Trump’s Gaza plan is shocking. Let’s listen to the voices of Palestinian Christians

As Donald Trump suggests turning Gaza into a “riviera”, Dr Harry Hagopian urges Christians to listen instead to the viewpoints of local Palestinian Christians, and to continue to pray for both peace and justice 

There was considerable shock and consternation on the faces of many Arab Christians and Muslims across the Middle East when President Donald Trump suggested the Palestinian residents of Gaza should be relocated to Egypt and Jordan.

Trump argued that the Gaza Strip, which consists of 140 square miles of land located in the southwest corner of Israel along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, was uninhabitable. They should go away, he insisted, so the USA would clean up the rubble and develop these lands into a new and gleaming Mediterranean Riviera.

A Riviera? Who will do the heavy lifting in terms of financing the whole project and re-building what was destroyed by Israel during the past 15 months? And more to the point, what is a Riviera according to the US president? Trump hotels and golf courses? Or will this tiny strip simply be viewed as a terra nullius so that Israeli settlers move in and establish their illegal settlements and outposts as they have done unrelentingly across the West Bank?

Whether President Trump is predictable or otherwise is not the issue here - not for me anyway. The real issue is that someone living in the White House would determine who lives in a land that is some 6,000 miles away.

Gaza is indeed devastated, but a majority of its Palestinian residents still consider it home and do not wish to forsake it. It is about their unarguably legitimate right to their land and property that cannot be appropriated from them, let alone about their culture, history, pride and ultimately their steadfastness…