Gaza Stripped
Hallelujah! Gazans, says Bibi, must have 'free choice'. Even at gunpoint. Sometime ago Israel unleashed 'Gideon's Chariots' on the Strip-of-land Gazans consider homeland. Just before this airpower-aided ground blitz, Bibi reportedly suggested folks being rendered homeless would 'desire' to 'emigrate'. It followed that, by choosing to emigrate, they'd be protected from bombardment – by those bombarding them into choosing to emigrate.
Wanting it US-'owned', Trump visualises Gaza stripped into a 'freedom zone', its residents ideally opting to be cleared out along with the rubble. That way you get a 'freed-up zone', so that a Riviera runs through it. Gaza 'freed' of Gazans, property (re)developers can 'zone' in, building resorts for celebrity sun-tanners. And, consensually 'zoned out', Palestinians can 'free' themselves from demolished homes, bombed-out hospitals and weaponised hunger. Call it VRS – voluntary removal scheme.
Kudos to Katz, though, for unveiling the grandest (game)plan. Israel's defence minister wants a 'humanitarian city' rising from Rafah's ruins where 600,000 Palestinians would first be shunted. Followed by everyone else still alive and cart-loadable. 'Screened', they'd all enter haven on earth. And, Katz reportedly eyeing an 'emigration plan', they'd exit when exiled…to greener pastures, naturally. Aren't refugees abroad chirpier than dead men walking to food-as-bait sites at home?
Where's 'choice' here, you ask. Well, copy-Katz plainly likes Trump's 'clean-out' Gaza project to 'relocate' Gazans for – you guessed it – their own good. Here's Bibi explaining Trump's 'brilliant vision': 'It's called free choice. If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to…' Remember, for Trump, the best (one-state) solution to conflict is 'surrounding countries' welcoming Gaza's 'emigrants'. If only immigrants in America found him as MAGA-nanimous.
So here's how Katz's 'humanitarian' (strata)gem promotes 'free choice'. Round up 2.1mn war-ravaged people caught between Hamas's atrocities and Israel's excesses. Herd them into a veritable internment camp. Let them live cheek-by-jowl, face misery and hardship, and have no exit. Then watch them depart, 'willingly'. Bibi says Gaza shouldn't be a 'prison', but an 'open place' where Palestinians (and butterflies?) are free. Well, make that 'open' as in open-air prison, where freedom's just another word for nothing left to choose.
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