01/10/2025
Trump’s latest contribution has been unveiling a "Gaza Riviera Plan", in which whoever survives of the 2.3 million Palestinians there is "cleaned out" and the enclave rebuilt with Gulf money as a playground for the rich.
Reports this week of a watered-down version of the plan suggest Tony Blair, who has been accused of war crimes over his role in the invasion and subsequent destruction of Iraq two decades ago with George W Bush, may be appointed effective "governor" of a Gaza in ruins.
If the establishment of a "viable" Palestinian state were really their goal, these leaders would already have imposed on Israel sanctions and diplomatic isolation.
They would be shunning visits from Israeli officials, not welcoming them. They would be vowing to uphold the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for Netanyahu, not allowing him, as France did in July, to use its air space to travel to the US.
They would not be turning a blind eye to Israel’s repeated attacks on aid flotillas to Gaza - on the high seas. Rather, like Spain and Italy, they would at the very least be seeking to protect their own citizens. Better still, they would have set up by now their own naval armadas to bring food to a starving population in Gaza.
They would be drawing parallels with Russia - and impose a trade embargo on Israel, ending its economic privileges, to echo the more than a dozen EU rounds of measures against Moscow over its war in Ukraine.
Instead, they are still aiding Israel as it demolishes the last buildings in Gaza, while it starves the population and ethnically cleanses them.
Don’t believe a word Starmer and the rest tell you. There is as much chance of Palestinian recognition tempering their complicity in Israel’s crimes as the Oslo "peace" process - celebrated by their predecessors - did a generation ago.
In fact, the evidence suggests that, as happened with Oslo, Israel will use this latest "concession" from the West to the Palestinians as the pretext for expanding and intensifying its atrocities, with Washington’s blessing.
