The declaration by United States President Donald Trump that he planned to expel all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and turn it into an American-controlled “Riviera of the Middle East” has rightly drawn condemnation from across the globe, including, ironically, from Western nations that backed Israel’s genocidal bombardment that devastated the territory. Many point out that ethnic cleansing violates international law and that the Geneva Conventions explicitly forbid the forcible displacement of civilian populations, for any reason.

This is all true but as an African, I was drawn to a slightly different aspect of Trump’s declaration: his imagined entitlement to other people’s land. The claims he is making to having the right to take Gaza should not be isolated from the claims he has made on Greenland and Panamanian territory. They all spring from the same root, one that has been nurtured by half a millennium of European colonial aggrandisement.

White fantasies of rights to other peoples’ lands can be traced as far back as the 1479 Treaty of Alcacovas, which established the principle that an area outside of Europe could be claimed by a European country, and was followed within 50 years by the Treaty of Tordesillas and the Treaty of Saragossa with which the Portuguese and the Spanish purported to divide the globe between themselves. There is a clear line from that to the infamous Berlin West Africa Conference 400 years later, attended by the US and all major European powers which established the legal claim by Europeans that all of Africa could be occupied by whoever could take it.

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It was at Berlin, that the doctrine of “effective occupation” –  essentially requiring occupying powers to demonstrate that they could enforce their rule and protect free trade in order to legitimise their claims – was articulated. The precedent of using the protection and development of capitalism to justify colonial occupation is today reflected in Trump’s assertion that he will rebuild and internationalise Gaza, creating jobs and prosperity for “everyone”. In essence, Trump is unwittingly attempting to base his colonial claim on to Gaza on the doctrine: that he can impose American rule, in this case through expulsion of the natives, and that he will enable trade to flourish.

To be fair, Trump is only building on ideas that have been circulating for months, largely emanating from Israel, that seek to justify continued occupation under the rubric of turning Gaza into a Dubai or Singapore. In May last year, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu purportedly unveiled just such a plan that would retain Israeli control of the territory and justify it through the implementation of a “Marshall Plan” that would turn it into “a significant industrial port on the Mediterranean” and make it part of “a massive free trade zone”.

As Africans can attest, ideas that sacrifice local sovereignty and rights at the altar of international free trade regimes rarely work out well for the natives. The structures meant to enable free trade laid out by the Berlin Conference 140 years ago gave birth to the horror that was the Congo Free State – a veritable hell that in 23 years claimed the lives of up to 13 million Congolese. The conference also supercharged and militarised what became known as the Scramble for Africa, which was accompanied by brutal wars of conquest, disease and campaigns of extermination. More than a century later, Africans are still living with the impact.

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Despite this, around the world, memories of the Berlin Conference and the devastation it wrought have faded. In 2017, addressing the Humanitarian Congress Berlin, then ICRC Operations Coordinator, Mamadou Sow, began his remarks by noting “I am from Africa. And it’s very interesting to be in Berlin for a Congress”. The joke fell flat. He would later comment on X that it was the day he “realised that the majority of educated Europeans know little about their colonial history”. People today are liable to blame Africans themselves for its consequences, just as Palestinians are routinely blamed for the consequences of the Israeli occupation and blockade. How often are we treated to the false refrain that Israel left the Gaza Strip in 2005, hoping the newly independent country would become the Singapore of the Middle East but that Hamas turned it into a base of terror?

But the lesson is clear. The recolonisation of Gaza, whether by Israel, the US or any coalition of states, is neither viable nor moral. There is no alternative to local Palestinian sovereignty. It is incumbent on African countries to draw on the history of Berlin and say with one voice: Never Again!

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.