đłď¸The Titanic Choice in Gaza: Evacuation or Starvation
â History proves mass evacuation is possible. The question is whether the world will actâor let Gaza sink.
𧞠The Daily Tally
Every morning, the headlines arrive like telegrams from doom:
How many Palestinians died overnight?
How many children starved in southern Gaza?
How many families still sleep in rubble?
And the worldâs chorus is the same, as monotonous as a broken phonograph: âWe urge restraint.â âWe call for aid.â âWe demand ceasefires that never hold.â Meanwhile, a million people remain penned in northern Gazaâordered to move, but given nowhere to go.
đ The Trump Gambit
Enter Donald Trump, heralding a âpotentially great day in civilizationâ with a 20-point peace plan. It offers phased Israeli withdrawals, demilitarization of Hamas, international committees, and a glittering âNew Gazaâ rebuilt in marble and golf courses.
But like many of Trumpâs announcements, it risks collapsing under the weight of its own vagueness. Who governs? Who disarms Hamas? How long does a âsecurity perimeterâ last? Trumpâs plan is less blueprint than blimpâbig, shiny, and full of hot air.
đ The Foil Effect
Trumpâs gambit, however, does serve a purpose: itâs a foil. Where his plan speaks in abstractions, evacuation demands blunt logistics: planes, ships, and actual housing. Trump imagines Gaza rebuilt from the top down. The world needs to start from the bottom upâby asking the simple, brutal question: how do we move the people buried under rubble today?
đ˘ Historyâs Precedent
Kabul, 2021: 122,000 evacuated in two weeks.
Saigon, 1975: 130,000 airlifted after the city fell.
Titanic, 1912: Even in chaos, women, children, and the infirm went first.
These rescues were imperfect, frantic, and often tragic. But they prove the principle: when the will exists, people can be moved at scale. Gaza would be larger, harder, messierâbut not impossible.
âď¸ Planes, Ships, Bricks
A U.S. C-17 can carry 600â800 passengers.
Ten planes, two sorties per day: tens of thousands in a week.
Civilian ferries could shuttle families to Cyprus or Egypt.
Processing centers in Sinai or Mediterranean bases could give shelter.
Not elegant. Not photogenic. But better than starvation and mass graves.
âľ The Flotilla Reimagined
For years, international flotillas have set sail toward Gaza, carrying aid that too often never reaches the people. But why not repurpose that moral theater into material action? Instead of delivering supplies to be confiscated or bombed, those ships could carry families out. Each vessel could become a lifeboatâtaking people to Cyprus, Crete, or Egyptâsmall steps in a larger corridor of evacuation. The point is not just to feed Gaza, but to free it from being starved to death.
𧹠Housing With Dignity
Evacuation cannot mean permanent exile. Palestinians want dignity and a binding right of return. History offers a model: Red Vienna, 1920s, where 60,000 sturdy apartments were built with courtyards, libraries, and communal baths.
A Gaza Resettlement Compact could do the same. Families would own homes with deeds vesting over time. Each deed paired with a UN-registered Right-of-Return Certificate. If we can fund bombs, we can fund bricks.
đ Divide the Burden
A million displaced sounds impossibleâuntil divided.
20 countries Ă 20,000 people = 1 million resettled.
No single host bears the burden.
Over time, new citizens contribute as workers, entrepreneurs, and taxpayers.
History shows displaced people enrich societies, not drain them. And here is a simple test of sincerity: more than 100 nations have already recognized Palestine as a state. Recognition means little if it isnât followed by responsibility. Those same governments could each take their shareâ20,000 apieceâand prove that their signatures are more than symbolic gestures.
â ď¸ The Real Policy Choice
âImpossibleâ is not a logistical category, itâs a political one. Planes exist. Ships exist. Aid agencies exist. Whatâs missing is the will.
And here lies the choice:
Demand ceasefire, open corridors, organize evacuation.
Or keep issuing statements while Gaza starves.
Better still: evacuate first to stop the murders, then see if Trumpâs âgreat peace planâ has any legs beyond hot air. One step saves lives now, the other might chart a future later.
And let us be clear: Israel must be spanked and held accountable for war crimes. No nation is above the law, not even one wrapped in the language of self-defense while burying children under rubble.
âWouldnât Israel itself have appreciated if, in 1939, the world had flown in to evacuate its people from looming genocide? The very precedent that might have spared Jewish lives then is the one they now deny to Palestinians.â
If Israel insists on clearing the north, the world must insist on evacuating its people safely, and housing them with dignityâall while sifting out Hamas. Do it as they did on the Titanic: women, children, and the ill first.
It will be imperfect. Expensive. It will look like defeat. But it will be better than the alternative: a moral collapse broadcast daily, with every childâs body in rubble staining not only Israelâs hands, but ours.
đ Historyâs Question
This is the evacuation nobody will attempt. Yet history will ask:
You had the planes.
You had the ships.
You had the flotillas.
You had the bricks.
You had the signatures.
Why didnât you move them?