Trump’s empty promises

By Hamada Fara’neh
With the mentality of investment capital—concerned only with narrow interests and expected profits—President Trump, the most overtly biased supporter of the settler-colonial expansionist, aggressive occupation program, has offered a multi-pronged proposal to solve the “Gaza” problem: the suppression of human resistance.

His goal is first to eliminate the resistance, and second to reduce the human presence in the Gaza Strip.

He has given Netanyahu a two- to three-week window to continue his assault, destruction, killing, devastation and apparent erasure of the Gaza Strip and its people, after providing him with all the means to persist in attacks and the liquidation of Palestinian civilians. In the eyes of the colonial leadership — ministers Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and Katz and the chief of staff — they are seen as inferior animals unworthy of life; hence they pursue physical elimination through ethnic cleansing and what amounts to genocide, viewing Gaza as the nurturing cradle of resistance and working to remove its human, material foundation so as to reduce the presence and continuity of resistance.

Trump seeks, rhetorically and as a marketing exercise, to create an enticing alternative to the Gaza Strip: the Riviera — “Riviera Trump,” a resort, a wellness center, one of the pleasures on the Mediterranean coast; it might include a casino or casinos, amusements… etc.

Trump frames the alternative in tempting terms: a substitute for resistance, for population density, for poverty, for national dignity. Will he be able to realize these wishes and aims?

What did the Americans promise regarding Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Sudan and, before them, Afghanistan — and historically regarding Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea and earlier regarding Cuba and countries in Latin America?

Many promises, numerous emotional appeals and fantasies — but the result, as we tangibly see in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Sudan, has been division, war, fragmentation, and client regimes that cannot even meet their employees’ payrolls.

Who imposed hunger, disease and killing in the Gaza Strip and caused it, before October 7 and after? Who imposed settlement and the fragmentation of the West Bank and made life difficult for its people? Who works to rip apart the Syrian people between Arabs and Kurds, between Sunnis, Alawites and Druze? Who seeks to tear Iraq apart between Arabs and Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites? The same in Yemen, and between Arabs and Africans in Sudan, and between Arabs and Amazigh in North African Arab countries.

This is demagogic, misleading rhetoric that will not sway the Palestinian people, who will continue to struggle and make sacrifices for freedom, independence and the return of refugees to their homes and to property confiscated and looted by the expansionist settler-colonial project.

And finally, who proposed the “Greater Israel” project and its expansion at the expense of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia?

The State of Palestine as it was in Palestine will remain and will be in Palestine as it must be, no matter how long it takes or how great the sacrifices. The Palestinian response, with its only option, is struggle and continued struggle: to remain in the homeland and to stand firm in it, on it and for it.