In all the argle-bargle over Donald Trump’s proposal for Gaza, there have been countless questions about legality, morality and feasibility. Isn’t the population transfer he suggests tantamount to ethnic cleansing? On what legal basis would the United States assert sovereignty over Gaza and enter into contracts with developers and investors? How could a country that fought a revolutionary war in the same of self-determination tell Gazans they must leave territory on which their families have been settled for generations? How would a redeveloped Gaza be paid for, governed, policed and populated? Would the Palestinians themselves benefit from it?
There is another question, a practical one, that seems to have been overlooked in all this: what about Judea and Samaria? The historical Jewish territory, which lies on Israel’s eastern front, was annexed by Jordan in 1950 and renamed ‘the West Bank’. Today it is home to half a million Jews and three million Arabs, three-fifths of the Palestinian population, scattered across hills and valleys in heavily guarded conurbations, Israeli here and Palestinian there.
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