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Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-840742
Trump Is Right - Gaza's Future Depends on Breaking the Cycle of Destruction
(Jerusalem Post) Einat Wilf - At the heart of President Trump's proposal lies an oft-overlooked fact: Gaza is not inherently doomed to fail. Its problems are not geographical, economic, or even logistical in nature - they are entirely political. The Gazans, and their sympathizers, have couched Gaza in terms of a hapless victim of circumstance for decades. Reality starkly differs. Gaza is a prime piece of real estate - a coastal strip abutting the Mediterranean, with fertile sands from the Egyptian Delta, proximal to ancient trade routes. The only problem Gaza has is the politics of destruction. Since Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the leadership there used international aid to turn Gaza into a military fortress embedded with terror tunnels and missile launch sites against Israel. Billions of dollars cascaded into Gaza from the U.S., EU, and Qatar. Much of it was diverted to armaments and terror infrastructure. If Gaza is to have a future, it has to start with a change of mind. The Palestinian notion of "return" - the idea that generations of Palestinians, including those born in Gaza, are refugees awaiting their rightful home in Israel - needs to be brought to a close. That ideological obsession underpinned the Oct. 7 attacks. The writer is a former IDF intelligence officer and Knesset member for the Independence and the Labor Party.