US President Donald Trump has backed down from his plans to send US forces to take control of the Gaza Strip for a long period to supervise the reconstruction process and transform the Strip into the “Riviera” of the Middle East. This rapid retreat, after less than 24 hours, was shocking and disappointing to us. This is because this US military occupation presence in the Strip would have fulfilled the hopes of many Palestinians, including us, in directly confronting America. This could have been a military lesson that may be no less harsh than the “Al-Aqsa Flood,” which shook the racist Zionist project from its roots in Palestine, starting from the Strip and moving to the West Bank. President Trump, who surprised the world with his stupidity and racism by proposing a project to displace all the people of the Gaza Strip to Egypt, Jordan and a third country that he did not name because the Strip was no longer suitable for its citizens to live in. He backed down with a humiliating speed, which confirms this stupidity when he said last night that “there will be no need for American soldiers to implement his proposal for evacuation and displacement and that the United States will not assume control and ownership of the Strip.”
Israel is no longer a safe country, and its settlers lack security. They spend long hours a week in shelters thanks to Yemeni and Palestinian missiles, and soon the Lebanese ones will return. The number of those fleeing from it to European countries, from whose racism and brutality they fled to the Palestinian territories with the help and encouragement of the British Mandate, is increasing. As for the rest, especially the Eastern Jews, the majority of whom need protection, but not in occupied Palestine, but in the United States itself, their “temporary” caring mother. Perhaps Trump will allocate a state for them in the American middle, which is almost devoid of population density. They can transform their new state into a “paradise” because they possess trillions of dollars.
Trump wants to achieve the racist, terrorist Israeli ambition to empty the Gaza Strip and the West Bank after giving the green light to completely destroy them and displace their residents to Jordan and Egypt by force with the crumbs of financial aid that America gives them annually, and to give the citizens of Gaza and the West Bank a one-way ticket to the new tent cities, with no return forever.
Finally, we say to President Trump that you do not know the Palestinian people, who have become a role model for their Arab and Muslim brothers in struggle, jihad, dignity and self-esteem. These people have fought and is fighting the Israeli war of extermination for more than 15 months, steadfast as heroes. They have presented more than 60,000 martyrs and missing and 112,000 wounded so far. It has never and will never leave its land. They are setting up their tents on the rubble of its destroyed homes, raising the Palestinian flag above them, and singing and enjoying the songs of victory. We hope that Trump will reverse his rapid retreat and return to his first plan of sending his forces to the Gaza Strip. Then he will know who the Palestinian people are that he wants to displace. We swear to God that he will have mercy on his soldiers and recall their defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan, and perhaps Vietnam as well.
[by Abdul Bari Atwan in Rai Al-Youm]
Compiled and translated by Faizul Haque