Alistair Burt, a former Minister for the Middle East at the Foreign Office, writes for The Mirror about the long-running conflict between Israel and Palestinians
The agony of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, which we see almost daily in our news, has a long back story.
At the very heart of it is the importance of home, and the memory of enforced movement and the misery of broken up communities, shared by the history of families of Jews and Arabs with emotional and political consequences today.
Since the disputed creation of Israel in 1948, issues between Jewish Israelis and displaced Palestinians have never been resolved. While some Palestinians remained in Israel, others fled their homes for Jordan and Lebanon and have never been able to return.
The uneasy relationship between all has been marked by violence, war and terror attacks ever since. The present hostilities began on the 7th October 2023 with a surprise attack, brutal even by Middle East standards, led by terrorists from Hamas, the ruling Palestinian group in Gaza. It was followed by massive reprisals from Israel, with tens of thousands dead and maimed. World Bank estimates 26 million tons of rubble, which will take years to clear and a potential cost of $18m to repair. It is a catastrophe.
Neither Hamas nor Israel can ‘win’ the conflict, and finally negotiators succeeded in forging the uneasy, phased ceasefire of today.
But what next? There is no agreement between Palestinians, or those international states seeking to resolve the crisis on who will rule Gaza, or who will repair it. Enter President Donald J Trump, who can claim some credit for forcing an agreement by his inauguration as President to a ceasefire deal which had been available for months. His plan is for the US to take over Gaza, ‘clean out’ the population and offer Gazans the opportunity to live somewhere ‘nice’, like Egypt or Jordan, and redevelop Gaza into the Riviera of the Eastern Mediterranean.
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If you are in business and believe that most people ‘follow the money’, it makes some sense. The politicians have failed- why not try something new? But if you know about the Middle East, you know it cannot work. The governments of Egypt and Jordan would fall if their populations sensed that they were agreeing to what will be termed the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Palestinians. The Gulf Arab states would see their hopes of peace in the region and a relationship with Israel wrecked by the plan, and every terror group in Europe and around the world would find their recruits growing by the day.
There is a solution. It is called a Palestinian State, and a safe and secure Israel accepted by all. Hard liners on both sides will have to swallow hard. There are many countries that say they want to see this. I bet there are none who believe that the Trump plan will work, but perhaps he has goaded them into finally delivering on it.