It’s a humbling sight watching battered Palestinians stream, totally on foot, into northern Gaza like a protracted, winding river.
The quiet, dignified procession again to the flattened remnants of their properties and unsure lives is a transferring testomony to the resolve of a individuals who, regardless of the pervasive grief and loss, are decided to reclaim and rebuild what a genocidal regime sought to erase.
Palestinians, as I wrote in a column earlier this month, are indefatigable.
In that very same piece, I explored the which means of 4 phrases that got here to thoughts when a ceasefire was lastly struck following 15 months of relentless terror: reduction, gratitude, acknowledgement, and disgrace.
There was a fifth phrase that I had deliberate to incorporate however, within the joyful second brimming with renewed potentialities and hope-fueled celebrations, it appeared off-key.
The phrase was “concern”.
I feared the predictable rush to declare “winners” and “losers” when it needs to be obvious that genocide solely produces damage, loss of life, and destruction.
A spate of instant-coffee-quick columns was certainly revealed claiming that Israel had misplaced the “struggle” and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been “humiliated” since, although broken, Hamas has emerged intact and nonetheless in strutting command of Gaza.
True or not, the commentary jogged my memory of the jarring and short-sighted triumphalism on miserable show within the uncooked residue of the deadly occasions of October 7, 2023.
Quickly after the ceasefire was introduced, I used to be gripped by a foreboding sense of déjà vu.
I feared that the settlement would solely subdue Israel’s killing lust in Gaza for a short while and, within the meantime, Netanyahu and rancid firm would unleash their unbridled wrath on imprisoned Palestinians within the occupied West Financial institution.
The horrors unfolding within the West Financial institution – the brutal invasion, the murders of youngsters, men and women, the compelled expulsions and blockades – are a mirror of Israel’s wanton ruthlessness in Gaza now on pause.
Lastly, I feared that the credit score, if not reward, that then-US President-elect Donald Trump acquired – even amongst some misguided Palestinian writers – for having brokered the deal to silence the weapons whereas the Biden administration dithered, would get replaced rapidly by disappointment and bitter betrayal.
Trump’s so-called “push” for a ceasefire was extra a matter of self-aggrandising optics on the eve of an inauguration than proof of a honest perception in peace or a real need to cease the wholesale struggling of besieged Palestinians.
It appeared plain to me that Trump – ever the preening autocrat – had by no means thought-about and would by no means contemplate Palestinians as human beings worthy of his concern or consideration.
As an instructive end result, the ceasefire accord was designed to mollify Trump’s please-me-instantly impulses and to make use of as a cudgel to crow over certainly one of President Joe Biden’s signature international coverage failures as he departed the Oval Workplace.
As all the time, America’s new commander-in-chief’s allegiances are with Israel – fanatical lock, inventory and barrel – and the ceasefire is a Computer virus meant to hide Trump’s sinister plans.
Certain sufficient, in a spasm of readability and honesty, Trump told a gaggle of reporters on Air Power One on Saturday that he needed to “simply clear out” Gaza with the assistance of Jordan and Egypt.
“I would really like Egypt to take folks,” Trump stated. “You’re speaking about most likely one million and a half folks, and we simply clear out that entire factor and say: ‘You recognize, it’s over.’”
It was classic Trump: Scale back Palestinians and their ancestral dwelling to a plot of land to be ethnically cleansed on a wave-a-wand-like whim.
The “mess” could be solved and – shock, shock – little doubt Trump-friendly property builders would revenue handsomely by ridding Gaza of Palestinians to make means for rampaging Israeli settlers and a bunch of seaside resorts.
All of it, each crazed, diabolical ounce of it, is the stuff of desires for Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s genocide-giddy finance minister, Trump’s icy, calculating son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and the president’s Center East envoy, Steve Witkoff, who’s reportedly “mulling over” the preposterous thought of getting Palestinians “voluntarily” migrate to Indonesia.
Trump’s calls to “clear out” Gaza of Palestinians are a near-verbatim facsimile of appalling remarks Kushner made at Harvard College final February.
On the time in that supposedly august venue, the previous senior international coverage adviser throughout Trump’s first time period, recommended that Israel ought to take away Palestinians from Gaza whereas it “cleans up” the annihilated coastal enclave.
“From Israel’s perspective, I might do my greatest to maneuver the folks out after which clear it up,” Kushner stated.
He added, for extraordinary measure, that Gaza’s “waterfront property” was probably “very invaluable”.
Once more, like his scheming father-in-law, Kushner views Gaza as one other profitable actual property enterprise and surviving, traumatised Palestinians – an irritating inconvenience.
Reasonably than Indonesia, Kushner apparently prefers to persuade Palestinians “with diplomacy” to conform to be shipped en masse to Egypt or moved to the Naqab Desert.
“I might simply bulldoze one thing within the Negev, I might attempt to transfer folks in there,” he stated. “I believe that’s a greater choice, so you possibly can go in and end the job.”
Sure, in fact, “end the job” – good and neat – similar to Papa Trump envisions.
On cue, the gullible pundits who, solely days in the past, applauded Trump for making use of the type of convincing stress that solely a US president can train on a recalcitrant Israel, had been shouting about “purple traces” that had been crossed vis-a-vis the potential forcible eviction of Palestinians.
Though preoccupied with discovering and burying the entombed our bodies of their useless family members, Palestinians took time from that pressing activity to tell Trump, Kushner, and Witkoff that they shall not be moved – anyplace, at any time, by anyone.
But my fears persist.
I concern that the Trump-appointed zealots, who believe that there isn’t a such factor as a Palestinian, that Israel has “biblical” dominion over the West Financial institution, and {that a} Third Temple needs to be erected on the particles of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, will prevail throughout the subsequent 4 years.
My fears are rooted within the data that Palestinians have been deserted by the “worldwide neighborhood” for greater than 75 years, together with whereas they had been victims of a blatant genocide.
I’ve little, if any, religion in that very same cowardly “worldwide neighborhood” standing in Trump’s bulldozing means if he and his equally callous confederates resolve to “purge” Palestine of its folks endlessly.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
