On the evening of February 4, 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump stood side by side at the White House to announce the results of their much-anticipated meeting. It is now clear what Trump’s views are and what he intends to do about the Palestinians, Gaza, and the West Bank.

First, he envisages the relocation of the 1.7 million survivors of Israeli/US genocide to other Arab nations, notably Egypt and Lebanon. He avers that neither the West Bank nor Gaza is safe; it is loaded with unexploded munitions; most of the buildings have been bombed, so no place to live; many of the half-bombed buildings pose a hazard; clearing the rubble and rebuilding would take 10 to 15 years; even if the Palestinians returned from resettlement a war would still break out in future, redevastating the area; and Palestine lacks the basic amenities and infrastructure for survival. No sense living there. Resettle!

Second, he envisages Gaza being taken over by the Americans. His nation would rebuild it into a beautiful and safe living, leisure, and working space. Because the Strip borders the sea, it would be like the Riviera. It would create peace, wealth, and employment.

Would the Palestinians be allowed to return and make this their future homeland? Fat chance. History proves that Palestinians must not live in this area. It would become a hellhole all over again! International groups, a cosmopolitan nation, inclusive of Palestinians, would return there to make their fortunes.

Third, both the resettlement of Palestinians and the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip would be funded by the wealthy Arab states. Settled in their new homelands in various Arab states, the Palestinians would lead lives of peace and prosperity, free from war — beautiful lives. How does he know these wealthy Arab states will fund his fantasies? Because he will ask (threaten) them to.

Fourth, asked if he agrees with the Jewish/Israeli claim that biblical Samaria, the current North West Bank, belonged to Israel, President Trump says an announcement would be made on this within four weeks. The West Bank is 2,173 square miles, the Gaza Strip, 141 square miles. The former is peppered with Israeli settlements on land seized by Israeli settlers over the last 50 years. The Strip is Israel’s colonial project: heavily militarised, controlling and sanctioning goods and services entering and leaving, including daily inflows to Egypt in the south and Israel itself. It is Israel’s apartheid project.

Is Trump serious? Doesn’t he know that following World War One, after the British obtained a mandate for Palestine from the League of Nations in 1922, Palestine encompassed not only Gaza and the West Bank but modern Israel and modern Jordan; that in 1948, following a UN resolution to establish a Jewish State of Israel, mostly for European Jews and holocaust survivors, the independence of Jordan, and the forced expulsion of Arab Palestinians by Jews during the Nakba in an Arab-Israeli war, the Palestinians were left with the West Bank and Gaza? That is, just over one-third of the size of current Israel (8,522 square miles). Does Trump want to snatch this last inch of land from the Palestinians too?

Does Trump understand the long history of Palestinian sacrifice in the Jewish-Arab nationalist wars between 1922 and 1948 and the subsequent employing of every form of diplomacy, protest, stoning (Intifada/ uprising), guerilla warfare, suicide bombing, stabbing, statecraft, hijacking, music, and terror to win their nation-State? Does he understand that they sacrificed themselves to ethnic cleansing and the systematic destruction of their hospitals, universities, media houses, journalists, health workers, water and food infrastructure and network? Does he understand that they sacrificed to stay in their homeland, with — according to some reports— over 60,000, and counting, dead and over 110,000 injured? Does he understand that their cities and towns have been converted to dustbowls and their leaders assassinated? Why would they now give in to this vulgar, tragi-comic, absurd act of real-estate land grabbing?

Did Trump or his agents consult with the Palestinians to ask them what they want? Did he consult with the proverbial ‘international community’, the UN, and/or the Arab League?

During Trump’s first term he appointed his Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner as envoy to bring peace to the Middle East. Kushner came up with the Abraham Accords (Jewish name). Bilateral agreements were signed between two Arab states — Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates — enabling the establishment of full diplomatic relations with Israel. But the Palestinians had been left out. The deleting of Palestinians when making treaties in their name, abandoning their identities, rights, and preferences, is old colonial fare.

And by what law, what right, what convention is Trump justified in this open, boldface, scandalous plan to take a people’s homeland and expunge their grand idea, their dream? Is this ethnic cleansing by peaceful means? Is this an attempt to swipe the people from under their chosen leader, Hamas, in a bid to decapitate and castrate Palestinian civil, political, and military leadership? And what assurance is there that they will not be resettling into squatter camps and ghettos, like the refugee camps in Lebanon?

And why don’t the US and Israel fund the reconstruction? Didn’t they orchestrate the destruction? Are they not subject to normal laws? Or are they chosen folks, exempted?

Does Trump not see the irony that the carnage in Palestine he so graphically describes was caused by his very own presidential office, by Joe Biden, his predecessor, and the smirking man standing next to him? Perhaps not. But the Palestinians do. And they will never accept his final solution.

wbkubla@yahoo.com