“Take wisdom from the mouths of mad men” is an old Arabic proverb. It sprang to mind a couple of days ago, when I heard the narcissist leader of the “civilised” world, President Donald Trump, openly calling for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Trump clearly said that Gaza is a “hell”; Gaza is totally destroyed, Gaza is uninhabitable and that Israel will hand it over to him, “when they finish the job”, that is, and that he will turn it into the Riviera of the Middle East. 

I agree with Trump. Gaza is hell. Gaza is totally flattened. Gaza is not fit for human habitation. 

The irony of all of this is that the ignorant Trump maybe did not notice that the man standing beside him, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, was the man responsible for all this death and destruction. Another irony is that Trump appeared not to realise that the instruments of this death and destruction had been supplied by his own country. The Biden administration, during the last 16 months, has supplied Israel with the latest instruments of war to the tune of $200 billion and Trump himself, so as not to be denied his moment in the limelight, in the first week of his presidency added another $1 billion worth of 2000-pound bombs and armed caterpillar bulldozers.

Further, Trump has stuffed his new administration with sycophantic supporters of Israel, most of whom deny our very existence. Again, this is not new. What is new, and is getting under my skin, is the feigned indignation of some European, international and Arab leaders. Where was your indignation and rejection during the last 16 months when you stood by, watching the Israeli destructive juggernaut plough through Gaza, killing, according to the latest estimates, more than 60,000 innocent Palestinians, the majority of whom were women and children, and injuring more than 110,00?

Where was the indignation when the Israeli Air Force dropped more than 90,000 tons of bombs on Gaza that flattened homes, schools, universities, churches, mosques, hospitals and infrastructure such as roads, water and electricity and sewage treatment plants that make life possible? 

Where is the indignation now when the Israeli destructive juggernaut, known as the IDF, has turned its attention towards cities and towns in the West Bank? 

It’s non-existent. Which tells me that the Zionist, colonialist project that started in 1947/48 is entering its final phase. Which is, and has been articulated by Netanyahu, Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, total Israeli sovereignty over the entire land mass of Palestine, with no Palestinians in it, from the river to the sea. 

Proof of this is the recent call by the current Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, ordering the IDF to prepare a plan for the evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. He also called for the Israeli Chief of General Staff, Herzi Halevi, to reprimand the IDF Chief of Army Intelligence, Major-General Shlomi Binder, for saying Trump’s plan for Gaza could result in violence in the West Bank.

None of this is new to me. As an 82 year-old Palestinian survivor of the Nakba — a phrase that we are not actually allowed to use — I have seen it all before. The choice that we were given in 1948 and are now offered by Trump, was “leave or die”. I remember as a five-year old picking up the pamphlets in my garden saying the very same thing.