US President Donald Trump’s recent statements in January on “cleaning out” Gaza and transferring part of the population to Jordan and Egypt so that reconstruction can take place have seen rehashed schemes to expel Palestinians from their land brought to the fore once again.
During a White House press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, Trump doubled down on these plans.
“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” the US president said, again reiterating calls for ethnically cleansing Palestinians to neighbouring countries.
Trump’s proposal to depopulate Gaza comes as no surprise to Palestinians. Since the 1948 Nakba (the mass displacement of Palestinians during the creation of the state of Israel from 1947-49) various repatriation schemes have been put forward by Israel and the US with the implicit goal of erasing the Palestinian issue.
However, on this occasion, the timing of the suggestion has provoked particular concern and calls for regional mobilisation because it is being linked to the near-total devastation of the Gaza Strip as a result of Israel’s 15-month war, labelled a genocide by human rights groups and legal experts.
Israeli plans to depopulate Gaza
Throughout the war on Gaza, which lasted over 470 days, Israel has sought to impose permanent forced displacement on Palestinians – particularly in northern Gaza.
At the beginning of military operations, Israel tried to build support for the ‘transfer’ of Palestinians to the Sinai, including with financial incentives, but Egypt rejected the proposals.
Plans were also suggested during the war for the “voluntary” displacement of Palestinians, with certain African and European countries pressured to agree to receive thousands of Palestinians.
All of these proposals were foiled by the ceasefire agreement, the terms of which managed to secure the mass return of displaced Palestinians to their homes in northern Gaza.
Far-right parties in the Israeli government coalition, their best-known representatives the now-resigned Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have pushed for reinstating Israeli settlements in Gaza, although this was never a declared war objective.
Unsurprisingly, Trump’s statements have been warmly welcomed by these right-wing factions, who see them as fulfilling the goal they failed to achieve through the unprecedented 15-month-long assault on Gaza, whose official death toll now stands at 62,000 people and rising.
Although Trump’s call has been met with unequivocal rejection by Egypt and Jordan, both on a popular and official level, as well as absolute Palestinian rejection, it has opened the door for expulsion plans to return to the table once again, cynically exploiting the devastation of Gaza to push for ethnic cleansing.
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The Palestinian response to Trump’s plans
Fatah spokesman Monzer Al Hayek said that the 500,000 or so displaced Palestinians returning to Gaza City and the north could be viewed as a rebuttal of Trump’s statements to depopulate the territory.
Speaking to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, The New Arab’s Arabic-language sister edition, he said Palestinians needed to unite to make joint decisions independently of external pressure.
“In no circumstances can a repeat of the Nakba of 1948 or 1967 be allowed to happen – and for this reason, a serious political position needs to be adopted,” he stressed.
“The path forward must be to empower the Palestinian government headed by Mohammad Mustafa, as it has the legal mandate to unite […] the occupied West Bank and Gaza.”
Hayek emphasised the need to “avoid aligning with Netanyahu’s plans, which include certain proposals such as the so-called Community Support Committee and other terms that were rejected by the Palestinian Authority (PA) but accepted by Hamas during talks in Cairo – as they effectively entrench division”.
In his view, the Palestinian Authority (PA) government in Ramallah “needs to be empowered, and international support enlisted for reconstruction, and then we must go to the ballot boxes so the Palestinian people can choose their political leaders and representatives – this is a matter Hamas and all the Palestinian factions need to listen to”.
According to Hayek, Trump’s proposal to depopulate Gaza isn’t the first. “There were other proposals made in 1956 and 1974. In this war, [Israel] strived to force expulsion and convince Arab states to take in the people of Gaza – but they failed.”
Hamas Politburo member Husam Badran told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the Palestinian people, especially those in Gaza, will never accept the idea of expulsion. “The experience of this war has proved that every criminal means used by the occupation to impose [conditions to force] displacement didn’t succeed,” he said.
Moreover, the “scenes of the displaced returning in their hundreds of thousands the very first day they were allowed to after a ceasefire agreement was reached – despite the state of devastation and decimated infrastructure – reflect the people’s national commitment to the land of Palestine”.
Badran added: “What is required nationally is a united, unambiguous and decisive Palestinian stance that affirms to all regional and international parties that implementing this idea – displacement – will be impossible”.
