Trump's ethnic cleansing plan: No option left for the Palestinians but to stay and fight
President Donald Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza not only alters long-held US policy in the Middle East; it also marks the end of the rules-based order that emerged after the Second World War.
Trump’s remarks on Gaza leave no room for doubt: we are witnessing the assassination of the United Nations and all international institutions that were designed to restrict, if not prevent, the types of war crimes committed during two world wars.
Such violence never stopped. But at least war crimes and crimes against humanity were recognised for what they were.
Genocide and ethnic cleansing - just what Trump proposes to do in Gaza, and perhaps later to the rest of the Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank and in Israel proper - are among the worst of these crimes.
Those who know the history of the Middle East conflict are aware that it was not the Palestinian people who initiated this protracted crisis. What Trump is proposing as a solution for Gaza was first proposed more than a century ago as a solution to another issue.
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Back then, it was Britain and France who decided to carve up the Middle East and create at its centre a western-style entity that would serve as a Jewish homeland and European military outpost.
Through the Balfour Declaration, they aimed to resolve Europe’s “Jewish problem” and prevent the revival of Islamic power in that part of the world.
Struggle for freedom
The creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine could not be achieved without massacres and ethnic cleansing. Britain, which was entrusted with an international mandate for Palestine, knowingly enabled Zionist land theft and the dispossession of the Palestinian people.
The 1948 Nakba, when at least 750,000 Palestinians were turned into refugees, marked the nadir of this process.
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Since then, the so-called international community has paid lip service to the Palestinian victims, while effectively recognising as legitimate what happened to them before, during and after 1948.
When Palestinians reject the notion of giving up their right of return, they are frequently asked: “What is the solution then?” Their struggle for freedom is often designated as terrorism; their resistance to subjugation as extremism.
Trump acts on the basis of a cocktail of ignorance and arrogance. The Palestinian people are acutely aware of this, which is why they are neither frightened nor intimidated
But Palestinians know many others before them endured similar struggles, from the indigenous populations of various colonies, to the oppressed peoples of Vietnam, Algeria, South Africa and Afghanistan.
There are essentially two options: surrender and be exterminated, or put up a fight to regain your freedom and dignity. The Palestinians knew from the start that they were not being offered a third option.
Even the peace process that culminated with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 was designed only to end the Palestinian issue by transforming the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) into a security agency that would aid and prolong the Zionist occupation of Palestine.
Today, in Washington, the Trump administration apparently believes it can achieve what its predecessors failed to do in countries such as Vietnam and Afghanistan. Blinded by arrogance, Trump seems unwilling to consult history books to learn the outcomes of previous miscalculations.
Past humiliations
Palestinians, on the other hand, are good learners. They are aware of the humiliations meted out to the US in its imperialist adventures, and to France and other colonial powers who once thought they could bring other nations to their knees, and rob them of their lives and resources.
Trump and his ilk, past and present, act on the basis of a cocktail of ignorance and arrogance. The Palestinian people are acutely aware of this, which is why they are neither frightened nor intimidated.
This is not about Hamas. Organisations come and go, and individuals come and go, but ideas are bequeathed from generation to generation.
Like previous liberation projects elsewhere in history and around the world, Hamas has demonstrated that, unlike Fatah or the PLO, it is willing to continue fighting to guarantee that this idea lives on. Trump and his advisers appear incapable of comprehending this reality.
So in the face of Trump’s real-estate vision for Gaza and its people, Palestinians are left with no options other than surrendering or resuming their struggle. The position of Hamas, echoed by many Palestinians, is that capitulation is not a choice, and they are thus left with no option but to fight back.
It remains to be seen whether the US and Israel are willing to resume the Gaza war, which in 15 months, resulted in an utter failure. As the old saying goes: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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