Portside

The plan for evacuating the residents of the Gaza Strip to other countries is a war crime, and it being introduced by the president of the United States is a death sentence for international law. It's the crime of the century.

Trump talks about Gaza like a capitalist who wants to develop real estate. He called it a demolition zone, as it has always been, and invented plans for building a city of the future without its original residents.

Trump wishes to take over the property with financial support from the gulf states through a regional peace agreement in an effort to maximize his profit and control.

When Trump stood next to Netanyahu, who destroyed almost all of the Gaza Strip, and talked about America taking over of the area, it's hard not to think about Netanyahu as his demolition contractor.

Israel's war of destruction was directed exactly to this end: to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable and to find someone who would accept the evacuees. Many in the government and military said this, one just needed to listen.

Trump is right in his statement that the scale of destruction in the Gaza Strip is unimaginable, and a danger exists for residents between the ruins and unexploded bombs. But instead of punishing those responsible for the destruction, he supports them and devises new crimes with them.

Except the crime of the century won't happen, because the Palestinians won't agree to leave the Gaza Strip and no Arab country will agree to accept hundreds of thousands of them and be a partner to the crime of a second Nakba.

In that case, why is Trump promoting this delusional idea? What's his true goal? Is it a threat that can be used to extort normalization from Saudi Arabia? Whatever his goal really is, Trump has succeeded in awakening the darkest forces in the Middle East: Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, with their delusions of ethnic cleansing and settlement in Greater Israel.

Such a plan will once again awaken the winds of war and set Arab countries on fire too. Trump's plan is chaos, without any thought about the long term, just shooting for its own sake in all directions.

He has another goal, too: Trump has given Netanyahu a political lifeline and stability for his government. The government will advance the crime of the century in meetings, and on the ground it will implement the doctrine of destruction of the Gaza Strip in the West Bank, too, with the main goal of annexing territory there.

And what about the "opposition" in Israel? Has Benny Gantz come out against this plan for war crimes? Has Yair Lapid announced he will firmly oppose the American takeover? No. The "center-left" opposition, in encouraging "out-of-the-box thinking," are normalizing Kahanism as the official policy of Israel.

We, Jewish and Arab peace activists on the left, will not give up and will not remain silent. We will oppose Kahanism and imperialism. We will oppose the crime of the century as well as the daily crimes of the occupation and apartheid. We will continue to insist there is only one solution for Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank: an independent Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel.

[Aida Touma-Sliman is a Palestinian member of the Knesset from the progressive Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, known as the Hadash party, part of the Joint List, with Hadash-Ta'al . She was first elected to the Knesset in 2015.]