Recording by prisonradio.org
It was by any measure a stunning moment. An American president essentially offering to gentrify the Gaza Strip, suggesting that they, should they resist, be forced to leave their historical homeland by the armed forces of the United States. “They’re living in hell,” Trump said, as he sat next to the man who ordered the hell bombed into hell, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump said these coastal lands could be made into a lovely kind of Riviera. “It’d be beautiful,” he said. Netanyahu beamed at every word, and while Trump saw it as a grand real estate deal perhaps, Netanyahu saw it as the ultimate Zionist dream.
Palestinians saw it as the ultimate nightmare, for they have lived for the better part of a century with political betrayal since Israel’s founding in 1948. For over 70 years they have lived under an occupation that the UN has called illegal, but that doesn’t mean a thing.
Now the U.S. exhorts an illegal removal of Palestinians, millions of them, from their own homeland. Is this the gentrification of Gaza? Probably not. But who can really say? Who indeed? We can only hope that Palestinians have the last word.
With love, not fear, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.