Food Now, Hamas Out

Embed from Getty Images

Image caption: A convoy of aid trucks, on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing with the Gaza Strip, awaits permission to drive toward the besieged Palestinian territory on July 27, 2025.

Food Now, Hamas Out: Gazans Emigrate to Safety with a Right of Return, and Trump Riviera Hotel

Gazan civilians are being denied food, adequate shelter, medicine, clean water, and subject to mortal danger by enforcement of organizational norms of the Islamist militant organization Hamas; and Israel Defense Forces implementing the anti-Hamas military policy of the right wing Likud Coalition. It is suggested here that the harm to Gazans can be reduced at the same time that Hamas influence inside Gaza can be eradicated, leading to a peace process culminating to a Palestinian State.

Details are important for the creation, timing, and implementation of these arrangements. The policies here are meant to be opening suggestions for a diplomatic process where negotiations will determine the specific results.

Food Now

Ending starvation and the threat of starvation of Gazans is a survival outcome for Palestinian civilians. For Israelis it improves their public diplomacy with most countries around the world, especially with countries in the Mideast. The strategy involves airlifts of food and aid, opening more border crossings into Gaza to facilitate many more aid trucks, allowing aid in through sea routes, facilitating NGOs to bring in more food to Gazans, and pushing Hamas out of Gaza and into Iran. The latter is important to facilitate a basis for a ceasefire, which will allow for more aid into Gaza, and be a positive condition for a process leading to a Palestinian State.

Gazans Emigrate to Safety with a Right of Return

As a means to survival, transferring Gazan civilians out of Gaza is something a majority of Gazans want. The policy to do this is twofold. Substantial amounts of Gazan civilians, who volunteer to do so, would be eligible to go to over 100 countries that recognize the “State of Palestine.” Recent polls and journalists show over a majority of Gazans want to emigrate to other countries. Out of desperation, Gazans are willing to emigrate even without a Right to Return. To help reduce future enmity against Israel, this flight from Gaza should be accompanied with a conditional Right of Return that includes a listing of those conditions and how that will be implemented. Monitoring of this Return process should be done by Abraham Accord countries.

A key element here is to prohibit Hamas political, military, and enforcement members from going to these countries that are welcoming to Gazan refugees. Welcoming countries would not want to invite refugees that could sow domestic discontent or threaten violence. Hamas partisans would be prohibited to participate in this emigration to safety by background investigations, lie detector tests, and signing of an affidavit based on the Singapore’s Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act, whose non-compliance would negate eligibility to emigrate or result in deportation if non-compliance occurred after immigration.

Hamas Out

Hamas political, military, and organization enforcement leadership are to be amicably expelled from Gaza to Iran. To facilitate an end to the Gaza war, seventeen countries, plus the European Union and Arab League are calling for disarmament of Hamas. This is a welcome start but a more sure path to peace is to facilitate Hamas leadership leaving Gaza. Once this is accomplished, Israel can start a process of moving towards the creation of a Palestinian State or Province.

An amicable removal of Hamas is necessary for Hamas to agree to a transfer from Gaza. “Amicable” includes Israeli abstention from revenge violence or incarceration directed to Hamas members, inclusion of family members in resettlement, and a money stipend to assist with the costs of resettlement in Iran.

Of course, the remaining hostages have to be released prior to or coterminus with the cessation of warfare. I nominate the US, EU, and Abraham Accord countries to monitor Israeli compliance; and Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Qatar to monitor Hamas compliance. Israel needs to have a temporary peace-keeping and police presence in Gaza until there can be a transition to Gazans along with, at first, Third Party countries such as Qatar, Ireland, Spain, and Norway. Israel also must be a planning and construction co-supervisor with Gazans, the US, and Saudis to oversee the reconstruction and make sure that the security of Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank is maintained. Former Israeli Ambassador Zion Evrony strongly advocates for a reconstituted Palestinian Authority (PA) to fill the governing vacuum in Gaza created by the removal of Hamas leadership. He also asserts a bigger and stronger role for the PA in the West Bank.

The rationale for Iran to accept Hamas members into their country is that they: (1) have been and are financial patrons for Hamas, (2) have some sympathy to stop the harm inflicted upon Gazans because Iran was substantially responsible for the initiation of this current war. (3) can place Hamas members into their military and propaganda infrastructures, and (4) can be economically rewarded through the removal of many of the sanctions placed upon them. For example, sanctions can be removed for purchasing or facilitating the delivery Iranian oil, unfreezing Iranian governmental assets in the United States and overseas, and allowing the sale of U.S.- origin aircraft or related goods, technology, or services to be sold to to Iranian civilian aviation companies.

To encourage participation of countries to accept Gazan immigrants, the U.S. has to show willingness to be part of this process. I originally thought of the U.S. temporarily or permanently taking in 1,214,000 Gazans in the Detroit and Chicago areas. Those cities were chosen because of the already large presence of Palestinian and Muslim refugees and immigrants.

I now think that number is way too high to create the housing, education, and medical infrastructure necessary for a quick resettlement. But the US can and should be taking in 200,000 Gazans spread over two to three years mainly in Detroit and Chicago.

While the Trumpian political faction is currently antagonistic towards immigrants and refugees, this would be a way to show serious intent on the part of the US to protect Palestinians and solve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, leading to a Palestinian State and Saudi recognition of and alliance with Israel. President Trump has taken in South African Afrikaner immigrants who are threatened by violence. Likewise, he can take in Gazans threatened by violence, the violence from Hamas enforcement of their political and religious ideology and the side-effect violence from the Israeli war against Hamas.

Trump has asked for countries with humanitarian hearts to take in Gazans. On Feb. 5, 2025 Trump said, “We should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this, and build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza, ending the death and destruction and, frankly, bad luck.”

With regards to the recent refugee immigration of Afrikaners, Trump said that he was doing this because they were victims to violence and “their race makes no difference to me”. Likewise, protection of Gazans from violence is paramount and the Arabic ethnicity of Palestinians should make no difference to him. In this context, Trump has to demonstrate that the US also has a humanitarian heart if he expects those 100 plus countries to actively help out in this peace process.

Trump Riviera Hotel (TRH)

Incentives need to be provided to Trump to push this policy as well as provide a institution of prominence that will be protected and bring stability and side-effect affluence to the neighborhoods near the TRH. This will act as a guarantee for having at least one Gazan neighborhood where first world standards of safety, nutrition, and jobs for Gazans can be provided. Gazans (without Hamas) must be able to create their own economic development plan based on peaceful co-existence with their neighbors, especially including Israel. It is not suggested here that a model of the French Riviera be created in Gaza to replace Gaza as a home for Palestinians but that there be a section of first-world lifestyle injected into Gaza, at its re-creation, to stimulate investment into it.