Let’s Call the ‘GREAT’ Gaza Post-War Plan Exactly What It Is: Ethnic Cleansing

GREAT! Of course, a new proposal for post-war Gaza is called GREAT! Just like the man himself. He’s so GREAT that he needs a GREAT proposal for Gaza. It is so GREAT that it will only be missing Tony the Tiger roaring out “You’re GREAT!” in the AI-generated video that undoubtedly will accompany this proposal for Gaza.

So let’s take a look at this GREAT (Gaza Reconstruction and Economic Acceleration and Transformation) Trust proposal, written by a group of Israelis (of course) who likely only ever have seen Gaza, if at all, from the inside of an Israeli tank. The other partner to this proposal is the folks behind the GHF (the Genocide Hunger Foundation), the folks running the so-called “aid sites” that have become “killing fields” where starving Palestinians trying to get food are gunned down by Israeli forces. What could go wrong?

The proposal, the full details of which were first reported by the Washington Post, is filled with so many spelling mistakes that Mr. Trump will love it with all of his heart. It is nothing less than an Israeli wet dream: the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, financed by the outside world – the Arab states and Europe, of course. After Gaza is ethnically cleansed, the GREAT minds behind this proposal will push for the financiers to erect sky scrapers and “mega projects” with amazing names like the “Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone” (likely proposed before Elon Musk fell out of favor with GREAT Donald Trump) and the “MBS Ring” (named after Muhammad Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia) and the “MBZ Central Highway” (named after Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the UAE).

Of course, no Riviera replica would be complete without the Gaza “Trump Riviera and Islands” (named after his GREATNESS), where world-class resorts and islands “similar to the Palm Islands in Dubai” will be built. The slide deck amazingly shows us the fancily sketched skyline; we see a few Teslas for good measure and, of course, who will live in Gaza: Arabs from the Gulf (to be precise, 11 men and one woman appear in the anything – but – slick propaganda slide deck). How GREAT!

But, in order to make the ethnic cleansing, which the Washington Post breathlessly referred to as “voluntary” relocation, look legitimate and clean, the Israeli geniuses behind the GREAT proposal will have someone else pay Palestinians $5,000 to leave, as well as unspecified subsidies for rent and food, surely also on someone other than Israel’s tab. Yes, $5000! “Of course, they should be happy with $5,000. Gaza is a pile of rubble,” is likely how the authors justified this plan to themselves. “Why wouldn’t they leave?” I can see the salespeople now!

To Palestinians, they will say, “Look, you can stay on this pile of rubble (cough, that we created after we bombed the place to smithereens) or you can take $5,000 and go to … anywhere but here. Just IMAGINE: you can educate your kids (cough, after we blew up all of the universities and killed almost all of the science and math professors), you can get treatment for your illnesses (cough, we bombed all 36 hospitals).” And to prospective “investors,” they will say, “You can build a skyscraper right next to the Mediterranean. Don’t worry about the site being a mass grave. We have lots of experience covering those things up.”

Leaving aside the innumerable and hideously grotesque details enumerated in this GREAT proposal, there are deeply troubling issues with the very concept of an Israeli or American plan for the Gaza Strip.

First, why would Israel, the country that has carried out, and continues to carry out, an unabashed and relentless genocide, have any right whatsoever to determine what Palestine and the Palestinians’ futures will look like? Under what conceivable rationale would or should Israel or Israelis have any say whatsoever in what the future of the Gaza Strip and its inhabitants will be?

Second, why are Palestinian voices not heard or, God forbid, even present in any proposal that purports to chart their future? From the very start of the genocide, Palestinians have been crystal clear in warning that Israel’s goals are: 1) genocide and 2) ethnic cleansing. This is not some sort of fantastical thinking on our part: as people who have survived genocide and ethnic cleansing, we know all too well from nearly a century of experience what the Zionist movement is about: our erasure. So why is it that, despite repeatedly and loudly warning about this ominous reality, our voices have not been heard?

Third, where is the Palestinian agency in all of this? Why can’t we Palestinians determine our own future? This “terra fantasy” that Israelis have engaged in since 1948, in general, and as relates to the Gaza Strip in particular, since 2005, where Gaza is compared to Dubai, precisely exposes the intrinsically foreign nature of the Zionist movement and its colonial aspirations: for the only people who think this way are those who are not “from” the place. The Gaza Strip is home to one of the world’s oldest churches, one of the oldest civilizations, and Gaza City is one of the largest Palestinian cities. Only those who have NO connection to the land would think of such widespread destruction and fantasize about the erasure of its Indigenous inhabitants to make way for foreigners.

Back in 2005, I saw the “terra fantasy” up close: at the time, the Israeli government had decided to evacuate its 7,000 illegal settlers, who had spent decades terrorizing Palestinians, and pull down the illegal settlements. In their place, Israelis came up with endless (spelling mistake-filled) proposals, similar to this (not) GREAT one, and peddled it from leader to leader, promising that Gaza could be turned into Singapore (they didn’t know Dubai back then). Of course, Israelis conveniently omitted that there would be continued Israeli control over Gaza’s airspace, its territorial waters, and the land crossings to Gaza, and that they would control every item and every morsel of food that went in and out of Gaza.

And just as this (not) GREAT plan brazenly tries to tell Palestinians what they should want, similarly, Israel’s 2005 plans completely ignored that Palestinians did not want Gaza to be Singapore – we want it to thrive as an intrinsic part of our Palestinian Arab nation – free from anything Israeli (including their weird plans). What was clear with those plans is also what is clear now: these plans are simply a way of masking Israel’s true desire to strangle and ethnically cleanse Gaza in the hope that it falls into the sea and disappears. Incidentally, ​​the 7,000 Israeli settlers were given between $150,000 and $400,000 (the equivalent of about $250,000 to $660,000 today) per family to leave a place that they never belonged to in the first place. That’s a far cry from the $5,000 being proposed now.

But now that we are talking about “relocation”, let’s be clear: 80% of Gaza’s residents are refugees from the areas neighboring the Gaza Strip. So, if we are in the business of relocating them, let’s let them return to the places they actually came from in what is now Israel: Jaffa, Al Majdal, Ashqelon, Al Jura, Al Khisas, Hirbiya, Najd, and Dimra, just to name a few. This is certainly more practical. In Trumpian language: it will be cheaper, easier, and faster to have them return home… And now that would be GREAT!

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Diana Buttu is a Haifa-based lawyer and analyst who was a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in the early 2000s and is a frequent commentator and writer on Palestinian and Israeli issues.

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