Gazumped!

For many years, the Israeli far right have debated how to clear all of Palestine of Palestinians and give Jews untrammelled control of all of the territory as part of a one state Greater Israel project. 2.7 million Palestinians have already been displaced into refugee camps in Jordan and illegal Jewish settlements have steadily encroached on further Palestinian settlements, land, and precious freshwater sources throughout the region. While officially Israel has not rejected the UN favoured “two state solution,” in practice it has made it impossible because there simply isn’t one contiguous territory for Palestinians to occupy any more.

The jewel in this project was always Gaza with its 25 mile stretch of beaches and Mediterranean coastline which is any property developers dream. The problem was always the remaining 2.3 million Palestinians still living there. The Hamas atrocities of 7 October 2023 gave the Netanyahu government the ideal pretext for carrying out this plan by carpet bombing the entire enclave and making it basically uninhabitable. An estimated 65,000 Palestinians were killed directly by the bombing but the greater objective was always to force the remainder to migrate elsewhere as refugees.

Israeli defence minister Israel Katz ordered the army on Thursday to prepare a plan to allow the “voluntary departure” of residents from the Gaza Strip, and claimed that countries like Ireland, Spain and Norway are “legally obligated” to take the displaced Gaza residents because of their criticisms of Israeli army actions there and their “hypocrisy will be exposed if they refuse to do so”. While Trump’s “bold plan” to turn Gaza into a Mediterranean Riviera or Mar-a-Lago has been greeted with shock and the usual mealy mouthed platitudes by other world leaders, the reality is that this was always the plan.

Despite the international criticism, President Trump was quite unequivocal declaring that “everybody loves [the plan]” and that “we will own it” perhaps in reference to his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s property development activities and not ruling out the use of US troops to enforce the “voluntary” emigration. Trump has also ended all US foreign aid programmes, perhaps in the hope of offering their renewal as a carrot to countries which agree to take on Palestinian refugees. “The king in Jordan and the general in Egypt will open their hearts and give us the kind of land we need to get this done,” Mr Trump said at the press conference, after laying out plans for the US takeover.

In Israel itself, the plan has been greeted with almost universal enthusiam:

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, embraced Mr Trump’s comments as vindication of his decision to stay in Mr Netanyahu’s government, despite his fierce opposition to the ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Rival far-right leader Itamar Ben-Gvir suggested Mr Trump’s proposal would effectively negate the need for ceasefire talks, which have been overshadowed from the start by lack of any Israeli plans for post-conflict Gaza.

One of Mr Netanyahu’s biggest political rivals, Benny Gantz, also backed Mr Trump’s plans to resettle Palestinians outside Gaza as “admirable”, and said Israel has “nothing to lose from it, only something to gain”.

And if other countries refuse to take all the refugees, there is always the Sinai desert where Moses led the Israelites around for forty years until they found their “Promised Land” in Israel. All other peoples are there to be smitten.

Frank Schnittger is the author of Sovereignty 2040, a future history of how Irish re-unification might work out. He has worked in business in Dublin and London and, on a voluntary basis, for charities in community development, education, restorative justice and addiction services.