By Patrick Gathara
The declaration by United States President Donald Trump, that he planned to expel all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and turn it into an American-controlled “Riviera of the Middle East” has rightly drawn condemnation from across the globe, including, ironically, from Western nations, that backed Israel’s genocidal bombardment that devastated the territory. Many point out that ethnic cleansing violates international law and that the Geneva Conventions explicitly forbid the forcible displacement of civilian populations, for any reason.
This is all true but as an African, I was drawn to a slightly different aspect of Trump’s declaration: his imagined entitlement to other people’s land. The claims he is making to having the right to take Gaza should not be isolated from the claims he has made on Greenland and Panamanian territory. They all spring from the same root, one that has been nurtured by half a millennium of European colonial aggrandisement.
