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Elliott Abrams notes that it is Donald Trump who wants to provide a better life for the people now in Gaza, by arranging for their removal while the Strip itself is cleared of rubble. Whether they then return, or remain in the Arab states where he hopes they can be resettled, they will be much better off than if they are forced, by their Arab brothers, to remain in Gaza, obstacles to its reconstruction. But along with physical reconstruction in Gaza, the people now in Gaza require mental reconstruction, after two decades of enduring the murderous despotism of Hamas. More of Abrams’ discussion of the need for this other “reconstruction” can be found here: “‘Gaza Shall Be Forsaken,’” by
…Trump’s plan tacitly understands another reason Gaza has never developed into the Singapore that Shimon Peres dreamed of, and that is the condition of the society that has developed in Gaza in the past two decades of Hamas control. Economic and political development require both sound government and a culture in which the polity can advance. One look at Haiti is a reminder of that obvious point. Trump’s plan accepts that development will not happen in the current Gaza situation, where society is permeated by corruption, brutality, hatred, and terror….
Perhaps 10 years of living without Hamas in a variety of countries would transform Gazans, too. Some would stay in the places to which they moved, while others would want to go “back” to the new Gaza—but this time not as UN-certified permanent “refugees” from the naqba of 1948. This time, as people with options for a decent life who chose to live in Gaza because it offered economic opportunity and peace.
It’s fanciful, and very, very unlikely. But it’s a better, truer, understanding of what led to Gaza’s current situation and what could possibly lead out of it than decades of “peace processing” and UN resolutions, which in the end have produced terrorism, war, and misery.
Trump is treating Gaza as a physical place and its people as suffering humans, which is more than has ever been done by any Arab League resolution condemning Israel and calling it a war crime to allow Gazans to move away. “We will not allow the rights of our people… to be infringed on,” declared Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has not permitted an election in 19 years. Trump’s scheme would “undermine the core of the Palestinian national project,” said Algeria, which is true if the core of that project is endless violence aimed at destroying Israel. An Arab League statement said Trump’s proposal would “threaten the region’s stability” which is also true if, by stability, is meant the 77 years of refusal to accept Israel in peace as a Jewish state.
Gaza is, as Trump called it, a “hellhole,” and history suggests it will remain so. Not because of anything the Israelis did. They left it in 2005 with an open possibility for a better future. Not because of Donald Trump, who in his first weeks in office offered a different future and asked Arab governments to think for once about Gazans as people rather than cannon fodder in the struggle against Israel. But it is apparently still easier to dream on about the “two-state solution” and the “right of return,” and far easier to scream about Israeli crimes and Palestinian victims, than to let the Jews live in peace. Until that changes, “Gaza shall be forsaken.”
It’s not enough to improve the physical conditions of the Gazans by removing the rubble and rebuilding the Strip. That will require their leaving what will become an enormous “construction site,” and to move to other Arab states while the reconstruction takes place. Then they should be given the freedom to choose whether to remain where they are, or to return to Gaza. But they must also be allowed to improve their mental condition, free from Hamas’ rule, whether in Gaza, should they return, or even in the places in Arab countries where they had been allowed to settle and choose to remain. The hold of the terror group on the Gazans has to be broken.
Without that change in their mental makeup, the Gazans will use their energies not to further their own wellbeing, but to return to making war on the Jewish state — that is, remaining in a condition of endless “terrorism, war, and misery.” It is Trump who has shown a real interest in improving the lot of the Gazans; those who oppose his plans are revealing their indifference to the rubble-strewn conditions in which the Gazans now live, and their desire to keep using the Gazans as cannon fodder in the endless, wasteful, and doomed-to-fail campaign to destroy Israel and to replace it “from the river to the sea” with “Palestine.”