TIt has a lasting meaning of the astonishing plan of Donald Trump to “take over” of the Gaza Strip and reinstall “definitively” the about 2 million Palestinians who live there can be legitimized an option which, as a possible solution to the conflict Israeli-Palestinian, had been largely considered beyond the pale.
Trump’s plan “would solve” the Palestinian problem by physically eliminating the Palestinians. It is a way of understanding the devastation that Israel caused in Gaza – to make it uninhabitable so that the Palestinians leave “voluntarily”, as the Israeli Minister of the far right said, Bezalel Smotrich, himself a colon. But it would also be a war crime and a crime against humanity, and certainly invite new accusations of the International Criminal Court, as well as a world condemnation. A week ago, the idea was considered an anathema.
It was there that Trump intervened at his press conference on February 4 next to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Secretary of State Marco Rubio then tried to resume the president’s comments, suggesting that Trump meant that the trip was only temporary while Gaza is rebuilt. But that’s not what Trump said, that’s why a smiling Netanyahu replied: “It’s worth paying attention.” Since its foundation in 1948, Israel has treated the forced deportation of Palestinians as permanent – that is why they refer to their expulsion of the earth which has become the Jewish State as the Nakbaor “disaster”.
If Trump seems unconscious or not Bother or not by the implications of his plan, the world was not. The indignation of the proposal was widespread, and the two governments that Trump planned to accept the Palestinian refugees, Egypt and Jordan, do not want to do anything. Indeed, it quickly became clear that Trump was talking largely about the top of his head without any serious planning. However, the damage had been caused. Trump seemed to adopt a clearly illegal program.
However, he could make amends by pushing the Israeli government to a fairer and lasting peace. Palestinians should hope that Trump is ready to change course.
Four options were long ago to end the centenary conflict. The first would be to recognize “reality to a single state” that Israel and Palestine have become because of large Jewish establishments. A transfer of occupation of its population by a power occupying to an occupied territory is a war crime, in violation of article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention in 1949, but the successive Israeli governments have ignored this ban, and the US government has maintained billions of dollars in help anyway flowing anyway. The draft payment was partly continued to make a Palestinian state impossible.
The view of a Cisjordan hill is illustrative. The proliferation of Israeli colonies, outposts and bypassing has left the West Bank A Swiss cheese of Palestinian enclaves. In 2017, B’tselem, the main human rights defense group of Israel, counted 165 “islands” disconnected, leaving no perspective of a viable state.
The option of a single state would recognize this reality. He would abandon the objective of a Palestinian state but would insist that all residents between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan have given equal rights in the primordial state. But Israeli governments of all bands opposed a single state because roughly the same number of Jews and Palestinians live in these lands, and the government wants to maintain a substantial Jewish majority.
Netanyahu prefers the status quo, which is the second option. Since the 1993 Oslo agreements, each Israeli government has claimed to be open to the negotiation of a Palestinian state. But it is an fiction, an excuse to stall, while the colonies continue to develop. After more than five decades of occupation and three decades of a supposed “peace process”, it is no longer tenable to consider the occupation of Israel as simply temporary. The “peace process” is dying.
All serious human rights organizations that have examined that the occupation determined that it is apartheid – a regime for the Jewish population to dominate and repress the Palestinian. The situation may have been forbidden for a short period while waiting for the creation of a Palestinian state, but there is no state on the horizon. This is why it is more and more recognized that the status quo is intolerable.
The expulsion of forced mass is the third option, promoted by the Israeli far right. This would avoid the obligation to grant all equal rights in a single state and the current apartheid opprobrium. This is the option that Trump shamefully adopted during the press conference, but the president could redeem himself by going to the fourth option – a two -state solution, an Israeli and Palestinian state sitting side by side. Netanyahu devoted her political life to avoid this option. As long as he had the support of the Republican Party, he felt safe in his intransigence. But if Trump had to approve him, Netanyahu would suddenly find herself isolated.
Why would Trump do that? Because he considers himself a master merchant and wants to negotiate a separate agreement, between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which would cement a regional alliance against Iran. The Saudi government has clearly indicated that the price of standardization of relations with Israel is a Palestinian state.
Trump prides himself as a disruptor, a leader who does not accept things simply because they have long been. Rather than asking for a reprehensible war crime as a solution to the Gaza conflict, he could be a more constructive disruptor if he was to be pivoted and insist, despite the demonstrations of Netanyahu, on a Palestinian state.
We know Trump is able to put pressure on Netanyahu. He played a decisive role in making the current ceasefire in Gaza. A much more intense pressure will be necessary to secure a Palestinian state, but the reward would also be much greater. And Trump would indeed be part of history as an excellence manufacturer.
