Mr Trump, Mr Netanyahu and their shared vision for Gaza

Source: Jesuit Institute South Africa

Mr Trump, the president of the United States has a vision for Gaza, which he shared with the world on February 4, 2025. Mr Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, was visiting him. It should not have come as a surprise. However, it did! It felt like a kick in the stomach. And I am not even a Palestinian. I am an Israeli.

Mr Trump's vision aligns with that of the Israeli administration. Over the past sixteen months, the Israeli political and military authorities have initiated a new stage in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the genocidal wiping of the Palestinians off the face of the earth. Trump's boldly proclaimed plan is to transform the Gaza Strip from the heaps of rubble left by Israel's military campaign, into a luxurious riviera. In that vision (bold or shameful?), there is no place for the people who call Gaza home. That population must be moved out (to where is far from clear). This is yet another stage in the removal of Palestinians from Palestine, a process that began more than a hundred years ago and reached a peak in 1947/1948 when the State of Israel was founded. It was back in 1947/1948 that the population of Gaza more than tripled with the influx of those expelled by the Israelis from their homes inside Israel, making Gaza one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

Of course, Mr Trump spoke only about Gaza but Mr Netanyahu's administration has already begun to work on the West Bank, sowing Gaza-like destruction in the cities of Jenin and Tulkarm. Thousands of Palestinians have already been expelled from their homes. And then let us not forget the destruction that Israel sowed in southern Lebanon in recent months, leveling tens of villages. And then there is Israel's occupation of parts of southern Syria. Why not simply transfer the entire population of the areas that Israel considers essential for its security, turning all those areas into holiday resorts?

Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu's vision is quite different from that of Peter Beinhart, a Jewish American journalist. I strongly recommend his latest book, 'Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning' (2025) as an antidote to the venomous discourse coming from US and Israeli leadership. Beinhart courageously reconstructs Jewish identity in the light of what has been happening in the past months, adamantly insisting that Israel's only way forward is to ensure equality for all its citizens.

Beinhart, whose parents were Jewish South Africans, has fully assimilated the message of the struggle against apartheid. Another prophetic voice, that of Israeli activist Orly Noy, the chair of the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories B'tselem, proclaimed unequivocally: "The war will end only when Israeli society realizes that it is not only immoral but also impossible to secure our existence through the oppression and subjugation of another people - and that the people we imprison, bomb, starve, and rob of their freedom and land are entitled to the exact same rights as we are, down to the last note" (972 Magazine, 24.1.2025 www.972mag.com/israelis-end-war/ ). That includes the fundamental right to stay in their homeland, Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu, and to live in dignity and freedom.

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