Resettling Gazans? Trump Against History (and Himself)

What do you call a political leader who insists on deporting millions of illegal immigrants in his rich country who are desperate to be there, but then insists that halfway across the world two poor nations must accept a couple of million people who do not want to emigrate to those countries? That’s President Trump’s “immigration policy.” I leave to you the most appropriate pejorative for such a self-contradictory policy.

But let’s disregard the almost oxymoronic element in his approach. What is most egregious about it is its lack of historicity — and from Trump’s own standpoint: self-defeating!

When Israel was established, it immediately became embroiled in an Israeli-Arab War. There is no longer such a war because the Arab countries have either signed peace treaties with Israel (Egypt and Jordan), or reached formal “Accords” with the Jewish State, or have become militarily and politically neutralized (Syria and Lebanon). Iran has become Israel’s greatest nemesis – but it is not (never has been) “Arab”. Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel’s only real cross-border threats are proxies for Iran.

Which leaves us with basically an Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And it is here that we arrive back at the immigrant issue – although it has been “packaged” as a refugee problem. Two things should be made clear:

1) Hundreds of thousands (now a few million, including their progeny) of Palestinians indeed left and/or were forced out of their homeland during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. They settled mainly in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanese refugee camps.

2) Of the tens of millions of refugees around the world in the post-World War II era, every single one relatively soon entered the new society in which they found themselves – except for one people: the Palestinians. They have been (s)moldering in squalid refugee camps for over 75 years – within the borders of their Arab brethren (unlike millions of other refugees who had to integrate in an ethnically, religiously, or culturally foreign society). The reason? The Palestinians could be used as a potential cudgel to keep the conflict festering, with Arab promises of their eventually “returning home” (many still wear the key to their former home).

Given this historical backdrop, Trump’s demand to have even more Arab refugees dumped on neighboring countries is obtuse at best – and even worse from his standpoint: counter-productive! As his main goal is to “bring peace to the Middle East,” nothing could be more harmful to that goal than to send millions more miserable refugees into these Arab countries that already suffer from poverty. Indeed, in the case of Jordan the problem is even more acute. The Hashemite Kingdom has the “wrong” ethnic majority in its midst: Palestinian! Adding a million more would probably tip that country into civil war (a la Syria over the last decade) or revolution (Syria a couple of months ago). Hardly a recipe for Middle East peace.
Is there a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue? Yes, but it entails the two-state solution – for if a non-belligerent State of Palestine were established, and well run (attracting Arab investment), that would be a main attraction for many of those decades-long refugees to finally return – if not “home,” at least to their “homeland.” Indeed, that would kill two birds with one stone – for such a Palestine would also run Gaza, enabling the Gazans to stay put and rebuild, while also negating Hamas’s rule.

None of this would happen overnight – and lots of change would have to occur: reeducation of Palestinians regarding Jewish rights to their homeland as well; demilitarization of Palestine (West Bank and Gaza); elimination of international institutions (e.g., UNWRA) whose raison d’etre is to keep the refugees relying on outside sustenance; and massive construction to enable the refugees to return.

In Washington, at his recent meeting with Bibi, Trump announced his plan for America to “take over Gaza.” No details were forthcoming, mainly because that would contravene several international laws, not to mention sending more U.S. troops overseas – patently against his declared, neo-isolationist foreign policy. Yet another contradiction, if you will. However, far worse would be any attempt to add millions of refugees to the boiling Middle East pot, adding injury (destabilizing two of America’s friendly Arab nations) to insult (forcibly removing millions of people from their land).

If President Trump is really serious about starting a process that has some chance of eventually getting him awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, his approach should be subtraction, and not addition: eliminating the refugee status of millions of Palestinians – not adding to it.