Israel MAGAZA Archives - Dr. Rich Swier

Much of the world has expressed its disapproval, chagrin, astonishment, or anger at Donald Trump’s plan to make life much better for the Palestinian Arabs now rummaging through the rubble in Gaza by providing them with decent housing at several areas outside of Gaza — he suggested sites in both Egypt and Jordan — where they can live while the area is being cleared of its mountains of rubble. He hopes to find places in the Middle East where housing can be built for them, while they wait for Gaza to be cleaned up. Egypt has denounced the plan. So has Jordan. So has Saudi Arabia. So has the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas, and the Secretary-General of the UN. But are they denouncing the plan because it won’t work — or because they are afraid that it will? It turns out that there are many in Gaza who do not denounce, but quite like, Trump’s plan, and would like to move out of Gaza as soon as possible, as Telegraph journalist Jake Willis Simons reports here: “Trump’s plan to Make Gaza Great Again could really work,” by Jake Wallis Simons, Telegraph, February 5, 2025:

“Habibi, make Gaza great again Gaza is uninhabitable, so this is a great idea.” Such was the WhatsApp message to which I awoke this morning. But it wasn’t from some Maga fanatic on a ranch in Alabama. It was from my long-time friend in Gaza, whom I met during my time as a foreign correspondent.

I made a coffee and we spoke on the phone, me in Winchester, he in Gaza City (he was displaced to the south but has now returned north). “We survived the war but we will die from the rubble,” he said. “This is the best solution for the people. Would you want to wait two-to-five years just for the rubble to be removed so your house can be rebuilt?”

In fact, it has been estimated that it will take not 2-5 years, but 10-15 years, to clear Gaza not just of its masses of rubble, but of land mines and other explosives — many placed by Hamas to booby-trap buildings that the IDF was likely to enter — underneath that rubble.

In truth, my friend had already made up his mind. He managed to send his wife and children to Cairo through the Rafah crossing by paying huge sums a few months back and is on the list to follow them soon.

“Everybody I know, the people around me, feel the same as me,” he said. “At least half-a-million will accept to leave, be happy to leave. We suffered for one-year-and-a-half. Also another ten years? Hamas has no support any more. Not like before. They destroyed us for nothing.”

These are the voices that don’t make it into the Guardian. I visited its website for comparison: “Trump declares US will ‘take over’ Gaza Strip, sparking widespread criticism” was the headline. The story showcased a statement from Hamas, which rejected the move as “expulsion from their land.”

I suggested to my friend that some view the proposal as ethnic cleansing. “Ethnic cleansing? Where is the problem?” he replied, genuinely confused. “I can’t see it’s a bad idea. It’s a good idea.” He paused for a moment. “Better to make it voluntary.”…

That Gazan needn’t worry. Trump always intended his plan to be voluntary. No forcible transfer of a population is contemplated; that would violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Where is all this going? Unlike his opponents, Trump has a plan. It began to emerge when he was asked about the prospect of a normalisation deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Behind the scenes, Saudi leaders are reported to have few concerns for the Palestinians and their aspirations. Not so the Arab street. This accounts for the two-track approach that Riyadh has been pursuing for years. In private, the Palestinians don’t matter; in public, a two-state solution is a precondition for normalisation.

Until yesterday, that is. When asked if the Saudis were demanding a Palestinian state, Trump casually replied: “No, they’re not”. It could have been, of course, that he was saying the quiet part out loud. But such slips have a habit of making history, particularly when Trump is concerned….

Here I disagree with Jake Wallis Simons. I think the Saudis mean it when they insist there will be no normalization of ties with Israel until a Palestinian state has been created. After October 7, nearly three-quarters of Israelis oppose that “two-state solution”; any such state, they know, would be built on land essential to Israel’s defenses. Israel would be squeezed back within something approximating the 1949 armistice lines, which Lord Caradon, the main author of UN Security Resolution 242, described as “a horrible line.” It only indicated, he said, where on a certain day in 1948, the parties had stopped fighting. Abba Eban described the 1949 armistice lines as “the lines of Auschwitz.” Were Israel to be forced within such lines, it would have only a nine-mile-wide waist between Qalqilya and the sea. Its tiny size — even tinier than it is now — would only whet, not sate, Arab appetites, for attempting yet again to destroy the hated Zionist entity. It’s never going to happen. As far as Israelis are concerned, the “two-state solution” is now dead.

The Saudis don’t have to offer Israel the carrot of a “normalization of ties” in order to persuade Jerusalem to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. The Israelis know that a nuclear Iran’s first victim would be themselves. And if that nuclear program is destroyed by the IDF, the Saudis will still have other reasons to normalize ties with the Jewish state, including gaining access to its advanced technology, its advances in agriculture, in medicines and medical devices, in renewable sources of energy, and much more. The Israelis are not going to run after the Saudis, panting for Mohammed bin Salman to favor them with a “normalization of ties.” They will not be blackmailed into accepting a “two-state solution” that would threaten the Jewish state’s very existence. They will commit only to what Netanyahu has eloquently stated: “I’m certainly willing to have them have all the powers that they need to govern themselves, but none of the powers that can threaten us.”

Instead of joining the crowd of naysayers, why not wait to see what happens in Gaza if people are no longer held in thrall by Hamas, and allowed to make their own choices? Half a million people, according to Simons’ Palestinian friend in Gaza, are ready to make a move out of the Strip to freedom and a better life outside. How many more residents of Gaza will join them, once they see that such a thing is possible?

AUTHOR