The voters who sat out the presidential contest in 2024 because they cared about the Palestinians will want to pay attention to what happens now.
Trump doesn't care about the well-being of the Palestinians. Netanyahu doesn't care about the well-being of the Palestinians. Hamas doesn't care about the well-being of the Palestinians. All any of them care about is power in their spheres of influence. Power is money. Money comes from real estate, among other things.
We know that members of Trump's family have plans for Gaza's beautiful sea frontage. What happens next depends on which party in the power struggle over there can make the best deal, promising the American capitalists the most security for their lucrative investment.
The god above all other gods is money. Negotiations are taking place right now between Netanyahu's government and Hamas. You can bet that they are not for statehood per se, but for how the money will be split among the power factions.
Hamas has less to lose than either the real estate developers or the Israelis. Gaza is already a mess. The people are suffering horribly. The consumerist world outside already has little conscience about that. Sure, some American voters felt bad enough to destroy what feeble chance the United States had at dragging itself back on track to become the shining example of citizen government that our mythology said we always were, but those people are powerless to do anything positive. The ones who might beggar themselves in hopes that what they go without will be distributed to the recipients they consider worthy are fooling themselves. Money and resources left on the table are always snapped up by the wealthy before anyone else can get a hand in there. The ones who are doing okay financially and really felt that they faced no risk will gradually find out that they faced much more than they realized. Too late for the rest of us...
Because Hamas has virtually nothing to lose, they can violate the ceasefire and restart the carnage. Because Israel is doing fine, they will respond in kind. We might wonder whether the current administration is stupid enough to let the conflict widen, hoping to secure the resources of the region after the combatants have devastated each other and collapsed the governments of every nearby nation.
In addition to soulless capitalists who don't care who dies as long as they can squeeze a profit out of it, we have people in the US government now who yearn for Armageddon. Jesus is going to come down and whisk them off to heaven because they have been such shining examples of the Prosperity Gospel. The 45th occupant's administration started out with just enough old fashioned cynical capitalists to keep the crazy from taking over too early. SARS CoV-2 took care of the rest.
Let's say instead that cooler heads prevail, and that Hamas and Netanyahu can work out a deal to let Kushner and Co. build luxury resorts. Will the common people outside of the compounds behave themselves, or will it be like some of those beautiful vacation spots in Mexico and Central America, where you stay inside the wall if you know what's good for you? That may be as good as it gets, reducing what had been political terrorists to mere muggers. Gaza goes from being a war zone to just another gentrified neighborhood next to a ghetto. Capitalism, baby! It really is saving the world!
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