By Mohamed Harees –

Lukman Harees

Let the World hear Loud and Clear! Gaza is not for Sale : Not up for negotiation! No leader, no government can claim it ;it belongs to the Palestinian people! Even if it turns to dust, they will build it brick by brick! Street by Street!  Who gave the right to Trump to own Gaza! to lay claim to a land which belongs to the people of Palestine? 

They destroy, they displace and now they want to erase. This is ethnic cleansing in broad daylight, wiping away its people as if they never existed. Gaza is not an empty piece of land waiting for a new owner. It is a home for over 2 Mn people that is filled with memories, love and sacrifice. It belongs to the people who have lived for generations who have buried their loved ones there,who resisted oppression with their resolve.   Gaza is not for sale! (Voices from Gaza- social media video)

Trump has done the impossible and made Bush look slightly less thoughtless for his doomed decision to go to war in Iraq. Trump promised voters an administration in his second term, that would put ‘America First’. But just weeks into his second go-around in the White House, he laid out plans to use American might to “take over” and reconstruct Gaza, threatened to reclaim U.S. control of the Panama Canal, renamed the Gulf of Mexico, ‘Gulf of America’, floated the idea that the U.S. could buy Greenland from Denmark, which has shown no interest in parting with the island and suggested making neighbourly Canada the 51st State of the US. The rhetorical shift from America First to America Everywhere leaves even some of his allies slack-jawed — wondering if he’s really serious. Particularly, his declaration bordering insanity recently, that he wants to remove roughly 1.8 million Palestinians from Gaza and redevelop the war-scarred territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East” with “long-term” American ownership raises anew concerns about the foreign policy implications of the US under the dictatorial Trump’s norm-breaking second term.

Is his imperialist talk just meant to appear tough on the world stage? Is he merely trying to provide his Israeli comrade Bibi cover to the far-right members of his governing coalition to move forward with their expansionist ‘Greater Israel’ plans in the area?  Is the Gaza takeover proposal a land grab by an adventurous American president who sees the world through the prism of a New York real estate developer? Or is it, possibly, a bit of all of the above? Whatever the answer, Trump’s play on the global scene and Gaza in particular has perplexed the rest of the world — as they try to make sense of his foreign policy doctrine, which is not just morally bankrupt— sheer lunacy too. Although the White House has since tried to temper his views, it has yet to explain under what authority Trump could carry his Gaza proposal. Nor has the administration clarified how Trump would get around stiff opposition to any relocation of Gaza’s population from Arab allies, including Egypt and Jordan, that he expects to take in Palestinians. Of course, Trump’s push was roundly rejected by US’ European and Middle Eastern allies, including those he’s calling on to take in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been left homeless by the war, as well as the UN and the rest of the world.

The proposal has little chance of being implemented, does not seem to have emerged from a serious policy review within the Trump administration, and overturns all the assumed foundations of the last half century of Arab-Israeli peace-making. Nevertheless, the worrying part of Trump’s proposal is how the US and its satellite state, Israel, now work as a formal team that uses immense military power to run amok across the Middle East and perhaps further afield. Further, the biggest takeaway from his declaration is how the American-Israeli alliance now formalises with a bang the heretofore sporadic destruction of the body of international humanitarian and human rights laws and protections that were created after WWII to prevent a recurrence of crimes like the Nazi Holocaust against European Jews. In any case, Israel has been long ignoring these legal and moral safeguards in its actions in Palestine and the Middle East, which culminated in its genocidal war in Gaza.  It was the US which has been formally and consistently providing most of the financial, military, and diplomatic support that allowed Israel to pursue its colonial policies since 1967, as the Joe Biden administration did in enabling the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Trump has now moved to sanction the officials of the ICC as well.

The Trump plan’s heightened cruelty toward and contempt for Palestinians and their rights is significant for its dramatic and sudden scale. He has now ‘elevated’ the US’ role, by moving from merely being complicit in the genocide to initiating and being a full participant in this latest “crime against humanity” plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza. The extreme nature of these latest Trump proposals shows that the US has taken its role as the standard bearer of Western imperial legacies in the Middle East to a higher level of direct military occupation of Palestinian lands and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Many smaller states around the world should be worried that this new variety of twenty-first-century American-Israeli imperialism that is imposed by military and economic might be used in other places around the world.

The notion of relocating Gaza’s population to neighbouring countries is not new. It aligns disturbingly with far-right Israeli narratives that have long sought to rid Gaza and the West Bank of Palestinians. Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich openly praised Trump’s idea, calling it a “great opportunity” for Palestinians to “start new lives elsewhere”. These statements give away the agenda: the erasure of Palestinian identity and claim to their homeland. Thus, it will embolden far-right Jewish extremists in the Netanyahu government who openly advocate the return of Israeli settlers to occupy Gaza.

Another troubling sign is that 7 out of 10 Israelis polled recently said they supported expelling the Palestinians from Gaza, meaning that this idea reflects much more than rightwing Zionist extremist sentiments. The anti-Palestine sentiments are no longer fringe group thinking but have become mainstream within Israeli society. This, indeed, makes resistance to Trump’s dangerous proposal essential for preserving Palestinian human and national rights as well as regional stability in the Middle East.

