I think I was woken up just after midnight by the world shifting on its axis as a result of all the jaws hitting the floor. It was a thoroughly Trumpian moment: he articulates a proposal that is so out-of-the-box that people didn’t even realise they were allowed to think it. But once the initial shock has passed, it begins to make sense.
I speak, of course, of the President’s proposal for the United States take over Gaza and relocate the inhabitants. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Although the broad brush strokes may be sound – it is time to acknowledge that Plan A, the two-state solution, has been a miserable failure – the implementation will not be easy.
To start with, there’s the job of persuading Arab states to take in Gazans. Then there’s the notion of the United States taking possession of the territory – how will that square with international law? – as well as the small matter of Hamas, which is down but certainly not out.
Add to this the furious resistance to the idea coming from the West, both on the level of international institutions like the United Nations and the activists in the media and on the street, and you’re looking at a big mountain to climb. And we haven’t even started talking funding or logistics.
At the heart of the matter, however, is the attitudes of the Gazans themselves. There is an assumption in the West that they would rather forge their lives for the next two decades amid piles of rubble, living on aid handouts, out of nationalist or jihadi fervour, which the Left thoroughly supports. But this is simply the product of inverted racism. Ask yourself: What would you want?
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