Horrifying plans

Not to be left out of genocidal politics, US President Trump’s latest reported proposal for Gaza is as appalling as it is revealing: reportedly suggesting that Gaza should be "cleaned out" and that Egypt and Jordan should take in Palestinian refugees as the US takes over Gaza. This is not merely a reckless statement but an explicit endorsement of ethnic cleansing. Such a policy, if implemented, would constitute a grave violation of international law and a fundamental assault on human rights. Since Israel launched its relentless military campaign in Gaza in October, nearly 50,000 Palestinians have been killed. The war has already displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents. Now, Trump’s remarks effectively legitimise the forced removal of an entire population to pave the way for Israeli expansionism. The fact is that the US has long enabled Israeli policies in Palestine, providing billions in military aid while shielding Israel from international accountability. However, Trump’s rhetoric takes this complicity to an unprecedented level. The hypocrisy of American democracy is once again laid bare: while the US claims to champion human rights and international law, it has effectively bankrolled a genocide and now its new president is advocating even more ethnic cleansing.

The recent US-brokered ceasefire in Gaza, which came into effect on January 19, had given a brief glimmer of hope to Gaza’s besieged population. However, it appears to have taken Trump less than two weeks to return to his true Zionist instincts. Egypt has firmly rejected the American president’s brazen idea, while Jordan is already home to over two million Palestinian refugees. For Palestinians, Trump’s proposal is tantamount to another Nakba. Instead of helping rebuild a shattered territory, where not a single health facility remains intact and starvation threatens thousands of children, Trump’s remarks remind the world just how little Palestinian lives count in the Western-Zionist imagination. Meanwhile, the slow and methodical annexation of the West Bank continues largely unnoticed. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that 2024 witnessed the highest number of settler-related attacks in the West Bank since records began. The usual justifications for occupation, such as security concerns, have been discarded. Hamas does not control the West Bank, yet Israeli settlers continue to terrorise Palestinians with full state backing.

In all this, international institutions remain powerless to enforce their rulings. The only countries capable of restraining Israel, primarily the US, have no interest in doing so. The Biden administration armed and supported Israel’s genocide, while Trump seems keen to go one step further. Palestinians have no powerful allies capable of matching the US-Israel axis, no state that can shield them from occupation and violence. But they do have an unbreakable will – a will that is seen as they return home, as they continue to care for their children, their pets, their belongings buried under rubble, the dead bodies they bury, the poems they write. In their songs of freedom lies their greatest strength: resistance.