Geopolitics and international relations are directly related to, if not determined by, theological beliefs and perceptions. This was confirmed once again in the statements of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who on February 4 at the joint press conference with U.S. President Trump at the White House reiterated the Old Testament messianism defining his geopolitical vision of the new Israel: the interpretation of God’s Promise as the establishment of a worldly kingdom of wealthy and chosen people.
Netanyahu᾽s remarks followed President Trump’s statement that “The U.S. will take over the Gaza strip and we will do a job with it too, we will own it, and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous, unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, and create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area. Will do a real job, do something different…”
Were it not for the President’s mention of permanently removing Palestinians from Gaza, one would say in principle that this is an excellent idea of international, social, and humanitarian contribution by the United States to the mercilessly destroyed Gaza Strip that has led to the deaths of more than 100,000 Palestinians. According to estimates by the Lancet scientific journal, this number may not be definitive, as it does not include all those who are either missing or wounded and still fighting for their lives.
However, there are two details that a careful listener to the joint statements could possibly discern.
The first fact is that from the outset the President expressed his policy on Gaza straightforwardly and made plain that about 1.7 million Palestinians cannot return and live in Gaza but must move to neighboring countries, such as Egypt and Jordan. In his initial position, however, the Israeli Prime Minister did not seem to explicitly adhere at once to President Trump’s vision, and he continued to talk about simply clearing Hamas and terrorist units in the Gaza Strip. It was only when a journalist asked PM Netanyahu on his view of Trump’s proposal for Gaza that he explicitly and unequivocally agreed with it, praising the President.
The second fact is that, when President Trump spoke of “jobs and housing for the people in the area,” he did not appear to have in mind the indigenous population of the Gaza Strip, whom he said could not remain there. Even the West Bank seemed to be destined to the same fate of population relocation. From the joint statements, it also became clear that Trump envisions an Israeli Mediterranean Riviera in the place where so far Palestinians lived packed together because of long-standing settlement processes.
Destructive military intervention
In the same press conference, President Trump—quite rightly in my view—fairly admitted and confessed the tragic failure of American foreign policy in the Middle East, which, as he emphatically said, cost the American people several trillion dollars and countless human lives. Thus, it is obvious that the President has decided to replace the destructive U.S. military interventions with a novel economic offensive that will be implemented through gigantic investments and reconstruction programs without precedent.
However, here arises the issue related to what we hinted at the beginning as both ethical and humanitarian, as well as theological. For, how sustainably can a model of exchanging the fundamental right to land and homeland with jobs and some economic benefits withstand its implementation without the participation of the indigenous inhabitants of the region? How could the U.S. that shares values such as freedom, liberalism, and the core value of faith in the individual, condescend to and advocate for a de facto expulsion of an indigenous people as equally ancient as the Hebrews?
Besides, the war between Palestinians and Jews is a civil fratricidal war. If one goes back to history and prehistory, and even according to the Jewish tradition and religion, the forefather of today’s Jews and all the tribes in the region is Noah, who leaves three descendants, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, who happened to be the three progenitors of the basic races of humanity, Semites, Hamites and Japheths (the European races).
Further, how does it follow that an indigenous people, in this case the people of Israel, one of Noah’s descendants, has the right to enslave others demanding and deserving a homeland more than those, as it were, who are now called upon to forever depart from their ancestral homes where they have lived for many millennia? For, both Palestinians and the Jews are historically indigenous inhabitants of the region sharing the same rights. It was later on that the identification of religion and nation occurred, and ever since, Hebraism was identified with Judaism.
Evidently, these new developments in Washington D.C. testify to a convergence of theological, metaphysical, and eschatological traditions that, however, had a specific historical significance and meaning and cannot be extended forever:
On the one hand stands Jewish messianism of cosmic kingdom and sovereignty that remains committed to the Old Testament and claims justification in terms of identifying a certain race, nation, and people with divinity. On the other, stands American Manichaean (“we are the good, the others are the bad ones”), monophysite (denial of coexistence of different natures: God and man, Greeks and Jews, and so on) Christianity, which after failing to be substantially updated by the New Testament, finds in Netanyahu’s Jewish messianism the justification of individualistic liberalism within postmodern neocolonial capitalism.
It is on the New Testament and the Incarnation of God in the person of Christ that the cultural values of respect for human personality, justice, and equality of people as individuals and persons, and the coexistence of all people in the Republic-city (πόλις), are founded.
President Trump is a man of sincere intentions for peace, and his vision for the Middle East could truly exemplify a brilliant American contribution to democracy in the Middle East, were the Palestinians to find a place and justification as human beings in the new plan for the region. However, he should be careful not to associate himself with a global holocaust that is at risk in the Middle East, should there be no respect for human beings. For it has been prophesied that in the Middle East all peoples will clash, should justice and respect for human rights be abolished; should the barbarity of power and the apotheosis of power return.
President Trump must therefore not be led—in the name of defending democracy for the sake of which he risked his own life in the U.S.—to contribute to abolishing democracy in the Middle East by implementing a fatal policy. A policy that, in fact, would be a repetition of the holocaust of American indigenous population implemented by the Western European colonists, and of the holocaust of the Jewish people, caused by European Nazism.
I wish to extend my special acknowledgements to “Public Orthodoxy”, the online review of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University, New York, and its directors, Professors Aristotle Papanikolaou and George Demacopoulos, and the “Public Orthodoxy” Chief Editor, Nathaniel Wood, for immediately welcoming and publishing the essay.
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