Trump-Netanyahu to the People of the Levant: Either You Die or You Die

Dalal Al-Bizri

The duo of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu is like two lovers who have finally found each other. Both are pure evil. The former's domain is the entire planet, while the latter focuses on what he has reaped from the Arab Levant, with weapons, funding, and an imagination that the former is passionate about. Pursuing their approach requires a unified political ethic based on killing: We will kill you if you don't agree, and we will kill you after you agree. However, there is a clear hierarchy of killing. At the forefront of the Levantines are the Palestinians, in Gaza and the West Bank, with less coverage. In the former, the visions of the global duo, Trump-Netanyahu, have evolved, and the military plan has become beyond interpretation. Netanyahu "returns" to war victorious, burning all negotiations and draft agreements. "It will be a year of war" whose goal is to "reoccupy Gaza," declares the new Israeli Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir. Gaza will be "cut into squares," with more than a million Gazans subjected to killing, starvation, thirst, displacement, and destruction. Death, for more than a million Gazans, or a "soft" uprooting. Finally, one of the features of the "new" plan for Gaza has been confirmed: Defense Minister Yisrael Katz officially inaugurates the "Office for Voluntary Emigration of Gaza Residents." The goal of this office is "to prepare and facilitate safe passage for Gazans going to third countries." Katz says the government has approved this project, and he details its provisions: the assembly points for Gazans, the approved routes for reaching the designated points, and the infrastructure that will allow them to travel by sea, land, or air. Where will these people expelled from their land go? Katz does not answer the question. But on everyone's mind is Trump's "Riviera" project in "beautiful Gaza," and the Egyptian and Jordanian destinations. Netanyahu also stated that his (other) goal in the war was to "implement Trump's displacement plan." Although Jordan was "exempt" (perhaps temporarily) from the burden of receiving Gazans, it was threatened with receiving the people of the West Bank, who had become displaced within their besieged towns. What is striking is the despair and the severity of the situation facing the Palestinians when Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri addressed the entire world: "Do not spare a bomb, a bullet, a knife, or a stone. Let everyone break their silence. We are all sinners if the interests of America and the Zionist occupation remain safe while Gaza is being slaughtered and starved." The Syrian army is required to be wiped out, its traces removed, to prevent its factions from turning to "jihad" against Israel, as the Israelis themselves say.

Before the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Israel was bombing deep inside Syria, and Assad was not budging. This was despite the fact that the targets of this were his savior guests: Iranian barracks and Hezbollah weapons caches. Now, after Assad has fallen and Ahmed al-Sharaa has risen to power, Israel has taken it easy, initially by striking Syrian army barracks. Its pretext at the time was that it was preempting the departure of "anti-Israeli" jihadist elements from the body headed by Ahmed al-Sharaa before he assumed official power. After al-Sharaa's position was established, its pretext for the bombing became "to send a warning message to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan." No one is talking about the occupied Golan Heights. Another form of Israeli aggression against Syria is taking place in southern Syria, at varying depths, some reaching as far as 60 kilometers from Damascus. Finally, in the Daraa countryside, the Israelis entered the town of Koya, west of the city, with infantry forces, as if on a picnic. The village's young men confronted them, and the Israelis returned with their aircraft, violently bombing the village, killing nine of them. Calls for "popular resistance" against the Israelis were heard for the first time. Even chants of "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) emanated from mosques in the town of Nawa during the funeral of those nine young men, calling for "jihad against the Israeli enemy." In collapsed Lebanon, the deadlock persists. The war ended with a ceasefire agreement disarming Hezbollah, at least south of the Litani River. Israel never respected this ceasefire for a single moment, occupying five border points and maintaining its firepower over the remaining villages. Those who were lucky enough to return to their villages (even in a prefabricated home) were doomed to have their home blown up and returned to the open. In other words, Israel is giving Hezbollah a strong pretext for retaining its weapons, especially given its environment. The new era, for its part, has taken upon itself the task of disarming Hezbollah. Trump, through his new envoy, Morgan Ortagus, (and Netanyahu as well) is urging it on by repeatedly threatening war against Lebanon if the party does not surrender its weapons. The new era is in limbo: its new government includes two "sensible" Hezbollah ministers, and the army is unable to disarm Hezbollah with the military force it lacks, nor with the moral force it possesses. Lebanon is anticipating a civil war in this case, and the two armies (the Syrian and the Lebanese) are being treated inconsistently. The Lebanese army is required to replace Hezbollah and stand up to Israel, without its American funders enabling it to arm itself adequately. The Syrian army is required to be wiped out, its traces removed, to prevent its factions from turning to "jihad" against Israel, as the Israelis themselves say.

The Trump-Netanyahu duo wants to kill us twice: once while we resist them, and once while we befriend them. The three (Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria) are united by Mount Hermon, which is occupied by Israel, where observation posts and offices are located, along with the ski resorts already existing in Palestine. What unites this Arab Levant today is stronger than what unites Trump and Netanyahu. All three have turned their occupied lands into "shrines" for religious settlers, who carry Israeli flags and live there for a while. In Gaza, in the north, on the border of its "envelope," they are planting the first pegs of their tents, singing, eating, and praying, raising their flags, and displaying maps of their future projects there since the middle of the war. In Syria, too, the buffer zone has become Israeli, as has the depths of southern Syria, to the Syrian Valley of the Sleeping Wadi, a trip for Jewish Passover tourists, organized by two religious educational institutes, with morning and evening tours. And in Lebanon, there are no changes to the occupation's tourism programs. Last month (March), a group of settlers entered the (non-occupied) town of Houla on a "religious" pilgrimage, also organized by the Israeli occupation army. Their destination was the "Tomb of the Worshippers," located on the outskirts of the town.

Israel wants to reoccupy Gaza and expel its people, as well as the rest of the West Bank, without saying it wants peace or normalization with the Palestinians, without stopping the killing, expulsion, bulldozing, and burning. It wants surrender and the continuation of the reasons for surrender. From Lebanon and Syria, it has announced that it wants "normalization" that would keep the two countries occupied and sign an agreement with it recognizing its right to these lands, while keeping its fires directed at them. The resistance, led by Iran, has failed in its project and arenas, and those calling for its downfall are also failures. Should we surrender to normalization and place all its consequences on the shoulders of future generations? Stifle their ability to breathe, stifle their resistance from the cradle, and turn us into slaves devoid of memory? The Trump-Netanyahu duo wants to kill us twice: once while we resist them, and once while we befriend them. They point guns at our heads and give us a choice: either we kill you while you're our enemy, or we kill you while you're our friend.