“New Gaza” and “Green Rafah” are the two catchwords of a rubric coming at us with promises of a prosperous future for Gaza. They join the other catchwords for rubrics that mirror real-estate projects and profitable ventures, after the French Riviera was proposed as the model to emulate.
One goal of these plans, which radiate novelty and color, is building a successful model that can be measured against the old failed model. As with the contrast of South Korea and West Germany with North Korea and East Germany, paradise on earth is to be established in the half of Gaza where Israel is expected to maintain troops (58 percent of the Strip), while hell is left to the other half of Gaza. Mind you, Gaza has a surface area of only 365 square kilometers!
As for the displacement of Gaza’s population, addressing the genocidal war and its repercussions, and the political future of the Palestinians... that is all swept under the rug, but without hindering innocent questions: what is objectionable about making Gaza resemble Dubai or the Riviera?
We do not know just how much of a say the Israelis have had in developing these plans, but there is no doubt that the “geographic engineering” broadly suits Tel Aviv’s vision for Gaza and its approach to the Palestinians. In fact, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert described one such project as “a concentration camp for Palestinians.”
This prism contains several hidden elements. One is treating human beings as something superfluous; another is the frantic pursuit of profit that can be reaped from real-estate and tourism. Erasing the past also heightens Israel’s appetite. Going along with the war cry currently in vogue- fly to the future on the wings of technology- history is reduced to zero, and everything becomes equivalent to everything else, giving rise to uniformity that would make potato heads blush.
This is part and parcel of an Israeli consciousness bent on effacing the past and memory of it. This consciousness was founded on the experience of 1948, which Israelis called their national independence. Full stop. As for the notion that this same episode was a catastrophe (Nakba) for the population whom it had uprooted from their homes, it should be forgotten. Instead of confronting that past, the expansion of the Israeli right and the diminishing prospects of peace have extended this amnesia to subsequent experiences, the latest being its unprecedented savagery in Gaza.
On the other side, the prevailing aspiration of the Palestinians (and to a large extent of the Arabs) is to return to a closed, sacralized past that is invoked at every discussion of the conflict. The more reasonable and knowledgeable proposals take the Balfour Declaration and Sykes-Picot as the foundational moments. As for the less reasonable and less knowledgeable ones, they make their ride back in time on wheels with no breaks, never stopping before they reach the pre-Islamic Banu Qurayza or the Battle of Khaybar.
The movements characterized as “anti-colonial” had made a habit of prefacing every mention of the United States and its policies with mention of its “genocide of the native inhabitants” or, at best, with the Vietnam War of the 1960s and early 1970s.
This approach implies that political conflict is not a struggle between two parties, but a struggle victims wage against an “essential nature” of the other side against whom disputes can only be resolved through elimination and annihilation.
On the opposite side of Israel’s denial of origins stands the Palestinian and Arab impulse to identify with origins whenever confronted with tangible present realities.
Even worse, approaching the world through a fundamentalist lens is that it says very little about the present, while the little it does say shuts the door to any political future. This approach is often conjoined with praise, or at least apology, for the operation of October 7, 2023. Indeed, it is telling the arguments of apologists of October 7 around founded on the “fundamentals” that “must” be covered before passing judgment. While it rightly condemns Israel’s genocidal war, this approach does not acknowledge Israel’s right to defend itself against that operation or any similar attack. Moreover, it does not address Israelis at all, and rejects (either implicitly or openly) the idea that the future will be built with them, whether we or they like it or not. This camp has never addressed Hamas or Hezbollah since their defeat in Gaza and Lebanon became patently obvious, nor has it demanded that they relinquish their weapons, whose only remaining function is perpetuating death and weakening our already weak negotiating position vis-a-vis the Israelis.
We have, then, one side that remembers more than it should, building a world on these memories, and another that forgets more than it should, building a world on this amnesia. Remembering here is as powerful as forgetting there, while both behaviors, remembering and forgetting, are extremely selective.
In this sense, it is no exaggeration that this region and its inhabitants have been plagued by two conflicting interpretations that have no solution to offer but broadening misery: one that has camped out in a future with no past, and another that has dug its trench in a past after which there is no future.
