Gaza: The Dream and the Nightmare

Trump’s Gazan dream is to overlay the complex human history with his own narcissistic real-estate fantasy. But for Maia Carter Hallward, co-author of a new contemporary history of Gaza, this once vibrant Mediterranean entrepôt linking Africa, Asia and Europe is now defined more by nightmare than dreams. “In peace studies, we talk about positive peace, which has rights, liberties, the ability to reach human potential - and we talk about negative peace, which is the absence of war,” Carter Hallward says. “I would say we have none of those in Gaza right now.” No negative peace, no absence of war. For Carter Hallward, that - alongside the more than 70,000 dead Palestinians - captures today’s Gazan tragedy.

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