Photo: lapatria.com

By: Guillermo Alvarado

US President Donald Trump has insisted on his misguided ideas of taking over the Gaza Strip and deporting the enclave's legitimate inhabitants to neighboring countries, an idea rejected by most of the international community.

The first version, let us recall, was the military occupation of that narrow strip of land that was reduced to rubble after more than a year of intense bombardments and ground attacks by the Zionist Israeli army that left more than 45 thousand dead, most of them children and women.

In the last hours, he announced a no less ominous variant, which is to buy the Strip, yes, to become the owner of this land and to transform it, according to his ideas, into one of the best places to live in the whole world.

In this country there is poverty at a level that is an insult to human dignity, there are at least 11 million people without health insurance, that is, outside this service, and there are tens of thousands of inhabitants who are immersed in drug addiction.

Workers are exploited, blacks are treated as second-class citizens by the police, gun killings are commonplace, even in unlikely places like churches and schools, and a plutocracy decides lives and fates within and beyond its borders.

It is definitely a country where much needs to be done for its people to live in dignity, with equal access to housing, health, education and job opportunities, especially for the nearly 37 million poor.

If Mr. Trump wants to create his own version of paradise in Gaza, he'd better start at home, don't you think?

But here comes the second question: from whom does the president of the United States want to buy the land in the Strip? From the Palestinians who live there? They definitely have absolutely no intention of selling it, for a reason that Donald Trump will never understand: they love their land, they love it deeply, and they are willing to fight and die for it.

And they happen to be the only ones who could sell it because they are its rightful owners. Israel is an occupying country, an invader, and as such has no legitimacy, much less a right to ownership.

Washington and Tel Aviv are the only ones enthusiastic about this unrealistic plan, whose only advantage is that it could strengthen the unity of the Arab peoples, something Trump should be afraid of.