My essay in Declassified Australia:
The recent announcement by US President Donald Trump that he wanted to take over the Gaza Strip, remove its Palestinian citizens and establish a “Riviera for the Middle East” has been rightly condemned as “ethnic cleansing” by sane voices around the world.
Standing alongside a smirking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a man with a long history of crushing any hope of Palestinian self-determination, Trump expressed a long-held dream of the Israeli Right, emptying Palestinians from Palestine. It’s a position that’s supported today by a majority of Israel’s Jewish population.
The Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appears unable or unwilling to condemn Trump’s proposal, left to mutter about a dead in the water two-state solution, while Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is far more enthusiastic, hoping to capitalise on Trump-like rhetoric to win the forthcoming federal election.
Beyond these shocking headlines, however, lies a far darker reality that’s been brewing in Palestine for decades. This is an occupied land and people used as a testing ground for the most sophisticated forms of Israeli weapons and surveillance tech. The mass slaughter in Gaza after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel is just the latest example of the Israeli state and defence companies profiting from disaster.
Israeli arms sales are booming. Defence exports topped US$13 billion in 2023 and figures for 2024 and 2025 are set to increase even more.
I’ve spent more than a decade investigating the ‘Palestine laboratory’, in a global best-selling book, podcast series and now film, recently released with Al Jazeera English and made with the UK production company Black Leaf Films and director Dan Davies.
Read the whole piece: THE GLOBAL SPREAD OF PALESTINE’S AGONY – Declassified Australia