The Israel-Palestine Exodus Fantasy

Trump or no Trump, partition of the Holy Land or one country for all remain the only games in town

From the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict there have been Jews who wished the Arabs simply weren’t here, and very much also vice versa. You didn’t need to be a crazy nationalist on either side to think that – even many regular people felt the land was too small for two very different equally stiff-necked peoples. Yet only crazies actually thought expulsions were a good idea.

Partitioning the Holy Land into two states or a single binational state – whether or not it featured equal rights – seemed to be the only real alternatives, and that remains the case. The place has 15 million people divided equally between Jews and Arabs, and even if a few hundred thousand Gazans actually leave, the fundamentals remain and a division is still possible. Into this complex reality and nuanced societal psychology now blunders Donald Trump with a half-baked plan to displace the two million Gazans while the U.S. takes over the strip and builds “magnificent” resorts – for whom, it is not clear.

Trump wants the ceasefire deal implemented to the end so that the hostages return, which means that Hamas will stay for now as Israeli forces leave the Gaza Strip – so is this carte blanche for Israel to afterward resume the war to finish off Hamas? Does he want US Marines to be fighting Hamas in Jabalya instead? Does he expect the Arab world to persuade Hamas to leave? Would Palestinians in any way be coerced to relocate? Would leavers be allowed to return? The questions are many. On the other hand, maybe asking them is pointless, because the proposal, if one can call it that, is a dead letter.

Some Arab states have vehemently rejected it and so has the Palestinian leadership, which is no surprise – because fanatically fervent attachment to Palestine is their defining national ethos. There are Palestinians still walking around with keys from long-destroyed homes from 1948 – long after Pakistanis and Indians and Germans, by the many millions, have accepted their displacement around the same time. Moreover, the American people will not put up with another Middle East military quagmire in order to indulge Trump’s fantasies; Trump himself surely doesn’t want one.

More likely, if there is any strategy at all, it is a dual one – and it actually may not be totally stupid, as long as it is not taken as face value