By Alina @Adobe Stock
Confronting Perpetual Refugees
President Donald Trump promised there’ll be “hell to pay” if Hama doesn’t’ return home American hostages. Around 80 hostages, living and murdered, remain in Gaza, according to the Spectator, which lays out what a Trumpian “hell to pay” could entail:
- a potential American takeover of the Gaza Strip
- maximum pressure against Iran
- arms shipments to Israel.
There is a purpose to keeping Palestinians as perpetual refugees. The end game is a way to wage a “forever war” on Israel, explains Elliott Kaufman in the WSJ.
Fits Like a Glove
Gaza is a tiny piece of land carved out by Egypt in 1949 to keep the Palestinians packed together at arm’s length. That move rendered Gaza an Israel problem.
UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, was founded in 1949. The purpose of UNRWA, a “subsidiary of the United Nations General Assembly,” was to resettle the displaced from the defeated Arab invasion. UNRWA was then to have disbanded, and instead of disbanding UNRWA, the Arab and Soviet blocs made UNRWA a permanent international commitment to the lost cause. UNRWA provides all services and thwarts its clients from building for the future. Gaza exists to trap Palestinians in war. This process fits Hamas like a glove.
UNRWA schools radicalize Palestinians, who are kept on international welfare in the reserve army of the unemployed rather than encouraged to build institutions of their own. Palestinians consider Gaza their homeland, which they don’t want to leave. Other Arab countries do not welcome Palestinians for the simple reason of not wishing to import a terrorist problem.
As Mr. Kaufman notes, Mr. Trump’s Gaza idea flows naturally from his move Tuesday to end U.S. funding to UNRWA. Trump plans is to do the job UNRWA was meant to accomplish but never would.
President Trump shocked the world with his proposal to resettle Gazans in nearby countries, but not because the idea is cruel. Few critics dispute his point that it would benefit the displaced to escape the “demolition site” of Gaza and live in peace rather than as cannon fodder. The real disturbance, after decades to the contrary, is to think seriously about what it would mean to put Palestinian lives first rather than sacrificing them to the lost cause of Palestine as their leaders always do.
From the River to the Sea
To achieve the dream of Khaled Mashal, the Palestinian politician who served as the second chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau, is to achieve Hamas’s dream of Israel’s destruction and, with it, an Arab Palestine from the river to the sea. Millions of Palestinians might have to die, a prospect that does not apparently bother the Hamas leader.
“Ethnic cleansing” is one term that was used to criticize President Trump, but that’s a little silly. After all, it’s not as though the “U.S. military could round up two million Gazans against their will.” Some look at Mr. Trump as a U.S. imperialist, contrary to his campaign theme of deriding foreign interventions. For those reasons and more, his Gaza daydream is fanciful.
Another Generation Sacrificed to Life/Death in Gaza
Indulging in this Nationalism has relieved Hamas of two burdens: (1) of resettling Palestinians and (2) of starting and losing wars to annihilate Israel. Let Palestinians fight and die instead, Arab leaders reasoning.
President Trump is accused of inhumanity when he says he would like to “resettle people permanently in nice homes and where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed,”
The humane solution, by liberal lights, is to sacrifice another generation of Palestinians to permanent refugee status and a forever war on Israel. That’s what life in Gaza holds for them.
Clearly, President Kamala Harris would sooner have suggested the evacuation of Israel than of Gaza. Prime Minister resisted President Biden’s conventional idea. The “day after” was likelier to hasten the net war than to bring peace. Israel can reap the reward by dealing with President Trump.
Is that what obstructionists find so devilishly intolerable? Not that it would hurt Palestinians, but instead, it would help them.
… but it would set back the lost cause, which, profligate as ever with Palestinian lives, had seemed to prosper so wonderfully from the war in Gaza and the death squads’ work on Oct. 7, 2023.
If Egypt or Jordan will not welcome Gazans, one suggestion is to resettle Palestinians in Iran, their biggest supporter and benefactor.
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