US President Donald Trump has reiterated his call for Egypt and Jordan to accept residents of Gaza into their territory, as part of arrangements to end the current war with Israel. Further explaining his idea on Monday, the President said that he would ‘like to get [Gazans] living in an area where they can live without disruption and revolution and violence so much’.
It’s difficult to see anything coming of this idea. Both Egypt and Jordan have already, predictably, rejected it absolutely. Hamas, which is currently re-establishing itself as the de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip, would obviously act to prevent any attempt to implement it.
Nevertheless, Trump’s statement was useful, in that by making it, the US President cast light on one of the enduring absurdities of the situation in the Middle East. Namely, that while Arab and Muslim states profess loyalty to the Palestinian cause, this rarely – if ever – extends to measures to actually help the plight of actual, living Palestinians.
Where a genocide is taking place, the first and most obvious measure to be taken, before political considerations, should surely be to offer safe haven to any of the potential victims.
Observe: for the last year, we have been told, endlessly, by Al Jazeera and other ‘pro-Palestinian’ media outlets, that a ‘genocide’ was taking place in Gaza. Where a genocide is taking place, the first and most obvious measure to be taken, before political considerations, should surely be to offer safe haven to any of the potential victims who manage to extricate themselves from the area where it is taking place.
Neither Arab nor other states have, however, offered such refuge to Gazans. Of course, the claims of genocide are refutable. What was taking place in Gaza was war, the result of the Islamist rulers of Gaza choosing to initiate war on 7 October 2023. But even then, it is a normal and a natural thing for civilians to flee war, as observing Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Israel itself over the last decade will quickly confirm. Only Palestinians have been denied that option. They weren’t denied it by Israel. It may be taken as read that had Egypt and other neighbouring states expressed their willingness to admit Gazans wishing to flee, Israel would not have sought to corral them.
But no such offer was ever made. And when the US President suggests that perhaps it should be, the idea is met with flat, horrified and outraged rejection, even as declarations of solidarity with the people of Gaza continue.
Why is this? First of all, this isn’t due to a general stance of rejecting the entry of refugees from neighbouring political conflicts. Jordan has received, for example, 716,000 refugees from the Syrian civil war since 2012. Lebanon took in 774000. Egypt, without a border with Syria, has admitted 156,000; Iraq 286,000. Taken together, these numbers account for more than the entire population of Gaza. Their admittance does not imply any political stance, for or against any of the sides in Syria. Why, then, is it utterly forbidden to propose any similar action for Gazans, who are simultaneously alleged to be suffering a ‘genocide’?
The answer is that the politics of the Arab and Islamic world require that ritual obeisance be paid to the ‘Palestinian cause’ – that is, the belief that the verdict of the 1948 Jewish-Arab war may still at some future date be reversed. Because both Egypt and Jordan for good pragmatic reasons long ago left the field of active engagement in the conflict, their continued fealty to this notion is solely symbolic. But fealty it is, and in service to it, actual living Palestinians – in this case Gazans – must be denied the usual option available to civilians caught up in conflict: namely the right to flee for as long as the fighting continues. They must continue to play their allotted roles as the victims of the Zionists, so that a series of neighbouring dictatorships can cry crocodile tears for them.
Loud declarations of support for the Palestinian cause, along with performative expressions of horror for what they say is an attempt at genocide, go together with a deliberate, absolute refusal to countenance one of the few options available to ensure the safety of the people they supposedly care for.
The politics of the Arab and Islamic world require that ritual obeisance be paid to the ‘Palestinian cause’ – that is, the belief that the verdict of the 1948 Jewish-Arab war may still at some future date be reversed.
The absurdity of this position is obvious. Yet no one points it out. Rather, an entire professional sector, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process industry, exists to ensure that the parameters of discussion on this issue are never widened, and no proposals other than the acceptable ones, are ever heard. Whole, quite lucrative careers can be made within this sector.
From this point of view, regardless of whether or not Trump’s ideas gain any traction, he has played the useful role here of a disruptor. What is refreshing about his position is that, like everyone else in the western world, he is aware of the shibboleths and taboos that surround this over-observed religious-national dispute. And unlike nearly everyone else, he sees no special reason to bow to them.
If Trump’s intervention can help play the role of freeing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the false uniqueness that is imposed on it by prevailing orthodoxies, and introduce into discussion of it some of the options considered normal in conflicts elsewhere, the US President will have performed a notable service. Considering the strengths of the orthodoxies in question, of course, his success even in this limited way is by no means assured. Well done for trying, anyway.
