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Journalist Jeremy Scahill says the Trump administration’s vision for the Gaza Strip is of a continued “colonial apartheid regime” with Israel and U.S. interests controlling the lives of millions of Palestinians in perpetuity. “Palestinians are being told that they must completely surrender,” says Scahill. President Trump chaired the first meeting of his so-called Board of Peace this week, a body established for Gaza but whose remit has already expanded.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back for a moment before we end to the so-called Board of Peace. President Trump speaking at it in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The war in Gaza is over. It’s over. There are little flames. Little flames. Hamas has been—I think they’re going to give up their weapons, which is what they promised. If they don’t, they will be harshly met. Very harshly met. They don’t want that.
AMY GOODMAN: This was the inaugural meeting of the so-called Board of Peace, Trump’s new initiative to create an alternative to the United Nations. By the way, the Pope has refused to join it, talking about it as a threat to the United Nations. Trump vowed to provide $10 billion in U.S. funds to the board, even though Congress has not approved any such spending, and has named himself the group’s chair for life. Among Trump’s board key proposals is to turn Gaza into an upscale seaside resort with gleaming skyscrapers and entirely new cities. Your final comment on this?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Let’s skip forward from all of the ridiculous pageantry of the scene at the Board of Peace and talk about what’s really happening here. Palestinians are being told that they must completely surrender not just Kalashnikovs and other weapons that they would use to defend themselves against Israeli occupation, but the very cause of Palestinian liberation or self-determination. What Palestinians in Gaza are being faced with is you either fully bend the knee and accept a colonial apartheid regime as your overseer, that you accept a new reality as dystopian plantation workers on Jared Kushner’s real estate project, or we’re going to kill you. That is what is being said here.
So, the U.S. has plans to build a huge military base there for their international occupation force. The Israelis are in control of nearly 60% of Gaza in the east of the strip. They don’t seem to have any intent of leaving. You have a reeducation program that Israel’s foreign minister spoke of at this so-called Board of Peace meeting yesterday and said that it begins with disarmament and demilitarization and then deradicalization. So if you are a Palestinian family, what they’re saying to you is your children need to be raised to accept that Zionism is going to dominate their lives now, that colonial apartheid regime is going to dominate your lives now, and if you dare think otherwise we erase you from the earth.
They still very well may try to mass-remove Palestinians but it does seem that the plan right now is to turn them into the plantation workers for Jared Kushner’s real estate plans moving forward, while you have Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority rewriting the Palestinian constitution alongside France and other Western powers to try to ban any Palestinians that don’t accept the Oslo Accords, don’t accept Israeli colonialism, from ever running for office.
So what they want to do is put in this Palestinian technocratic committee in Gaza and force them to essentially be like Mahmoud Abbas where you are the mayors of a large prison camp run by the United States and Israel, and the residents of this prison camp are just keeping the land until Israeli settlers can come in and take it over. That’s what this Board of Peace is entirely about.
AMY GOODMAN: And Israel has just joined the Board of Peace. Jeremy Scahill, I want to thank you for being with us, co-founder of Drop Site News. We will link to your new piece ‘This is Not a Dress Rehearsal’: U.S. Engaged in Massive Military Buildup as Threat To Bomb Iran Grows. Coming up, Palestinian activist and Columbia graduate student Mohsen Mahdawi, a judge has just blocked his deportation. Stay with us.
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Democracy Now! produces a daily, global, independent news hour hosted by award-winning journalists Amy Goodman and Juan González. Our reporting includes breaking daily news headlines and in-depth interviews with people on the front lines of the world’s most pressing issues. On Democracy Now!, you’ll hear a diversity of voices speaking for themselves, providing a unique and sometimes provocative perspective on global events.