Palestine Dismantling Plan

In colonial logic, national geographies become moving borders that can be shifted and changed according to understandings of resource-sharing areas or settlements for the management of conflict hotspots, which are based on the displacement of indigenous peoples from their countries and the confiscation of their right to self-determination.

The colonial logic renews itself at every historical stage according to international and regional changes. The American administration directs its diplomacy and political resources to reshape the Middle East region, towards the “New Middle East”, starting from the Palestinian gateway, by imposing a scenario for the future of the Gaza Strip after the truce, and requires the displacement of Palestinians from their land as a condition for achieving stability in the region.

The American-Israeli colonial policy is similar in its occupation and expansionist dimension in imposing representations of power, and employing it to move geographical borders at the expense of the national borders of sovereign states, and also at the expense of the indigenous population, through the use of multiple pressure cards, at the forefront of which is military power.

In this alliance context, which serves the policies of hegemony, the administration of US President Donald Trump has become an effective tool to accelerate the plans of its occupying ally in Palestine, by imposing a strategy aimed at dismantling the Palestinian cause and evacuating the Palestinians from their historical land. In addition to the unconditional military and political support, which allowed Israel to continue using force against the Palestinians and ignore its military escalation in the West Bank camps.

The dilemma of rebuilding the Gaza Strip and its complexity are intertwined with the implications of the policies of displacing citizens at present or in the long term. Although rebuilding Gaza may require a long time, given the widespread destruction resulting from the Israeli war, the daily reality in the Strip requires, from a humanitarian and moral perspective, the suspension of the political conditions for rebuilding Gaza, by beginning with the rehabilitation of the service infrastructure and residential facilities, at least partially destroyed, to enable citizens to settle in their areas, an urgent humanitarian condition that goes beyond urgent daily interventions to save lives.

However, the Trump administration may aim to establish the status quo in Gaza as a repellent environment and a multi-faceted pressure card to push citizens to accept alternative options, including voluntary migration, as there is no possibility of life in the cities of the Strip, starting with housing, ensuring a minimum standard of living, as well as finding job opportunities, not to mention securing the future of children, while the narrative of living in displacement camps in inhumane conditions continues and constitutes a daily challenge that affects the lives of citizens, socially and economically as well.

In addition to the human overcrowding in the camps, the competition for housing in suitable buildings puts citizens in a daily struggle for survival, in addition to the growing disputes between residents, while the economic and living aspect constitutes another pressure card, through competition over the scarce resources in the sector. Therefore, perpetuating this coercive reality on the Palestinians, and turning the reconstruction of Gaza into a bargaining chip, creates repulsive conditions that may lead the wealthy Palestinians to prefer to leave the sector, and thus to migrate voluntarily to avoid the misery of a life of destitution.

For the sake of Israel’s security, not the security of the region, the US administration is aligning its policies between dismantling historical Palestine and displacing Palestinians, and continuing to strip Palestinian political bodies of their legal and sovereign status, whether the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, and in accordance with the same colonial doctrine, stripping them of the right to self-determination for Palestine and determine its political future.

The survival or disappearance of Palestine, according to American policy, is a product of the regional situation, and before that of the art of managing deals with its partners, which is evident in its policies, ranging from bargaining over the two-state solution to involving its allies in determining the fate of the future of the Gaza Strip, after the truce, not in developing the national authority in Palestine, but in accepting the proposal of housing the Palestinians by neighboring countries, specifically Egypt and Jordan, as the ideal solution for rebuilding Gaza.

However, this arrogant policy does not only reflect the colonial nature of the American administration, by seeking to displace Palestinians from their land and cleanse Gaza, which means a blatant violation of the rights of the Palestinian people and a breach of international conventions and laws. Rather, this approach contradicts its domestic policy, as the inauguration of Trump’s second term by forcibly deporting refugees, in an illegal and inhumane manner, and forcing their countries to take back their citizens, is pressuring the Egyptian and Jordanian authorities diplomatically, and by threatening to use force, to accept hosting the Palestinians, and turning Egypt and Jordan into alternative homelands for the Palestinians, thereby violating diplomatic norms and the sovereignty of states.

In contrast to the US administration’s crystallization of its vision for the future of Gaza, the official Arab position is still incapable of confronting these serious challenges. The Arab countries are still dealing with Palestine either as part of a grand deal for normalization with Israel in the future, or as a security problem that affects their national security, including the countries neighboring Palestine. Therefore, we lack a unified Arab strategy, whether at the popular or official level, to confront any constraints or compromises imposed by the US administration.

In the fateful battle between the indigenous people and the occupiers, the narrative of resistance to uprooting and calls for purification remains. If the colonial powers still see the peoples of the earth as “red Indians” who can be exterminated and their homelands occupied, then historical Palestine is an intense narrative of rejecting the dominance of force and arrogance. The people of Gaza, who walked more than eighty kilometers to return to their destroyed homes in the northern Gaza Strip, in the greatest march of life in this century, are the memory of today, tomorrow and the future, of the meaning and images of clinging to the homeland, even if the harsh circumstances of life and the brutality of the occupiers conspire against them.

*Quoted from Al-Araby Al-Jadeed