By David K. Shipler 

            In the late1970s, Israel’s former general Ariel Sharon used to call Jewish settlements inthe occupied Palestinian territories “facts on the ground.” As agricultureminister then, he provided the roads, wells, and power lines that madesettlements possible. They would anchor the Israeli presence, he argued, makingit hard to dislodge.

            He wasaccurate as far as the West Bank was concerned. Those settlements,proliferating over the decades, have balkanized the land that would be theheart of any Palestinian state.

But he himself dislodged theIsraeli presence from the Gaza Strip. He still had a general’s mindset as helater became defense minister and then prime minister, and by 2005 had come tosee the densely-populated territory as more liability than asset. His mostnotable and controversial act as prime minister was to end the occupation bywithdrawing the army and sending Israeli soldiers to forcibly evict Israeli Jewsfrom Gaza settlements.

The resentment and backlash byIsrael’s religious right, combined with the area’s rapid takeover by Hamasmilitants, demonstrated the limitations of pure military calculations, whichrarely consider politics, emotions, or the human quest for dignity. Israelis’willingness to consider a Palestinian state was virtually obliterated by Hamasrockets.

Sharon was known for brutalretaliation, so if he were still alive and in power, he would surely be decimatingGaza as thoroughly as Israel has done since the intimate atrocities by Hamasfighters during their invasion of Oct 7, 2023. The resulting “facts on theground”—some 80 percent of Gaza’s buildings destroyed or damaged, the bones oftens of thousands in the earth, a health care system and infrastructure inruins, systematic sexual violence, over 2 million traumatized Palestiniansstruggling to survive—define a new reality not easily dislodged.

Most Palestinian Arabs in Gaza arepowerless. They have never governed themselves in an open democracy. Theirleaders have been ineffectual or violent, compensating for helplessness bymilitarizing their territory into a hotbed of terrorism against Israelicivilians. Israel has mostly walled them off, and fellow Arabs in nearbycountries have wanted only the rhetoric of their cause, not the peoplethemselves.

Compounding their misfortune, Gazafamilies are now at the mercy of the two worst governments imaginable, in theUnited States and Israel. Both are run by extreme anti-Arab radicals who carenothing for those caught in that miserable reality. President Trump, indulginghis impulsive and mercenary fantasies, urges ethnic cleansing—voluntarily, hesays—under the euphemism of luxury real estate development along Gaza’sMediterranean beaches. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, amplifying hiscabinet’s most excessive hatreds, smiles appreciatively at Trump’s dream of beingrid of all those Palestinian Arabs.

It might be logical to assume, asTrump does, that many Gazans would rather be somewhere else instead of campingin the rubble. Departures through Egypt have been popular among youngPalestinians, and even over the years before the current war, significantminorities of 26 to 48 percent told pollsters thatthey considered emigrating, according to the respected Palestinian Center forPolicy and Survey Research. Turkey was the most favored destination, followedby Germany, Canada, the United States, and Qatar. And that was before October 7.Presumably, the numbers have risen since.

But here’s where facts on theground get in the way. First, leaving is seen as a statement of retreat orbetrayal—betrayal of the Palestinians’ aspirations for self-determination.Second, Hamas, which seeks the Jewish state’s destruction, has been diminishedby Israel’s onslaught but not eliminated. We’ve seen the videos of masked,armed fighters surrounding Israeli hostages being released.

Third, while the vast majority ofGaza residents are descendants of refugees from inside what is now Israel,uprooted during Israel’s 1948 war of independence, a good number have toldreporters of their attachment to their towns and neighborhoods of Gaza. Uprootingthemselves again would feel like a repeated exile.

Fourth, nobody will take hugenumbers of Palestinians—not Egypt, not Jordan, not Saudi Arabia, and certainlynot Trump’s United States. At least half of Jordan’s population has Palestinianheritage, and as Jordan’s King Abdullah surely made plain to Trump during aWhite House visit, his pro-American monarchy would be destabilized by a hugeinflux of Palestinians from Gaza. The same for Egypt, whose alignment withWashington would be jeopardized.

Palestinians have not been integratedinto any Arab countries except Jordan, where most Palestinian have citizenship.They remain stateless in Lebanon and Syria, for example, where they are largelyconfined to longstanding slums that still bear the label “refugee camps.”

