The Gaza apocalypse and India’s guilt

ON 4 FEBRUARY, just two weeks after he took over the office of the president of the United States for the second time, Donald Trump shocked the world with his plan for Gaza. Overtaken, as it seemed, by a sudden epiphany, aiming to resolve one of the world’s most tangled conflicts, Trump announced the plan during a press conference with Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was, from his point of view, breathtakingly simple. “I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza,” he said. “Why would they want to return? The place has been hell.” 

The United States had helped Israel reduce a centuries-old home of the Palestinian people to rubble, and was now telling them that it was not in their interest to ever return. Instead, according to Trump, Gaza “would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting,” after Palestinians had “already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region.”