Nobody cares where cockroaches go when the exterminator is called, as long as they go someplace else. That’s Trump and Netanyahu’s approach to Palestinians. From Andrew Korybko at korybko.substack.com:
He might have convinced himself that ethnically cleansing the Palestinians is the only way to decisively end the conflict, ensure Israel’s long-term security, and restore regional business opportunities like the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor.
Ralph Peters is a former US Army analyst who became famous in the mid-2000s for his article “Blood Borders: How A Better Middle East Would Look”, which proposed redrawing the region’s borders according to local identities. He justified this on the basis that “Ethnic cleansing works.” Even though Peters wrote that Israel should return to its pre-1967 borders, the overall gist of his piece might have inspired Trump’s latest proposal to “just clean out” Gaza by sending its people to Egypt and Jordan.
He isn’t influenced by moral or humanitarian arguments when formulating his country’s policies, only practical ones, which in this case are driven by his interest in decisively ending the conflict and then restoring regional business opportunities in its wake. All references to moral and humanitarian arguments, such as him telling the Davos elite that he wants to end the Ukrainian Conflict just for the sake of stopping the killing, are just attempts to make his envisaged proposals more publicly acceptable.
That’s why he has no qualms about suggesting something that essentially amounts to ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from their homeland, but there are several problems in his latest proposal. For starters, there’s no way to coerce them into exile without risking another conflict. The nascent ceasefire calls for allowing the Palestinians to return to their homes and permitting hundreds of aid trucks into the strip each day. Hamas is expected to resume hostilities if Israel reneges on these crucial parts of the deal.
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