The leak that Tony Blair attended a recent White House meeting about Donald Trump's "Riviera in Gaza" plan could be either good or scandalous. Good if he used his influence with Trump to stop the outrageous idea. Terrible if he was part of the plan himself.
The plan itself was first unveiled by Trump to a stunned world in February. Now the details have emerged. It involves the expulsion - effectively imprisonment - of two million Palestinians, while the US administers the enclave for the next ten years. Each Palestinian would be paid $5.000, plus four years of rent elsewhere and a year's worth of food. Gaza would then be transformed into a futuristic world of skyscrapers, artificial intelligence, investment and tourism. It is set to become another Dubai, bringing in up to $400 billion for investors.
The private contractor for the plan would be the same “humanitarian” fund that is currently supplying food to the famine-stricken territory. Trump said that the Palestinians would be better off “living nicely somewhere else.” Americans, he said, could one day see “a reformed and deradicalized Palestinian political system… ready to take on that role.” It is inconceivable that this plan could be acceptable anywhere but Israel.
All sides in any war have a moral obligation to plan for what comes after it. As the main sponsor of Israel’s response to Hamas’s crimes of October 2023, the United States is now participating in the destruction of more than 90 percent of Gaza’s built infrastructure and the killing of 63.000 of its residents. As moral obligations go, this is almost unprecedented. But when Israel eventually occupies all of Gaza, both it and the United States will undoubtedly claim the victor’s right to do as they please.
No feasible plan can involve the mass cleansing of a country of its historical population and the theft of that land for colonization by an outside power.
If morality may have been left off the agenda at Blair’s White House meeting, the question is: was reality at least present? A range of possible scenarios are already being considered for Gaza. Among them is one backed by Egypt and the Arab League, worth $53 billion for reconstruction. Another could mean a return to the 1993 Oslo accords, which have been undermined at times by both Hamas and Israel. A third option could involve some kind of coalition of Palestinian and Israeli development interests under Israeli control.
No viable plan can involve the mass cleansing of a country of its historical population and the theft of that land for colonization by an outside power. Gaza could never become another Dubai. It would be devastated and besieged, plagued by factional strife and terror. For ten years, Washington would be responsible for a besieged construction site, until it got fed up and abandoned it to its fate, as it did with Saigon, Baghdad, and Kabul.
The United States may be the most successful country in the world, but its attempts at imperialism have been disastrous. The first was in the early 1900s, when Teddy Roosevelt approved the takeover of the Philippines and set his sights on parts of the Caribbean and Latin America.
Attempts to play world policeman have consistently led to mission expansion and prolonged episodes of interventionism. General MacArthur almost succeeded in invading China during the Korean War. The global presence backfired on George HW Bush in Kuwait, when he proclaimed a “new world order” under American control. He largely followed the later warning of his Chief of Staff, Colin Powell, that “if you break something, it’s yours,” but he invaded Somalia anyway.
The United States may be the most successful country in the world, but its attempts at imperialism have been disastrous.
His son, George W. Bush, followed the advice of his foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, who insisted that the US military should not be used as “the world’s police force. They are not the world’s emergency number, 911.” Bush agreed with this until the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, after which he and his neoconservative associates were consumed by a desire for war and nation-building.
In Iraq, he promised to bring democracy, increase American influence in the Middle East, and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. America had for a time “owned” South Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and, briefly, Lebanon, all at terrible cost and with enormous loss of life. In each of these cases, the gap between the proclaimed goals and their realization was enormous.
Non-interventionism has a long and respectable tradition in the United States. Every president considers it until the call of fame and the lure of power lead him to war. The most recent and almost hysterical opponent of interventionism has been none other than Donald Trump. His hostility to NATO collectivism, trade wars, and turn on Ukraine demonstrated an almost obsessive desire to isolate the United States from the troubles of the world. For him, it was not the mission of Kennedy and Johnson to liberate the world and bring it “freedom.”
In May last year in Saudi Arabia, Trump fiercely attacked "so-called nation-builders (who) have destroyed far more than they have built ... by intervening in complex societies that they themselves do not understand."
He told his Arab hosts that the Middle East was created by “the people of the region themselves … pursuing their own unique visions and shaping their own destinies.” At the same time, he armed Benjamin Netanyahu to the teeth.
Gaza faces a huge task of reconstruction, and, yes, the United States has a moral obligation to help with that. But Trump has envisioned a colonial intervention that no Arab country, let alone any Western country, would likely support. The goal is simply to justify and politically exploit Netanyahu’s horrific invasion. He is sliding down the same dark path that one American president after another has taken. The only question is: Did Blair say that?
The author is a "Guardian" columnist.
Translation: A. Š.
See more:
Download the app and follow the news
FOLLOW US ON
