The Trump Doctrine and Palestinian Diaspora

The Trump Doctrine and Palestinian Diaspora

Trump’s crazy talk (how my sainted mother would have characterized it) is producing results. He threatened Canada and Mexico with tariffs and they strengthened their border security. Mexico is trying to keep illegals and fentanyl out of the States while Canada is trying to keep US liberals from fleeing to Toronto and Montreal. What’s up with Canadian “bacon” anyway? Trump threatened Panama and they agreed to cut ties with the Hong Kong firm that operates Panama’s ports and has withdrawn from China’s Belt and Road infrastructure program. That program has 150 countries as members with 3,000 projects and around a trillion dollars pledged (so says China). Then there is Greenland. Trump wants to buy it from Denmark who says its not for sale. Has anyone asked the Greenlanders (Greenies?). The answer is yes. Sixty percent want to join the US, 37 percent do not while three percent were not certain what the US is.

Greenland is part of North America. It is closer to New York than it is to Copenhagen. A major problem in my mind is the premier of Greenland is called “Naalakkersuisut Siulittaasuat”. Hey, if Navajos can speak Dine bizaad (called the world’s most difficult language) then why not Greenlandic? Greenland has a population of around 58,000. Wyoming has 10 times that number so Greenland could not be the 51^st state. Maybe Greenland would have the same status as American Samoa with its 45,000 residents. (BTW, Christina Thompson’s Sea People tells the story of the amazing travels of the Polynesian peoples In the Pacific and is one of my all time favorite books). All Trump has to do is to threaten to impose tariffs on Carlsberg beer and the Danes will probably give us the island. Then we will all be saying Ukiortaami pilluarit  (good morning), Naak W.C-ii? (where is the bathroom?) and most importantly Sumi baaja ippa? (where is the beer?).

So maybe Trump’s proposal to take over Gaza is not so crazy after all. I thought all the reports said that Israel had devasted Hamas and wiped out most of their fighters? Well did you see the mob of masked Hamas fighters surrounding the release of the Israeli hostages? It looked like there were thousands of Hamas fighters present seeking to intimate (further) the Israeli women solders that were set free. Maybe Israel ought to rethink this so cease fire because Hamas certainly does not look destroyed to me. 

I can see why the Israelis embraced Trump’s idea of relocating the Palestinians and taking ownership of Gaza. Why should the Palestinians remain an existential threat to Israel by being their next door neighbor? Consider that Hamas governed Gaza. Its army then invaded Israel on October 7 inflicting the most Jewish casualties since World War II. Israel then invaded Gaza and by all accounts, Hamas lost. Why should they be allowed to remain on Israel’s doorstep? Yes I know the detractors will shout “ethnic cleansing” but so what? 

History is replete with the sometimes forcible relocation of ethnic peoples. There were over a million ethnic Poles who were evicted by the Russians after World War II. The Polish transfers were only a part of the total amount of 20 million ethnic peoples forced to leave their homes. Following agreements by Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt at Yalta in 1945, three million Sudeten Germans were expelled from their homes in Czechoslovakia to Germany. As many as 12 million German speaking residents of other European countries were forced to leave their countries and sent to Germany and Austria. Too date I have heard no one clamoring for the return of the Sudeten to their homelands.

In the case of Gaza the focus has been on sending the Palestinians to their next door neighbors in Jordan and Egypt – who clearly do not want them. Two million Palestinians are already in Jordan. But only 100,000 are in Egypt. There are an estimated 3 million in Gaza, 1.6 million in Israel and 3 million in the West Bank. Syria has less than 500,000. One can understand why countries would not want a vast number of Palestinian migrants flooding their borders. Going back to Trump’s idea, what would happen if all the Arab countries (excluding Jordan) agreed to take a percentage of the 3 million Palestinians from Gaza? UNESCO identifies 23 Arab countries. So if each of the remaining 22 Arab countries agreed to allow the immigration of 136,363 Palestinians, then no country would have an outsized burden for resettlement. I just see it now: Trump threatening the Arab world (except Jordan) with 100 percent tariffs unless they take in 136,363 Palestinian immigrants. Ethnic cleansing? Let’s call it ethnic displacement..