The Killers' Plan for the Day After in Gaza

The Washington Post reported (9/2, “Gaza postwar plan envisions ‘voluntary’ relocation of entire population”) on the plan the Trump regime and its international partners have in mind for “the day after” in Gaza. It’s named GREAT (of course), standing for Gaza Reconstruction and Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust proposal. The plan was written by Israeli businessmen, including GHF, the shadowy group behind the “aid sites” in Gaza, at which over 1,000 Palestinians have been murdered while seeking survival rations. They received assistance from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and the Boston Consulting Group. This grotesque colonialist fantasy envisions a gleaming hi-tech future for Gaza, paid for by the Arab states and western oligarchs. The GREAT plan shamelessly caters to these prospective underwriters – the “Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone”, the “MBS Ring” for the Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman (of bone saw fame in the murder and dismemberment of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi), and “MBZ Central Highway” for United Arab Emirates dictator Mohammed bin Zayed. The consultants thought it prudent to pander to Donald Trump, so they dangle the “Trump Riviera and Islands” modeled on the Palm Islands in Dubai. Proposal AI graphics of the “EV Industrial Zone” look like replicas of the Dubai skyline.

So where are the Palestinians in this shimmering future? Oh, the Israelis and their consultants have a swell plan for them. After turning Gaza into an uninhabitable wasteland, Israel will enact its “final solution” – the Palestinians will be ethnically cleansed. Israel and its colonial partners – the United States and Western allies - will cynically reframe this as “voluntary migration.” Out of the goodness of their heart, every Palestinian will be given $5,000 and temporary rental subsidies (not paid by Israel). They can take these “grants” and go anywhere, just so long as it is not Gaza, and of course, nowhere in historic Palestine, especially not the original Palestine homes they were driven from in 1948 and 1967. They will again be condemned to wander as refugees, with no right of return. It should also be remembered, by contrast, that when Israel dismantled their settlements in Gaza in 2005, Israeli settlers were each given between $250,000 and $600,000 (in today’s dollars) “for their trouble.” Once the Palestinians are exterminated and/or driven out of Gaza, then the Israelis and the Americans will seize it and do what they will with it. As Trump said, “We will own it, and we will do a job with it.” Remove the rubble, and turn it into a capitalist utopia. On a mass grave, mind you. But, as Diana Buttu, Palestinian international lawyer and negotiator, points out, this is no problem for the Israelis; they have a lot of experience covering over and building on top of mass atrocities.

What’s that you ask, “But were the Palestinians consulted? What do they think of this plan?” In the colonialist logic of the Israelis and their western accomplices, there has never been any meaningful consultation with the Palestinians, no respect for Palestinian self-determination. It goes back over a century. There is an extremely telling statement by British Lord Balfour at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919: “In Palestine, we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country (93% Palestinian). The Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes , of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.” That last statement is a brazen admission that it is only the aspirations of the Jewish people that really matter to the western powers, not the indigenous people of the land. In this colonial mindset, Palestinian lives do not matter. Never have. What is playing out in Gaza, and the West Bank, today is the continuation of a radical plan of dehumanization and dispossession of the Palestinian people that began over a century ago. As Chris Hedges has said, “Gaza has illuminated a dark truth – barbarism and Western civilization are inseparable.”