Manu Joseph: Trump’s Gaza plan may be more pragmatic than it looks

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The plan to relocate over 2 million Palestinians from Gaza to neighbouring Arab nations may be the second-best idea for lasting peace in the region. The best idea might be for all Israelis to move to a uninhabited island with a temperate climate and excellent soil.

The second-best is not Donald Trump’s original idea. Such a plan was mooted around the time Israel was formed in 1948, and later by Jewish nationalists. It was never a popular idea.

Long before Trump pitched it as an American real-estate redevelopment plan, it was disliked by those who represented the Palestinian people, those who were conscious of their moral compass and those who did not want the problem to end because conflict was their business. It was also disliked by Arab nations that loved Palestinians from afar and seemed reluctant to have them settling in their territory. Trump probably knew that—which was why he said the people of Gaza could be taken in by “humanitarian" Arab nations.

The relocation of Gaza’s Palestinians, who number half the number of passengers who take the Delhi Metro everyday, to resolve one of the greatest problems of the modern world is not as outlandish as it seems at first glance. Certainly not as a logistical problem. Gaza’s Palestinians have been relocated before in huge numbers.

The wealthy and lucky among them left. Many live in other Arab nations, and also in the US and Europe. Much of the Palestinian elite did ‘relocate’ to other countries, leaving the poor behind to fight for the Palestinian cause.

This is a familiar story in every conflict zone. I saw it as a child in Madras among the swarms of middle-class Tamils who fled elsewhere (the rich fled to the UK). The correct way to