DONALD TRUMP’S PLAN FOR GAZA IS ATROCIOUS AND BEYOND COMPREHENSION!

• The global community is quite aware of how unpredictable, shockingly abrasive, tempestuous, and impetuous the newly inaugurated President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, can be. Right from the time of his first presidential stint to the campaign leading up to his second term, the global community has witnessed several instances of how the maverick leader goes off-track on matters of importance and wider consequences quite nonchalantly. Prima facie, it appears leaders and people from around the world have come to accept the fact that Trump cannot be easily decipherable since bracketing him would be a futile exercise. Now that he has commenced meeting leaders from other countries, pearls of wisdom from Trump are overflowing.

PC: Financial Times

• The deportation of illegal immigrants, banning citizenship at childbirth, encouraging local businesses, imposing trade tariffs on countries, downsizing bureaucracy, visa restrictions, and vitriolic attacks/barbs aimed at some countries like China, Mexico, El Salvador, and Canada have been heard around the world loudly over the last few months. Executive orders on these issues have already been dispersed. However, Trump’s recent announcement of Gaza, Palestinian, is not only appalling and illegal but also surpasses all his previous proclamations, hands down. He wants to shape Gaza’s destiny without consulting Palestinians by moving them out to live in Egypt or Jordan – both countries oppose the idea, expectedly.

PC: Financial Times

• Trump finished the idea by declaring the US would take over Gaza for the long term and rebuild it into the Rivera of the Middle East, home to the world’s people, maybe also Palestinians. Farfetched as it seems, the idea would be ridiculous if it originated anywhere but the White House. Coming from the US president, it’s appalling. Mind you, it’s also illegal under international law, as many world leaders pointed out immediately. When they met in Washington recently, Trump was never expected to read the riot act to the visiting Benjamin Netanyahu. But he still managed to shock most by substituting policy with thinking aloud. It sounds like something Trump, the corner-cutting realtor, might have proposed to extend his business. This is diplomacy, not business, you see.

PC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

• But the US president ought to know international law does not allow forcible relocation of people. Even though 70% of Gaza has been damaged or destroyed over 15 months of Israeli shelling, some 2mn people consider it home. It’s where they grew up and buried their dead – around 47,000 of them in just the war. They won’t leave it, and by proposing they do en masse, Trump has done what even the Israelis had not dared so far. Besides, Trump’s idea runs counter to his stated policy of keeping the US out of West Asia’s troubles. Does he expect Gazans to abandon their homeland without a fight? By dispossessing them, he will lay the seeds for generations of strife. Trump should be adviced not to press ahead with the implausible and unfeasible claims. Period.