US President Donald Trump is attempting to obliterate understandings in the Middle East regarding the Palestinian people living in Gaza.
Until now, it was well-understood that Gazan territory constitutes part of the future homeland of the Palestinians, to be named Palestine. A representative of this future state already sits in the United Nations.
But Trump is hoping to be the first president to achieve peace in the Middle East and, instead of pressuring Israel, he is attempting to destroy Palestine.
In joint remarks with Jordan's King Abdullah II in the Oval Office last week, Trump reiterated his earlier remarks that he wants to take over Gaza and expel the Palestinians to other countries, namely, Jordan and Egypt.
Previously, during a press conference on February 4 with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump astonished everyone in the room when he said he wanted to deport the Palestinians from Gaza, resettle them elsewhere, and send US troops to Gaza instead.
"We should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this and build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the million Palestinians living in Gaza, ending the death and destruction and frankly bad luck," Trump said.
"This can be paid for by neighboring countries of great wealth. It could be one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, twelve. It could be numerous sites, or it could be one large site. But the people will be able to live in comfort and peace and we'll get - we'll make sure something really spectacular is done," he continued. "The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too."
Pundits around the globe have since sought to understand whether this was another bloviating, Trumpian case of grandstanding, or whether this was the foretelling of a massive upending of a decades-long paradigm that saw the establishment of a Palestinian state as the central goal of any US involvement in the Middle East.
Naturally, the Palestinians fear a repeat of the Nakba, the mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 that saw 750,000 refugees rendered homeless. Trump's dangerous idea is a non-starter and would violate international law if implemented.
Trump's plan supports Israel's occupation and colonization of the West Bank. His pro-Israel stance is an extension of his first-term policies that saw the recognition of Israel's illegal annexation of the Golan Heights, a recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's exclusive capital, and moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Adding American insult to Palestinian injury, Trump announced his outrageous ethnic cleansing plan just hours after he signed an Executive Order withdrawing the United States from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and prohibiting any future funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency for the Near East (UNRWA).
Trump also claimed everyone loves his idea.
"Everybody I've spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land," he continued. "I don't want to be cute. I don't want to be a wise guy. But the Riviera of the Middle East, this could be something that could be so-this could be so magnificent."
But several Arab countries including Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia have expressed their firm opposition to Trump's plan. With the US having placed the onus on Arab countries to produce an alternative plan if they object to Trump's, the next few weeks will be crucial. Palestine's future now rests on the creativity of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab League in general.
It is unclear if Trump really means to perpetrate the crime of ethnic cleansing or is simply deploying the "madman theory" - a negotiating tactic used by President Richard Nixon during the Vietnam war, in an attempt to convince the North Vietnamese that he might in fact be so crazy as to use nuclear weapons, thus forcing them to a peace settlement.
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