When President Donald Trump convened his Board of Peace in Davos, Switzerland, a key agenda item was his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s extravagant (and detached from reality) plan for a “New Gaza.” The scheme’s rendering depicts more of a luxury resort for tourists than the foundation of a just future for the Palestinian victims of Israel’s genocide. But since the raison d’être of the Board of Peace was addressing the aftermath of Israel’s war on Gaza, the conversation included the needs of hundreds of thousands of now-homeless Palestinians.

 

Thus, Kushner presented a proposal for a model community, the “New Rafah,” intended to house Palestinians in Gaza. The plans circulated since the meeting cover: Gaza’s economy, educational and health systems to create a new generation of hale and non-ideological Palestinians, and “new city” layouts, functioning, and governance. Calculations indicate how many teachers, doctors, judges, religious leaders, and laborers needed per capita in each community.

 

If Kushner were preparing an owner’s manual for complex machinery or instructions for installing new software, this plan might seem flawless. But Palestine isn’t a video game. Palestinians are human beings, not Lego pieces to be assembled, per the instructions. Like every other people on earth, Palestinians have emotional ties to their homes and families, and memories of the personal and collective injustices they’ve endured. This failure to consider the fullness of Palestinian humanity is the fatal flaw that will stop the New Rafah before it begins or unravel it soon afterward.

 

The refusal of those with power over Palestine to acknowledge the grievances and aspirations of its indigenous Arab people isn’t new. In fact, it’s defined their history.

 

In 1919, when the British Lord Balfour was presented with findings from the US-commissioned survey of Arab attitudes overwhelmingly rejecting his intent to grant the Zionist movement a homeland in Palestine, he famously responded, “In Palestine, we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting its inhabitants as to their wishes.…Zionism…[is] of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who inhabit that ancient land.”

 

And Palestinians were not consulted when the UN drew up grossly unfair maps to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Those maps gave the Jewish community, less than one-third of the population, over one-half of the land and disenfranchised more than half a million Palestinians. Nor did Palestinians receive support when 650,000 were expelled from the newly created Israel in 1948, or when, after the Oslo Accords, neither the UN nor the US would hold Israel accountable for sabotaging the peace plan through settlement expansion, land seizures, the erection of a wall, and the deliberate obstruction of the development of a Palestinian economy.

 

Instead of supporting Palestinians as their rights were systematically trampled, the US and other Western states have historically blamed Palestinians, while exonerating themselves and Israel. A century of systematic abuse and denial of rights has resulted in a justifiably embittered Palestinian community whose feelings and grievances are dismissed. Conversely, US policymakers understand the full humanity of the Jewish community, the history of their losses and their need to be respected and heard.

 

The genocide in Gaza and the state-sanctioned ethnic cleansing and erasure of Palestinian communities in the West Bank is the same story. Every effort is made to make Israelis feel secure, while Palestinians lose their homes, families, and memories, and are moved about like pawns on a chessboard. They’re expected to be grateful for the opportunity to live in a model city, once properly vetted, biometrically identified, and de-radicalized.

 

Palestinians have never been permitted the human right to make their own decisions. The results have been devastating for them and the region. The wars that have been fought and the aberrant behavior of some elements of Palestinian society are rooted in one simple fact: the refusal to allow Palestinians the freedom to determine their future and recognize the fullness of their humanity.

 

In our polling throughout Palestine over the past few years, we’ve found that Palestinians don’t want to live under the control of Israel or any other external powers. They want the Israeli occupation to end, national unity, and a referendum to elect new leaders and develop a governance plan to move toward freedom and independence. They deserve nothing less.

 

 

The writer is president of the Washinton-based Arab American Institute