Trump wants to relocate Gazans?

Not Acceptable

Some early media reports suggest that Donald Trump may want to “relocate” many, if not most, of Gaza residents during a period of reconstruction in their land. I have yet to see evidence that many Palestinians do, or would ever, support such a plan. Every historical event is different in important respects, but the suspected plan, if true, evokes images of the forced relocation of Native Americans in the 19^th century to reservations. Worse, it reminds the world of Israeli legislation that barred approximately 600,000 refugees from the 1948 War, or Israel’s War of Independence, from returning to their homes inside the new State of Israel after that war’s conclusion. Incontestably, most of the refugees had not been combatants. I derive the number from UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East. The original refugees were given what were essentially identity cards to authenticate their status and those cards are never thrown away.

I should note that it has become controversial in past decades whether the descendants of those refugees should also be classified as refugees (which is how the numbers have ballooned to six or seven million over the years), and there are credible allegations that UNRWA is in fact run by Hamas and Fateh, i.e., has been subject to what is known as “institutional capture.” There also have been substantial allegations and testimonials asserting that many if not most of the original refugees were forced to leave in the 1948 War, though it’s hard to think of any war in which civilians at risk did not flee if they could.

Nonetheless, the suspected Trump plan to relocate much of Gaza’s population during a reconstruction period will easily remind people of what happened after the 1948 War.

Sure to raise further suspicions about this alleged Trump plan is his move today, January 20, 2025, to lift sanctions on violent Jewish settlers in the West Bank who have attacked, harmed and/or killed Palestinians absent provocation. I’m not ignoring Arab attacks on Jews, but that would hardly excuse these vigilante settlers. The English-language Israeli press itself seems surprised by the move.

The proximate cause of the current Gaza War certainly was the October 7, 2023 massacre of approximately 1,250 Israelis in one day and the mass hostage-taking staged by Hamas then, irrespective of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s unhelpful remark soon after the massacre and hostage-taking that it ‘did not happen in a vacuum.’ Part of the history he was referring to may well have been Israeli occupation and backtracking on previous peace plans, but part of it is Hamas itself, which not only has vowed in the past to never recognize Israel, but ousted Fateh from Gaza because it did recognize Israel, and whose 1988 Covenant (Article 22) blames the Jews and “their money” and their “control” of banks and media for seemingly every crime in history, including not only the Russian Revolution but also the French Revolution! It’s straight out of Mein Kampf. It, too, is part of the historical context.

Hamas scored a victory on October 7, first by pulling it off, and by once again exposing the myth of Israeli invisibility, as well as by putting the Palestinian cause at the top of the international agenda. But Israel could claim a victory, too, as the world would no longer be able to turn a blind eye to what Hamas really is – no, not merely a terrorist organization, a label that has lost most of its impact and which is mocked in leftwing and Progressive circles anyway – but as an insane, theocratic fundamentalist group that is intent on establishing Shari’a in their part of Dar al-Islam in partnership with other Islamist groups in other parts of Dal al-Islam. Hamas is not a national liberation movement in the old Soviet-promoted model of the last century. Their vision is not “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” but is theocracy.

Israel snatched defeat from the jaws of its victory, however, with its campaign in Gaza over the last 16 months. The international press has rightly showed the devastation and loss of life, though it apparently refuses to accept that many of those killed were militants, or the credible claims that hospitals and schools may in fact have been used to launch attacks against Israel, itself a violation of international law.

Now, Hamas can claim another victory, at least for now – it survives, and it’s getting prisoners back. Israel’s efforts to destroy its enemy once and for all has failed, at least up to this point. A few commentators and analysts, both outside Israel and inside, early on said Netanyahu would not succeed. The only hope I can see for dismantling Hamas is for a revolution from below, that is, the people of Gaza will have to throw the maniacs out. They will have to ask themselves if the “sacrifice” that the late Yahya Al-Sinwar demanded of them, which was imposed on them, was worth it, and then find a way to overthrow Hamas and its ally, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Right now, I see the ordinary people there caught in a terrible, terrible vice.

Take a few moments to read this sober analysis of the Hamas victory, as published in The Jerusalem Post, not a particularly anti-Israel newspaper!

For the Palestinians of Gaza to finally control their own destiny, free of Israeli designs and free of insane leaders, they must remain in Gaza and help rebuild it directly. It is their home. Any idea to relocate, or export, or deport them is madness akin to … well, I can only think of ugly historical examples.