Shock and disgust, applause and euphoria met Donald Trump’s freaking plan to acquire the headline-making belt of land. Redeveloping Gaza, say the predictable experts – predictably wrong again – is not remotely feasible. Whoever heard of a property developer trying his hand at ending the stubborn clash between Muslim and Jew? What conflict resolution course did the wheeler and dealer President attend? Or is Trump, ask the experts never learning from their reliable miscalculations, playing the old fascist game of ethnic cleansing? Time will tell. So far Donald Trump looks odds on to make the winning bid for Gaza.
Yet time is of the essence. Why wait when already the aspirant property developer answered the question that has been on every tongue from the day Israeli premier Netanyahu pledged to eliminate Hamas: what happens the day after? Who will take Gaza over?
Trump has answered: America will.
But more important than the surprise he sprung, think of the trial balloon Trump floated at last Tuesday’s press conference where, unknowingly he galvanized a disrupter able to ride rough-shod over the President of America no less. The disrupter would be? No one we knew existed. Nameless and ghostlike it happens to be Gaza’s – and the 'West Bank'’s – biggest stakeholder. As such it has the most to lose from Trump turning the demolition site into a playground for the rich. In brief, POTUS’ designs for Gaza may hit a too-real brick wall.
How so?
To fix bombed-out Gaza – indeed to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict – we must treat the spook stakeholder like someone with too much to lose. Relocating up to a couple of a million human shields and developing Gaza into a Frenchified Riviera, would be dandy and doable, only if the President has it in him to dismember the stakeholder – call it the ‘Great Peace Blocker.’
To explain…Go to history oh sluggard. Consider her ways and be wise.
The ways of history lead to the many archived Middle East peace plans, testimony to a foolhardy array of special envoys, Secretaries of State and US Presidents, who blamed the wrong blockers for the brutality and intransigence of: 1) Hamas in Gaza and, 2) the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. In particular:
(1) The antipathy of warlords to the idea of a Jewish flag next door to them
(2) Israeli settlement building in Judea and Samaria which is supposed to be Judenrein
(3) Israeli imagined "occupation",
and
(4) Warlords demanding a time bomb code-named, ‘Right of Return.’
They, the peace-seekers, were too absorbed by the blockers to hear the elephant in the war room trumpeting. More is the pity because they could’ve saved time and trouble; the only true blocker, believe it or not, was and remains MONEY. Filthy lucre has institutionalized the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict…And made resolving it depend on the next-to impossible task of stopping the foreign aid taps still gushing dollars or Euros, after many long decades. That is correct.
Unbeknown, even to the smartest President of modern times, a successful bid to redevelop Gaza entails depriving an entire economy of its money lifelines.
The consummate deal maker indubitably ‘gets it’ that freezing a trillion dollars may be a bridge too far, even for a gutsy gambler of a US President. Trump surely ‘gets it’ too that simply brokering a diplomatic accord on paper will fail to neutralize the Great Peace Blocker. One cannot render millions of secure jobs redundant; nor condemn thousand of groups, civil society ‘non-profits’ and street mobs to obscurity without cutting off their interest-free cash flow.
That is correct. Obese beneficiaries sup at the anti-Israel table, courtesy of treasuries and trust funds. So long as they feast, so long will Gaza and the so-called 'West Bank' be on fire.
Who are these fat cats, besides the warlords in tailored suits (the ones whom Israel hasn’t got around to eliminating) resplendent in Doha or Ramallah? Who besides them would rather die than disturb a state of blissful limbo supported by no-strings-attached bursting coffers? And that’s only from Western donors. It is anyone’s guess how much Qatar and Iran have doled out in ‘development aid’. What that means depends on what Ramallah and UNWRA and what’s left of Hamas’ top management want it to mean. “Chronic Kleptocracy – Corruption within the Palestinian Political Establishment” was the title of a hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs
For Gaza, foreign aid is the economy.
Since there can hardly be taxation where no taxpayers live, Gaza’s reliance on donor money would be total. As for UNWRA, it’s an economy on its own. When governments defunded the UN agency after it emerged that workers on its payroll had moonlighted for Hamas on Oct 7, a cry went up that defunding it was tantamount to being an accomplice of Israeli genocide. Ludicrous – but it soon refilled UNWRA coffers. DOGE has yet to audit any USAID payments to the UN’s employment bureau for terrorists. Enticing flunkies accountable to no one to smoke the peace pipe is…well, a pipe dream.
And how, excluding divine intervention, will Team Trump decommission a planetary system? What will be with the bodies orbiting the feast table – better known as the human rights industry dominated by the likes of Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Red Cross International and lesser planets and moons. At stake are millions of livelihoods, reputations, careers and wild-spending dependants on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Industry” is correct. Consider the sustainability factors enjoyed by Human Rights NGOs:
- mountains of cheap capital
- global reach
- well-connected stakeholders
- media channels beating a path to the door and, not least -
- the traded commodity, ‘Israeli violations’ which the international market can’t get enough of.
If these are not conditions for big business what are they? Can even Trump get this global industry to pack up and disperse?
Not to leave out the foot soldiers. Imagine how the boycotting business will take a Trump deal which makes Israel, the goose that lays the golden egg, more secure from boycotts and the like. Limelight, book sales, academic careers and celebrity status will evaporate like the dew at sunrise.
Building cities and towns for Gazans to live in peacefully in other countries will hardly give them back their rewards.
“Israel-bashing is the key to acceptance,” the late Professor Robert Wistrich said. Even a humble saxophone player can aspire to quick celebrity-hood. “It is Gilad Atzmon’s blunt anti-Zionism rather than his music that has given him an international profile”, explained the Guardian.
Good luck and all to President Trump. Were he to dismantle the Great Peace Blocker a Nobel Peace Prize would be a miserly reward.