U.S. President Donald Trump’s bombshell proposal to take over the Gaza Strip and relocate its Palestinian inhabitants has made the forced transfer of populations – a war crime – a policy discussion, galvanizing Arab states.
While President Trump’s proposal, floated Tuesday in a joint press conference at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left Palestinians scrambling, an Arab firewall quickly emerged to reject any attempt to expel Palestinians from their land.
Jordan warned Wednesday that efforts to force displaced Palestinians into the kingdom would be considered an “act of war” done by Israel.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused on
Whatever becomes of President Donald Trump’s proposal to take over the Gaza Strip and resettle the Palestinians there, the Arab world is not on board. Many consider the plan a form of what the United Nations terms “ethnic cleansing.” Some say it could lead to war.
The Trump administration Wednesday appeared to walk back some aspects of the president’s plan, saying the relocation of Gaza Palestinians would be “temporary.” But Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the Israeli army Thursday to prepare a plan for a mass “voluntary departure of Gaza’s populations.”
Whether or not the Trump administration moves ahead, officials and observers say the proposal has normalized the forcible transfer of Palestinians – classified as “ethnic cleansing” and a “war crime” by the United Nations. And that threatens talks over the fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire and regional discussions on the rebuilding and governing of postwar Gaza.
Egypt on Thursday cautioned the mass relocation plan “provokes the return of hostilities and poses risks on the entire region.”
Yet one key pillar of Arab world resistance to pressure from the United States and Israel remains elusive: unity among Palestinian factions.
Palestinian opposition
The militant organization Hamas, which still exerts control in Gaza after 16 months of a devastating war with Israel, described the Trump plan as “a reinforcement of the law of the jungle at the international level” that would “destabilize security in the region and beyond.”
The Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank, made it clear: Any displacement outside Gaza is a red line.
“We will not accept displacement under any terms: temporary, transitionary, or ‘voluntary,’” says Omar Awadallah, the Palestinian deputy foreign minister for multilateral affairs. “There is no such thing as ‘voluntary’ relocation under bombardment and genocide, and there is nothing called ‘temporary forced displacement.’ Lessons from our own history show displacement is permanent.
“We believe that the attempt of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people is not new, and the Palestinian people will never repeat the Nakba,” Mr. Awadallah says, referring to the 1948 dislocation of 700,000 Palestinians in the first Arab-Israeli war.
Under the PA’s own proposed rebuilding plan, Gazans would be housed in temporary shelters in farming and coastal areas during reconstruction.
PA officials say that since 2.2 million Palestinians lived in small concentrated areas during the war, they are not required to leave the besieged enclave for reconstruction.
Mr. Trump’s proposal caught off guard Palestinian officials who were recently assured by his envoy, Steve Witkoff, that any American involvement in Gaza’s rebuild would be merely “technical.”
“This has severely complicated any talks about Gaza’s future, because the Trump administration has made it clear that under American policy, Gaza’s future is without the Palestinian people,” says Bassam Salhi, PLO executive committee member.
Gazans: “unimaginable” to leave
Palestinian residents say they cannot conceive of leaving their land in Gaza after surviving 16 months of bombardment, displacement, severe hunger, and an Israeli offensive that killed more than 47,000 people.
Ghada Abdulfattah/The Christian Science Monitor
“The people of Gaza find ourselves besieged by land and air, but we have a deep-rooted conviction: No one wishes to leave the Gaza Strip permanently,” says Hussam Abu Mailiq, leader of the Hasanat Abu Mailiq clan. Like many Palestinians in Gaza, members of the clan were uprooted from their lands in the creation of Israel in 1948 and driven into the strip.
“This land is our only home, and the thought of forsaking it is unimaginable,” he says.
Tawfiq al-Zarei, leader of the Zarei tribe, says Gaza Palestinians reject Mr. Trump’s “failed” and “disgraceful proposal.”
“All existing [postwar] plans seem to disregard the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people,” Mr. Zarei says. “Why transfer people outside their homeland in order to rebuild their country?”
“Gaza remains a symbol of resilience,” he says. “We have shown an extraordinary ability to adapt and survive. However, this resilience cannot thrive in isolation; it requires robust support from the Arab world.”
Arab firewall
Within hours of Mr. Trump’s announcement, Saudi Arabia put out a statement rejecting the transfer of Palestinians from their lands, reiterating its support for Palestinian statehood, and stressing its statements were “not open to interpretation.”
According to Saudi political analyst Aziz Alghashian, the kingdom increasingly sees the Palestinian cause through a “security lens.” It is alarmed that the forced relocation of Gazans would destabilize the region and threaten its own economy.
Ghada Abdulfattah/The Christian Science Monitor
“Saudi is sensing the fact that it has to play a bigger role and start leading from the front,” says Dr. Alghashian, “For this issue, Saudi is trying to galvanize a clear united diplomatic coalition.”
The fiercest opponents to Mr. Trump’s plan have been Egypt and Jordan, two countries that have peace treaties with Israel and that Mr. Trump is pressing to host displaced Gazans. Both nations see that as an existential threat.
Egypt fears an influx of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants could invite Israeli military strikes on its soil, plunging the countries into war, Egyptian officials recently told the Monitor.
In Jordan, the influx of Palestinians would upset a delicate demographic balance in which roughly 50% or more of Jordanians are of Palestinian origin, driven into the kingdom by the 1948 and 1967 wars, and 40% to 50% are members of Indigenous East Bank tribes.
Jordanians of both origins fiercely oppose the expulsion of Palestinians from their lands.
“The government, king, foreign minister, commentators, parliament, and people on the street are unanimous,” says Jawad Al-Anani, former Jordanian foreign minister and an architect of the 1994 Jordan-Israel peace treaty. “If it takes war to prevent forced migration into Jordan, they will do it.”
King Abdullah is set to meet with President Trump Feb. 11 at the White House, a visit in which, sources say, the monarch will stress to the president the impact of his proposal on the stability of Jordan and the wider region. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is expected to meet with Mr. Trump soon after.
Royal Hashemite Court/Reuters
Palestinian unity?
Palestinian politicians are urging the PA and President Mahmoud Abbas to unite other factions, now, to push back forcefully against Mr. Trump’s proposal and advance its alternative vision.
“The most important thing the Palestinian Authority should do is move quickly toward unifying Palestinians by creating a national consensus government,” says Mustafa Barghouti, head of the Palestinian National Initiative.
“What Trump is talking about is a war crime. That requires full unity of Palestinians immediately,” Mr. Barghouti says. “If people think they can save us without unity of the Palestinians, they are mistaken.”
Yet Palestinian factions remained fractured, and key questions remain unanswered.
Will Hamas allow the return of the PA as the sole governing entity in Gaza? Will Mr. Abbas widen his government to include other political factions and rivals outside his inner circle?
Some observers suggested parallels to the 1940s, when Palestinian infighting left them unprepared for the 1947 U.N. partition of Palestine and the subsequent war.
“There are no signs that the Palestinian political leadership has realized that their divisions and factionalism has helped lead us to this point,” where the forced transfer of civilians is proposed as serious policy, says Palestinian political analyst Jehad Harb. “And there are no signs yet that Palestinian leadership will finally unite.”
