Douglas Murray, in his book, “On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization”, pointed out that the Hamas terror attacks of October 7th on Jewish civilians were committed with a level of glee by the assailants that has little precedence in the modern age. Rwandan Hutu militias may have rivaled Hamas with their orgiastic delight in hacking their Tutsi victims to death, but it is difficult to find others. Even the Nazis, in perpetrating the mass murder of European Jewry, tried to cover up their actions because they knew that their undertaking was far outside of the norms of civilized society. The Hamas assailants acted without even an understanding that what they were doing was wrong. They reveled in the satisfaction that their mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters would experience similar delight in viewing live streams of them decapitating Jewish children with shovels.
This all demonstrates to me that Gazan society is deeply implicated in the crimes of October 7th. Although almost entirely forgotten, the Germans as a whole, not just the Nazi leadership in the dock at Nuremberg, paid a price for their actions in WWII. Over 12 million Germans were displaced under the Potsdam Agreement of 1945 that dictated German loss of all land east of the Oder-Neisse Line to Poland and the USSR. A similar fate should await the Gazans. All two million Gazans should be displaced to a location far away from Israel’s border. To weed out some and allow others to stay based upon their involvement with the Hamas death cult is an impractical, near impossible task.
As Trump has reportedly suggested, Libya seems to be the ideal spot for relocation of the Gazan population in that the language, culture and proximity to the Mediterranean matches with what they have known. The relocation does not necessarily have to be inhumane, and the cost of resettlement is small in comparison to the future human and monetary cost of continued fighting in Gaza.
Trump’s recommendation is to build a luxury resort to supplant what remains of Gaza. I prefer that Gaza be transformed into a nature preserve. The preserve would provide sanctuary and respite for birds during their annual migration from Europe to Africa and back. This has the advantage of refuting any claim that Israel or the U.S. was seeking any territorial aggrandizement or monetary gain. Rehabilitating the land as a bird sanctuary would be a good task for the Audubon Society, if it could take its attention away from climate change for a minute. If it isn’t up to the task, then I am sure that the Israeli army has the engineering prowess to accomplish it.
Naysayers to the relocation scheme may point out that it will only be moving the trouble to another country. A country from which a resurgent Hamas might continue to launch attacks against Israel. This might be the case, but it will be logistically much more difficult for Hamas to do so. Others on the Left, like Greta Thunberg 2.0, will gnash their teeth and beat their breast screaming, “Oh the inhumanity of it all!”, but they were bound to do that anyway.
There are modern precedents in which the political displacement of populations worked out well in the long run. The reason you don’t hear about them is because they were successful. In addition to the aforementioned displacement of Germans after WWII, there is the Turkish Greek partition and subsequent population realignment in 1923, a result of the Treaty of Lausanne following the Greco-Turkish War. This agreement led to the relocation of approximately 1.5 million Orthodox Christians from Turkey to Greece and 500,000 Muslims from Greece to Turkey.
One should not dismiss the Gazan situation as intractable. Although Hamas inducted many into its death cult, so did the bushido militarists of prewar Japan, and in the aftermath of WWII, the Western world came up with an answer. The Japanese are now pacified and firmly ensconced in the Western alliance. It is time to think out of the box about answers to this conflict and ignore the academics who are stuck in the oppressor-oppressed mindset.
Image generated by AI.