by Bhagrat Dogra, published on Countercurrents, February 22, 2025
“The (Ukraine) war is all about money. People don’t talk much about it. But you know, the richest country in all of Europe for rare earth minerals is Ukraine. Two to seven trillion dollars (worth) of minerals that are rare earth minerals, very relevant to the 21st century… Donald Trump is going to do a deal to get our money back, to enrich ourselves with rare earth minerals. A good deal for Ukraine and us, and he is going to bring peace.” –Senator Lindsey Graham in conversation with Fox News host Sean Hannity in November 2024.
True to what Senator Graham foresaw, President Trump has not lost any time in staking claim to nearly 500 billion dollars worth of rare earth minerals of Ukraine, meaning that these will be exploited by US companies, in return for the aid provided in the past and linked also to reconstruction work likely to be taken up by US companies in Ukraine in the near future.
While President Trump’s overall efforts to stop the Ukraine war and bring peace here are most welcome, it is strange and unfortunate that peace efforts are being linked to resource grab. This is hardly the ideal way to pursue peace diplomacy or justice-based diplomacy. In fact the requirements of peace and justice based peace can be trumped by such a narrow vision of prioritizing economic gain and resource grab.
While Graham’s comments of November 2024 indicate prior planning for this, this may also be the case in the context of the Gaza Riviera plan. Its origin are being traced to a detailed document prepared in the summer of 2024 by a Washington based economist Joseph Pelzman whose proposal included not just hotels and resorts but also airports and harbors. At the same time, he too had stated eerily that for his plan to work out, first Gaza needs to be emptied out and that Egypt should be willing to take in displaced Palestinians.
Of course the concept of mass displacement of the people of Gaza is completely hostile to any understanding of justice-based peace in this region, and has so far been opposed with rare unity by almost the entire Arab world.
This is very unfortunate because President Trump had won goodwill even here initially by placing adequate pressure on the Israeli government to agree to at least a temporary ceasefire, a goal that had eluded the Biden administration for over 15 months. However soon after this Trump’s proposal to displace the people of Gaza to create Riviera really shocked not just the Palestinians but all those people in world who believe in justice, particularly as the people of Gaza have already suffered so much and to now inflict mass displacement on them would be the height of injustice.
This injustice appears all the more unacceptable as this would mean that the people of Gaza would be deprived of their quite substantial gas reserves too. Earlier it was being stated that Israel has its eyes on gaining control over these gas resources of Gaza, but if the Trump project is implemented, then it is more likely that the USA will get control over these gas resources.
What is more, if the people of Gaza are sent elsewhere by arguing that Gaza has become unlivable now, then this creates a highly objectionable model of achieving the objective of ethnic cleansing—first pound a country or region endlessly with so much bombing that much of the place is reduced to rubble, then tell the people who have always lived there that since so much has been destroyed so you also must leave.
If this kind of reasoning is accepted, then how can anyone speak of justice and justice-based peace?
Then there is the additional question of what will happen to the Palestinian people of West Bank. If such extreme actions can be taken to displace the people of Gaza on a mass scale, then isn’t it likely that something similar will be done to the people of West Bank by later displacing them too, particularly when one keeps in mind the reality that there are already intensified pressures on the Palestinians there with continued expansion of Israeli settlers and more atrocities inflicted on the Palestinians. The Israeli motivations for occupying West Bank have been stronger compared to the occupation of Gaza.
Hence the peace prospects in Gaza and West Bank should be pursued within the framework of justice-based inclusion of the Palestinian people.
A cynical, narrow and commerce-based view of peace negotiations can never become a substitute for proper peace diplomacy. Sincere and justice-based peace diplomacy is what the world needs. If peace efforts are to be linked or made conditional to resource grabs or big business interests, then these efforts will not go very far and can get disrupted when big business and narrow commercial interests get priority over peace and justice concerns.
*Featured Image: src ~Reuters
Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, Earth without Borders, Man over Machine and A Day in 2071.