The one silver lining to Trump’sfantasies of relocation is its provocation: Arab countries have been provokedto counter with a five-year, $53.2 billion reconstructionplan for Gaza. But the proposal has two conditions that Israel rejects: theright to a Palestinian state, and “the full return” to Gaza of the PalestinianAuthority (PA), which has weak oversight in parts of the West Bank. The PA,created by the 1993 Oslo accords, could be the embryo of statehood, so Netanyahuhas spent years undermining its viability, partly by permitting millionsin funds from Qatar to flow to the PA’s chief rival: Hamas. Yes, you readthat right.

Trump is a new fact on the ground. Hisinfluence so far is contradictory. On the one hand, he is so eager to chalk upa victory by extending the Israeli-Hamas ceasefire and winning the release ofremaining Israeli hostages that he broke with precedent and sent an aide tonegotiate directly with Hamas. Netanyahu’s government was infuriated. But itcan count its blessings on the other hand, since Trump is unleashing Israel to beas harsh as it wants against Palestinians. Whatever mild restraints the USplaced on the Israelis—and they weren’t many—seem to have vanished.

Trump’s new ambassador inJerusalem, Mike Huckabee, is a right-wing Christian who favors Israeliannexation of the West Bank, which Israeli settlers call by its biblical namesJudaea and Samaria, connoting ancient Jewish title to the lands. Expect theState Department to adopt those terms. Annexation of Jewish settlements there wasproposed in the first Trump administration.

If Israel’s radical government movesto take the entire territory, Trump probably won’t object—unless he wants creditfor another victory. That would be the establishment of Saudi-Israelirelations, similar to his first administration’s Abraham Accords, which wonIsrael ties with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. TheSaudis, anxious to counter Iran and eager for US security guarantees, were onthe brink of following suit with Israel when Hamas attacked. The Israeli atrocitiesin response hardened the Saudi demand for eventual Palestinian statehood, whichWest Bank annexation would block.  

Beneath those obvious impedimentsto both Trump’s grandiose scheme and the prospect for a near-term peacefulresolution of the conflict lie the facts of trauma and grief and humiliationvisited upon both Israelis and Palestinians. These are active wounds asobstinate as any settlement of concrete and mortar.

 Israeli women and men taken hostage into Gazawere sexually abused and assaulted, asreported by a doctor who treated them after their release. During theOctober 7 attack, gruesome gang rapes and murders of Israeli women fueled afire of revenge that burned through Gaza when Israel retaliated.

Sexual violence and humiliationhave been the “intentional policy” of Israeli authorities, according to areport published last week by a United Nations Independent InternationalCommission of Inquiry for the Human Rights Council. Multiple interviews and videoswere cited to document alarming findings:

Israel troops forced men to stripin front of their families—to make sure they weren’t hiding weapons, Israelisauthorities explained. They forced religious women to remove their veils andeven undress to their underwear in the company of male soldiers and other men. Sexualassault of female prisoners “included kicking the women’s genitals, touchingtheir breasts, attempting to kiss them, and threats of rape.” Male prisonerswere also raped, the commission said.

 A November 2023 attack on a center for survivorsof violence against women “appeared to have a clear gendered dimension,”judging by the soldiers’ graffiti in Hebrew: “We came here to fuck you, you andyour mothers, you bitches,” accordng to the report, and, “The dirty pussies ofyour prostitutes, you ugly Arab you ugly, you sons of bitches, we will burn youalive you dogs.”

The commission does not entertainthe possibility that the individual incidents are ad hoc aberrations typical inevery war. Instead, it projects them onto a big screen of nefarious policy. “Sexualand gender-based violence is increasingly used as a method of war by Israel todestabilize, dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people,” itconcludes.

For example, in recounting theshelling of the Al-Basma IVF Centre in December 2023, the report says thatabout 4,000 embryos and 1,000 sperm samples were destroyed. The center carrriedout 70 to 100 in vitro fertilization procedures monthly. “Satellite imageryindicates that the area around the clinic was extensively damaged due to thehostilities,” the commission notes. It presents no evidence that the center wasintentionally targeted instead of being part of widespread collateral damage.

Yet that attack becomes ground for thereport’s most damning conclusion: “The Commission finds that the Israeliauthorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of thePalestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended toprevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute andthe Genocide Convention.”

“Genocidal acts.” Were they? Whatevernarrative each side constructs about this war, beliefs are also facts on theground, not easily overcome.