Call it what it is — forced displacement, not relocation

There is a popular reality show on UK television called “A New Life in the Sun,” in which professionals help people who long to escape the gray British weather to find a home and a job, or even start a business, in sunnier climes.
Many of the participants find happiness when they move. But this is not the kind of relocation US President Donald Trump is offering the Palestinians of Gaza. We should call his suggested plan to permanently “relocate” more than 2 million Gazans what it really is — forced displacement.
It is ethnic cleansing. It would only add yet another tier of suffering to a people who, even before Oct. 7, faced extreme hardship and since then have experienced a living hell, including repeated displacements within the Gaza Strip. Furthermore, such a move would be bound to have a destabilizing effect on the entire region.
Even by Trump’s standards, his joint press conference this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was extraordinary. He delivered one bombshell after another as he “clarified” his comments from a few days earlier about relocating the people of Gaza to Egypt and Jordan.
His suggestion that the US would take over the territory and transform it into a “Riviera of the Middle East,” after permanently pushing its Palestinian residents into neighboring countries, left many people in the region, and far beyond, speechless or enraged.
The word “relocation” suggests that the people who undertake such a change either initiated the move to a new place or at least gave their consent; it does not accurately describe a move forced upon them and also upon their designated host countries.
Regarding the prospect of compliance by these host countries, Trump told reporters: “They’re going to do it. We do a lot for them and they’re going to do it.”
The immediate reactions of these countries to his plan, from indignation to outright rejection, was only to be expected.
Trump’s suggestion that his plan is intended to be a permanent arrangement is effectively a version of the most extreme ideas of the ultra-right-wing settler movement in Israel. It would serve only to motivate the most militant forces within Palestinian society, who would need no further proof that the US and Israel were conspiring to quash their political aspirations and human rights, including the right to self-determination.
This proposed forced displacement is immoral, politically damaging and, furthermore, forbidden under international law. Article 49 of the Geneva Convention clearly states: “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”
When those who support this plan continue to use the words “voluntary departure,” they know full well that throughout history, transfers of populations have been moves forced upon millions of people and are never carried out to protect those pushed out of their homes and communities. The transfers simply serve the political interests of stronger powers.
The cheering from the sidelines by far-right Israeli proponents of this proposed ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people is unsurprising, and sad evidence of their moral degradation as they proclaim their wish to do precisely the same thing in the West Bank, establishing Jewish supremacy over all land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea. 

What the inhabitants of Gaza need is an urgent plan for reconstruction, not their marching orders.

Yossi Mekelberg

Worse still, it also reflects the outcome most Israelis would like to see, according to a survey by the Jewish People Policy Institute, which found that about 80 percent of the Jewish population in Israel supports the idea that “Arabs from Gaza should relocate to another country,” with 30 percent of them saying it was “not practical but desirable.”
In other words, if Trump could make it happen, they would not see any immorality in uprooting people from their own land. It also means that deep down, they do not believe that a peace based on a two-state solution, not to mention coexistence and reconciliation, is possible or even desirable. Disturbingly, even centrist parties that previously declared their support for a two state-solution also welcomed Trump’s half-baked ideas.
The response from the region was diametrically opposed to Trump’s proposal. Arab foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the UAE, the Palestinian Authority, and the Arab League, who met in Cairo last Saturday following Trump’s initial comments about his plans for Gaza, made it clear that they object to any talk about the transfer of Palestinians from their land, under any circumstances.
In a joint statement, the ministers and officials rightly warned that such a move would threaten regional stability, spread conflict, and undermine prospects for peace. Jordan, which has been extremely generous in accepting refugees, firstly Palestinians displaced by the 1948 and 1967 wars, and then Iraqis and Syrians when their countries experienced wars and political turmoil, cannot afford to receive any additional refugees without putting intolerable pressure on its resources, which would have adverse political implications both at home and further afield. The same is true of Egypt.
And then there is the fact that if either of these countries did agree to accept forcibly displaced Palestinians, it would implicate them in a process that crushed the prospects of Palestinian statehood.
There is something else that those who suggest Palestinians should be forced out of Gaza fail to grasp, most probably on purpose: this conflict is a political one. It is a political struggle by the Palestinians to be free in their own independent country, consisting of part of the former Mandatory Palestine.
One of the key concepts of the Palestinian resistance to occupation is that of “steadfastness” or “perseverance” in their struggle to remain in their homeland despite extreme adversity.
They have practiced and lived by this principle since the 1948 Nakba, or catastrophe. What Trump has put on the table is a new Nakba. Moreover, in all the discussion about it there has no mention of including the Palestinian leadership, let alone the Palestinian people. This is because there is not a single Palestinian leader who would even engage in such a conversation, much less accept it.
It is not far from the truth to say that Gaza in its present state is hardly habitable or governable. But what its inhabitants need is an urgent plan for reconstruction, not their marching orders.

• Yossi Mekelberg is a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House.
X: @YMekelberg