Donald Trump’s suggestion that Gaza be ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian inhabitants has certainly seized the world’s attention. The proposal is bizarre; the United States taking actual ownership of the territory, effectively the first new American colony since Woodrow Wilson purchased part of the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917.
Assessments of the Trump plan hover between improbable and impossible. But the first thing to say about it is that it is deeply immoral. The forcible deportation of more than a million and a half Palestinians from their land and what’s left of their homes would represent the greatest act of ethnic cleansing since the Second World War. It is an inhuman idea, whether or not Mr Trump’s stated intention to provide for the constantly displaced populace of the Gaza Strip is well-meaning.
