The sight of the three released Israeli hostages last week in Gaza, after 16 months of being in the captivity of Hamas, was horrific. Dazed, thin and starved, each of the three was taken out of a tunnel, driven to the site chosen for their release and escorted to the stage by hooded, armed and hefty Hamas men, who raised guns and fists in what was a repulsive show of brute power. The victims were so thin that the armed escorts could only hold them by the sleeves of their sweat shirts.
Who of us thought we would have to revisit the heart-wrenching and nerve-destroying sights of the Nazi era Jew victims in 2025? Scenes from scores of realistic films, and documentaries one has seen about the atrocities against Jews came alive.
Seven million Jews are Israelis now, but their national identity has done nothing to alleviate their pain and suffering. U.S. president Donald Trump was on dot when he said the hostages looked like the Holocaust victims. He is the only one who noticed and commented on the cruelty displayed by Hamas against the hostages.
One Israeli, reduced to a skeleton during captivity, asked about his wife and children as he was released. They had been with him the day he was taken hostage. The armed Hamas escort laughed wickedly as the hostage learned they had been killed. His brother was also killed in captivity.
Even about the rest of the hostages, Trump’s guess may be right. “Who knows, are they alive, are they not alive, but after I saw the condition of the last ones that came, they are not going to be alive long.” Trump wants them all, including one American hostage, released in one go.
“ I would say they ought to be returned by 12 (noon) on Saturday and if they are not returned, all of them, not in drips and drabs, not one and two and three and four, I think a lot of them are dead, it is a great human tragedy, after that, I would say all hell will break out.”
That Trump means business is clear from his answer to a reporter’s question about the retaliation the president was contemplating.
“You will find out, and they will find out, too. Hamas will know what I mean, these are sick people.”
The silence of other world leaders on what we saw of the released hostages is deafening. Compare it to the chatter and ire generated by Trump’s proposal about the relocation of two million Palestinians from Gaza. The normally soundless leaders of Saudi Arabia opened their mouths. One of them, a member of Saudi Shura Council, mockingly suggested Trump resettle all Israelis in Alaska, and Greenland—after annexing it.
The leader who fancies himself to be an heir to the Ottoman empire and apparently thinks he is going to live forever, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, dismissed the idea with his usual arrogance. Egypt and Jordan, the two countries Trump first proposed should rehabilitate the Palestinian refugees, rejected it outright. Of course, the rejection comes in the name of the rights of Palestinians to the territory of Gaza, but that is just lip service.
The Muslim countries’ leaders, including those who made noise against Trump’s Gaza proposal, do not have any genuine sympathy for the suffering endured by the Palestinians of Gaza. As Trump said, they have been “persecuted, spat on and have been treated like trash, and they would love to get out of Gaza” which he rightly described as a “hell-hole”.
Even when Gaza got reduced to rubble in the Israel-Hamas conflict following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the civil, medical and food supplies in Gaza got choked, the Muslim-majority neighbours sealed their borders and refused to take refugees.
The initial reaction of the king of Jordan to the Trump proposal was negative, and he rejected it outright. Both Egypt and Jordan say they cannot bear more refugee burden than they already have– over decades of the Israel-Palestine conflict. However, shortly after meeting Trump in Washington on Tuesday, Jordan softened its stand. “ I think one of the things we can do right away is take 2,000 cancer (affected) children or that are in a very ill state to Jordan as quickly as possible.”
Trump welcomed Abdullah’s “ beautiful gesture”, saying it was “music” to his ears. He was also upbeat about his proposal about Gaza’s rebuilding. For once, there is a world leader who has come up with a common sense solution to the problems of ordinary people of Gaza. The whataboutery that has attended every proposed solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict over the last six decades has to end, or it is almost impossible to find a solution.
Trump the builder has come up with an unusual–and interesting–plan for Gaza. Trump the president seems set to put it into action.
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