Trump's plan to colonize gas is rooted in an old white fantasy | Views

The imaginary right of the US president on the land of other people is very familiar to the Africans.

The statement of the United States President Donald Trump that he plans to expel all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and turn it into an American controlled “Riviera of the Middle East” rightly attracted condemnation from the world, including irony of fate, from Western nations This supported the genocidal bombing of Israel, which devastated the territory. Many point out that ethnic cleansing violates international law and that Geneva Conventions explicitly prohibit the violent shift of the civil population for some reason.

All this is true, but as an African I was drawn to a slightly different aspect of Trump's declaration: his imaginary right on earth of other people. The allegations he makes to the right to accept gas should not be isolated from the allegations he has made to Greenland and Panama territory. All of them spring from the same root, the one who has been fueled for half a millennium European colonial enhancement.

White fantasies about the rights to other people's lands can be traced to The Treaty of 1479 of Alcakova, which establishes the principle that an area outside Europe can be stated by a European country and followed Within 50 years The Tordessilla contract and the Treaty of Zaragoza, with which the Portuguese and the Spaniards are considering dividing the globe into each other. There is a clear line from that to the scandalous conference in Berlin West Africa 400 years later, which is attended by the United States and all major European powers that establish the legal claim of Europeans that all of Africa can be occupied by anyone who can take it S

It is in Berlin doctrine for “effective profession” – In essence, the requirement of the power to demonstrate that they can impose their management and protect free trade in order to legitimize to legitimize their claims – it was articulated. The precedent for the use of the protection and development of capitalism to justify the colonial occupation today is reflected in Trump's claim that it will restore and internationalize the gas, creating jobs and prosperity for “all”. In essence, Trump is inadvertently trying to establish his colonial claim as a gas on the doctrine: that he may impose a US government, in this case by expulsion of the locals and that he will allow trade to thrive.

In order to be fair, Trump is only upgrading ideas that have been spread over months, to a large extent, which seek to justify the prolonged occupation under the section of turning gas into Dubai or Singapore. Last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's service supposedly revealed exactly such a plan This would retain Israeli control over the territory and justify it by applying a Marshall Plan, which will make it a “significant industrial port of the Mediterranean” and make it part of a “massive free trade area”.

As Africans can testify, the ideas that sacrifice local sovereignty and rights to the altar of international free trade regimes rarely work well for locals. The structures designed to allow free trade, set out by the Berlin Conference 140 years ago, gave birth to the horror, which was the free state of Congo – a real hell, which after 23 years took a life of up to 13 million Congo. The conference also recharges and militarizes what has become known as the struggle for Africa, which was accompanied by brutal wars for conquest, illness and extermination campaigns. More than a century later, Africans still live with the impact.

However, all over the world, the memories of the Berlin Conference and the devastation it has faded. In 2017, turning to the Humanitarian Congress Berlin, then the Coordinator of MCC Operations, Mamadou Sow, began its remarks Noting “I'm from Africa. And it's very interesting to be in Berlin for Congress. ” The joke fell equal. He would later comment on x That it was the day on which he “realized that the greater part of educated Europeans know a little about their colonial history.” People today are obliged to blame the Africans themselves for its consequences, just as the Palestinians are routinely accused of the effects of Israeli occupation and blockade. How often do we treat the fake refrain This Israel left the Gaza strip in 2005, hoping that the newly dependent country would become Singapore in the Middle East, but that Hamas turned it into a base of terror?

But the lesson is clear. The restoration of gas, whether from Israel, the United States or any coalition of countries, is neither viable nor moral. There is no alternative to the local Palestinian sovereignty. It is for African countries to take advantage of Berlin's history and say in one voice: Never again!

The views expressed in this article are the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial positionS