GIVE Donald Trump credit. In a stunning eruption last week, he proposed to annex Gaza and expel whatever inhabitants refuse to leave, generating a nifty waterfront investment opportunity in the bargain. It may seem counterintuitive, but he has done Palestinians a great favour. He has not `killed` the two-state solution. That had long since died. Instead, he has added useful clarity to a pernicious situation.

The horrific Israeli onslaught of the past 15 months, following the terrorist outrage of Oct 7, is but the latest iteration of a recurrent pattern of Israeli repression, futile Palestinian resistance, and grossly disproportionate Israeli reprisal.

Whether or not Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu returns to the killing fields as promised, there will be no permanent end of hostilities so long as the underlying dynamic holds. As Trump has pointed out, when you do the same thing over and over, `you end up in the same place`.

But that`s as far as credit can go. Needless to say, Trump`s proposal is absurd on its face. Most Gazans surely would refuse to leave. Trump concedes that US troops will not force them. Neither Egypt nor Jordan, alone or in concert, will accept two million Palestinians, for multiple obvious reasons. And the Saudi leadership has made clear that they will not stand exposed before the entire Islamic world to finance ethnic cleansing on Israel`s behalf. In short, this half-baked idea is going nowhere.

Simultaneously, Trump was asked whether his proposed American seizure of Gaza would be combined with US support for Israel`s annexation of the West Bank. He promised an answer in a month.

Predicting Trump is a fool`s errand, but he has telegraphed his response. His key Mideast advisers are loud proponents of Israeli annexation. Trump`s prospective support may be the push which emboldens Netanyahu to do what he transparently desires, but to date has not dared.

We should hope that he does. Israeli settlements in the West Bank have long since reached an extent that even a marginally viable, contiguous Palestinian state is inconceivable. That is the product of many decades of purposeful Israeli policy. De jure annexation would change nothing on the ground. Formal seizure of Palestinian lands would merely be a welcome acknowledgment by Israel of the true state of affairs: that it has created, and intends to sustain, an apartheid state.But annexation would give the US and others nowhere to hide. So long as the status of the West Bank was nominally undetermined, the US could maintain the cruel fiction that it supports a twostate solution. In fact, the US has been fully complicit in Israel`s successful effort to preclude any such thing. The fact that American policy is a product of inertia and political cowardice, rather than malice aforethought, is hardly a compelling defence.

Annexation would reveal the pious incantations of Western politicians for what they are impotent drivel at best, and cynical cant at worst. It would force them to choose: Either openly acquiesce in Israel`s blatant violation of international law, or actively oppose it. There will no longer be a middle way.Trump has chosen acquiescence. For all his moral obtuseness, he is by comparison with his predecessor refreshingly straightforward in what he means to do. Rather than wring his hands, he proposes to cut the Gordian knot by doing for the Israelis what they could not do for themselves: clear out the Gazans and swindle them with the specious chimera of `beautiful homes` in other countries, paid for by others.

This is actually a continuation of Trump`s firstterm policy. His `deal of the century` for the West Bank in 2020 was of a piece with last week`s bombshell. It proposed to give the Israelis virtually everything they wanted in the West Bank, while inducing the Palestinians to trade dignity and sovereignty for promises of economic investment in the Bantustans to which they would be relegated.

It didn`t work then, and it won`t work now.

So, if not Mar-a-Gaza, then what? There are many just peace proposals extant, involving bothtwo states and one. All would be excruciatingly painful to adopt. With Israel militarily unassailable by its neighbours, none could be implemented without enormous pressure from outside the region.

It is therefore a useful thought experiment to imagine what sort of alternative pressure would be required to divert Israel from its irredentist course. A crushing, South Africa-style international campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions, supplemented by a complete cutoff of US military and diplomatic support would be required, and then might not be enough.

That is unlikely to say the least. But the longterm trends may not be so positive for Israel.

As violence in Gaza recedes in intensity, it brings greater focus on Israel`s continuing depredations in the West Bank: the air strikes, the land seizures, the financial strangulation, the willful destruction of civilian infrastructure, the facilitation of increasingly violent Israeli settlers. The stated logic is to force Palestinians to vote with their feet. But that will be excruciatingly slow.

And it cannot be hidden.

Chinese policy towards the Tibetans and the Uighurs might be a useful model of state impunity for Israel, but tiny Israel is far more dependent on outside support, and has nothing like the coercive power of China.

It is possible that the world will ultimately shrug and acquiesce. But that is by no means assured.

Israel is fast becoming an international pariah.

Many countries, including in Western Europe, have pledged to enforce ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defence minister, issued in response to a rolling, 17-month war crime.

Even in the US, the negative generational shift in attitudes towards Israel is striking, and the growing willingness of politicians to publicly oppose Israeli policy would have been inconceivable just a few years ago. The furious right-wing demands to suppress pro-Palestinian demonstrators on American campuses and to sanction the ICC are useful indicators of fear.

No, peace in greater Palestine is not at hand.

History will continue its dismal course, for now.

But in the meantime, Mr Trump`s heat and bluster have also cast a useful ray of light. • The writer is a former US official and author of 88 Days to Kandahar.