There needs to be “a national discourse and a unified Palestinian position” to safeguard the Palestinian people from being subjected to external diktats, including attempts to remove them from their land, he said.
Rehashed displacement plans
Israel’s far-right parties hope Trump will manage to convince various Arab and even Asian states to accept displaced Palestinians – both from Gaza and the West Bank – to achieve its dream of settling the entirety of historic Palestine and drastically reducing the number of Palestinians in it.
Ahmed Al-Tanani, director of the Arab Centre for Strategic Studies and Research said Trump’s comments weren’t the first of their kind, noting that “similar statements were made before Trump’s inauguration as president, when his administration was reportedly discussing relocating Gaza’s residents outside the Strip as part of the reconstruction plans, with Indonesia proposed as one country that could temporarily host them”.
Trump had said that Gaza could be “better than Monaco” if “rebuilt the right way” during his election campaign – a statement which echoed the suggestion made by his son-in-law and ex-advisor Jared Kushner last February when he floated the suggestion that civilians be evacuated to open up space for real-estate investment projects on Gaza’s coastline.
This attitude, says Tanani, reflects “obvious bias and a purely investment-based vision which doesn’t just ignore the fundamental rights of the Palestinians – but is based on the premise of building on their ruins”.
According to Tanani, these comments “once again put Gaza at the heart of Trump’s controversial vision on the Palestinian issue. However, this proposal completely disregards all humanitarian principles and amounts to a covert reproduction of plans to displace the Palestinians – especially with the [explicit] notion of ‘cleaning’ Gaza of its residents”.
This aligns with previous Israeli attempts to empty Palestinian areas of their indigenous population using security or economic pretexts, Tanini said, with the genocidal war in Gaza representing the culmination of these attempts.
He added that these attempts collided with the steadfastness of Gaza’s people, “especially in the north”, which once again thwarted Israel’s plans to expel them by force.
From observing the way Trump had approached international issues in the past, especially the Palestinian cause, Tanani believes Trump has shown a tendency to use the “trial balloons” strategy – scattering statements and seemingly off-the-cuff ideas to gauge local and international reactions.
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These ideas will then be integrated into a comprehensive vision – as with the ‘Deal of the Century’. Tanani thinks Trump’s current statements fall within a similar approach, and indicate that he is preparing the ground for a possible ‘Deal of the Century 2’.
This version is likely to be “even more extreme and harmful to the rights of the Palestinians than the first. This is why an urgent and effective emergency plan for reconstruction is needed, as well as coordinated action with the Arab states, especially Egypt and Jordan, to formulate a unified regional stance against Trump’s plan”.
At the political level, Tanani emphasised the need for “the unification of Palestinian national institutions on the basis of preserving Palestinian existence and countering the plans for their liquidation”.
Trump’s remarks about Gaza’s population merely signify an initial step that will be followed up in the West Bank, the political analyst said, to facilitate annexation and occupy what remains of Palestinian land, paving the way to the “dismantlement of any political entity representing the Palestinians”.
Arab mobilisation
Hussam al-Dajani, a political science professor at the Ummah University in Gaza, said Trump should have engaged in Hamas’s invitation for dialogue and pursued political solutions instead of leading the region into an escalating crisis.
“Rebuilding Gaza can take place with the Palestinian people remaining on their land. Palestinians won’t accept being relocated or temporarily displaced using the pretext of reconstruction, especially since the Nakba of 1948 and 1967 loom large to this day in the Palestinian memory,” he said.
However, Dajani ruled out that Trump would succeed in imposing this plan, either on the Palestinians or even on the Arab countries, especially Egypt and Jordan – as both countries reject the plan and see it as a clear threat to their national security.
In early February, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League released a joint statement rejecting any proposals to displace Palestinians from their territories in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The statement warned that such plans “threaten the region’s stability, risk expanding the conflict, and undermine prospects for peace and coexistence among its peoples”.
In a swift response to Trump’s comments on Tuesday, Saudi Arabia said it would not establish ties with Israel without the establishment of a Palestinian state.
This is an edited translation from our Arabic edition. To read the original article click here.
Translated by Rose Chacko
This article is taken from our Arabic sister publication, Al-Araby Al Jadeed and mirrors the source’s original editorial guidelines and reporting policies. Any requests for correction or comment will be forwarded to the original authors and editors.
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