For Palestinians, the proposal evokes haunting memories of the Naqba or ‘Catastrophe’ of 1948, when over 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced during the creation of Israel. The suggestion that Palestinians will find “peace” in other countries wilfully disregards their deep connection to this land and the unique challenges they face as a displaced and stateless people. By advocating the displacement of Palestinians, he is not only fuelling tensions in the region but undermining international law and setting a dangerous precedent for the treatment of vulnerable populations worldwide. History has shown that forced displacement leaves scars that last generations. International law unequivocally prohibits the forced displacement of populations. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: ‘The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.’ Thus, it will do nothing to bring a solution to the conflict – quite the opposite.

History counts for little when the real estate billionaire turned Trump talks about Gaza. The traumas of the past, successive wars, attachment to a place, the long shadow of ancestors, the rights of the living – all this seems buried under rubble.  It’s a predatory real estate operation guided by the spirit of profit, from which Palestinians would be excluded. Trump is certainly consistent on one issue: He has always blindly aligned with Israeli positions. The transfer of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, unilaterally recognizing the city as the capital of Israel, including its eastern part conquered by force in 1967, and the equally unilateral recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan Heights illustrated this during his first term (2017-2021). He is now embracing the vision of resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict developed by the racist and supremacist Israeli far right. All the more so as the stunning announcement concerning Gaza is very likely, to soon be accompanied by a stance on possible massive annexations of the occupied West Bank.

More than two decades ago, this belief led another Republican administration, in the wake of 9/11, to opt for warring ventures in the Middle East. The US did lasting damage to its image, lost thousands of soldiers, and sunk colossal sums of money for the very opposite of the desired results. Trump entered politics a decade ago by denouncing these errors and now defends neo-imperialism and neo-colonialism with boots on the ground. Instead of restoring America’s “greatness,” as he claims, he risks dragging it back into its bloody past.  It appears that his “America First” approach seems to have morphed into “America More,” with his fixation on acquiring new territory even after campaigning on pledges to keep the nation out of foreign entanglements and “forever wars.”. It was characteristic of how Trump has approached his second term – treating ties with close allies such as Canada and Mexico as largely transactional relationships and viewing the world as one large business opportunity. Another analyst stated Trump’s foreign policy isn’t America First. It’s America Alone. And in the long run, that’s a losing game, because when a bully finally falls, no one rushes to pick them back up.

The Gaza crisis cracked open the West’s pandora box, starkly exposing the hypocrisy of the “human rights” rhetoric while supporting and encouraging the barbaric—there’s no other word for it—killing of Palestinians. The American (and British) legacy over the entire past century has allowed Israel to act with impunity across the entire Middle East and to bend Western foreign policies to its liking, which we see dramatized nowadays.

As many analysts point out, global leaders will face significant challenges in navigating Trump’s second term. The unpredictability of his administration affects key global issues, from climate change to technology. With Trump, compared to Biden, that unpredictability is magnified. Global leaders must prepare for abrupt decisions with little consultation. Trump does not seem interested in adapting to modern realities. His inaugural address was deeply backward-looking. Even Reagan-era conservatives recognised that the world moves forward; Trump is unique in his attempt to pull it back. His rhetoric about “making America great again” reflects a nostalgia for a past that was only beneficial to a select group – namely, white men. Trump does not seem interested in adapting to modern realities. His inaugural address was deeply backward-looking. Even Reagan-era conservatives recognised that the world moves forward; Trump is unique in his attempt to pull it back.

As the European Council for Foreign Relations says, Europe particularly should look to pre-emptively make its position clear to Trump. This should include a formal assessment by the European Commission to suspend the EU’s association agreement with Israel and ban settlement products. The European Union could also apply pressure by imposing sanctions on Israeli military units involved in human rights abuses, extremist politicians advocating violence, and settlement regional councils and organisations that fund Israeli settlement activity, such as the World Zionist Organization. European actions can still shape the trajectory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Such actions can also show that European leaders can challenge the destabilising policies of a Trump administration bent on empowering Israeli maximalism. This means continuing to push the only viable track to resolve this crisis – a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and a real pathway for Palestinian self-determination predicated on ending the Israeli occupation. A sustainable solution cannot favour Israel at the expense of Palestinians. This is a chance to salvage European credibility as a global actor committed to human rights, peace, and stability.

Rights experts have said that because the UN’s top court has ruled that Israel is an illegal occupier of the Palestinian territories, Israeli authorities have no right to hand over control of Gaza to a foreign power. Analysts have also pointed out that as an occupying force, Israel is prohibited from permanently removing Palestinians from the enclave.

A refreshing thought from Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, who decried Trump’s plan as “unlawful, immoral and completely irresponsible” also deserves our attention. She said ‘International law prohibits the seizure of a sovereign territory without the consent of the controlling government’. Albanese warned if the US president carries on with this plan, “it will make the regional crisis even worse”. She called for world leaders to stake a stand.“ The international community is made up of 193 states and this is the time to give the US what it has been looking for: isolation,” she said. It is time, to put an end to American Exceptionalism or Trump fascism. Times are emerging where the weakness of the powerful and the power of the weak are getting clearer. What Albanese says above makes much sense in this context! Bullies should be told that their game is over!