All countries of the world must stand with the Palestinian people, supporting their inalienable right to live where they alone choose, and to make clear to the United States and everyone else a forcible transfer of the population will be stopped. The global community has failed the Palestinians over and over again. We cannot undo the past, but we can shape the future by empowering our institutions which aim to bring justice to criminals and to provide the assistance, infrastructure, and capital necessary to make Gaza a safe home for Gazans.
Since early this month United States President Donald Trump has stated repeatedly he has a plan to relocate the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to other countries and have the U.S. take permanent ownership over the land. His justification was that because the destruction of the Gaza Strip due to Israel’s bombardment (a fact he conveniently leaves out) is so complete, it would be better for the Palestinians to call somewhere else home. This is nothing short of outright ethnic cleansing, a grave violation of international law, and a moral outrage. None of the surrounding countries have accepted the proposal, and even many of Trump’s Republican colleagues have voiced dismay and even disbelief over the plan. Human rights organizations have correctly labeled the idea ethnic cleansing, with Palestinian authorities, both Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas, have chided Trump’s remarks, according to Al Jazeera.
As the world further transitions into increased and disorienting multipolarity, it is likely such ideas will emerge again. This is why we must resist and promote a vision and policies which solve the issues at hand in a democratic and equitable manner. Our Survival Bill begins to offer such a vision and policies. First, the United Nations (UN) must be both funded and empowered to carry out its functions effectively. With the proper funding and leadership, the UN can make the jurisdictions of the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court compulsory for all UN member states. This will also help to give the UN a mandate to abolish the veto of the five permanent members of the Security Council which has caused so much inaction on the part of an international response to security crises, and in turn higher levels of death and destruction.
We live in a world where the leader of the most powerful country in human history is openly calling for the ethnic cleansing of over two million people. This is said to only make clear the reality we face. However, the political world does not operate according to fixed laws, unchanging throughout time. Trump is a robber baron who became a politician. He wants to return to the Gilded Age of late nineteenth-early twentieth century America, when the ethnic cleansing of the native population was completed and the country truly became an overseas empire following the Spanish-American War. Such is the rationale behind all of Trump’s expansionist and imperialist statements regarding Greenland, the Panama Canal, and now Gaza. Yet whenever we hear these things, get angry and get involved. Such decisions are made by people whom others put into power. We are standing in elections to be the decision makers who can make our reality a sad part of history, but not the present and certainly not the future. We ask you to support our campaigns, and if you believe strongly in our message, to join us in standing in your own election under the Atlas banner.
Political realities are the results of choices. Who makes those choices matters. It is possible to enact our platform, but we need your help to make it happen.
By Trent Trepanier
Photo: The New York Times