and depreciating Iranian currency against US dollar has increased inflationary pressures causing widespread public discontent and protest marches. But Iran’s enemies of whom US and Israel in particular, had been instrumental in turning those marches into open riots through mercenary elements which naturally prompted a harsh response from Iranian police and security forces. Western media without any credible evidence has reported that 30,000 had been killed so far and that the situation demands a regime change. Trump had sent his invincible armada and aircraft carriers in preparation for an attack. In the meantime, the son of the former Shah is getting ready to be installed as the new Iranian monarch. Lately, EU has declared Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist outfit and very soon US may declare Iran itself a terrorist state. Iran in response has declared that it would fight to the end if US tried to attack the country.

Although certain factions in Hamas had declared their willingness to hand over Gaza governance to an international body, which might have prompted Trump to give credit to Hamas as the “main actor” in the handover of Israeli captives, there are other factions that are willing to carry on with the armed struggle. Turkey is now willing to organize a teleconference between Trump and Iran mediate between Iran and US for a peaceful deal. But behind the scenes, all this are part of a grand drama to create public fear in the Middle East to make Trump’s Gaza plan appear to be the most preferable solution.  Naomi Kein’s Shock Doctrine is well and truly in action.  

The End Game

As David Hearst commented in Middle East Eye, “Iran’s battle for survival is the Arab world’s fight too”. That is true. But the Arabs are historically famed for their disunity as Tim Mackintosh Smith illustrates in his book Arabs: 3000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires (2024).  It was their disunity that made them to lose the 1948 Palestine war as Ilan Pappe illustrated in his Shortest History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (2024) and led to the current situation. Even now it is their desertion of Iran and joining Trump’s BOP to support his colonial experiment in Gaza that will eventually allow Gaza to become part of Greater Israel. If Iran is weakened militarily Israel’s expansionism in the Middle East will be unstoppable. No amount of friendship with America and Western powers will be enough to protect the oil rich Arab nations if Israel decides to attack. Qatar was bombed last year in broad daylight with the full knowledge of Donald Trump.  Realpolitik compels the Arab and Muslim world to sacrifice Palestine.