Jerusalem Figures Respond to President Trump’s Plan to Ethnically Cleanse the Gaza Strip

In a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on February 4, 2024, US President Trump stunned the world with a radical proposal for Gaza: The “1.8 million” Palestinians in Gaza “should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts.” Once they are magically transported out, “The US will take over the Gaza Strip [with the possible support of US troops] and we will do a job with it too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out. Create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area . . . do a real job, do something different.”1

The New York real estate tycoon then claimed the US could turn the enclave into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”2

Later he added: “I have a feeling that the king in Jordan and that the general president—but that the general in Egypt [President Sisi] will open their hearts and will give us the kind of land that we need to get this done [meaning that they will take in all Palestinians from Gaza], and people can live in harmony and in peace.”3

The Palestinians of Gaza, thus, would no longer be around to benefit from the massive transformation, but, according to Trump, “I envision a world—people living there, the world’s people. I think you’ll make that into an international, unbelievable place. I think the potential in the Gaza Strip is unbelievable. And I think the entire world, representatives from all over the world will be there.”4 When asked, he allowed that Palestinians might live there too, but implicit in his statement is that first they would need to be forcibly deported to other countries during the 15 or more years of reconstruction. And history tells us that once they are outside Palestine, ways will be found to ban them from returning. Or, if they are allowed, their status would be as residents returning to a fait accompli at the mercy of the US, not sovereign owners of Gaza, which is their right under international law.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Trump elaborated a bit more explicitly on his plan during his meeting with Netanyahu in the Oval Office the same day. He said he believed Jordan and Egypt “won’t tell [him] no” when asked to welcome Palestinians from Gaza. “They won’t tell me no. I want to remove all the residents of Gaza,” he responded. “It will happen.” He added that “he did not believe Gazans would ever want to return once a new home is provided, but that he would like to see an agreement to ‘resettle people permanently in nice homes and where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed.’”5

Jerusalem Story spoke with a number of Palestinians in Jerusalem to assess what they think of Trump’s proposal.

It is painful, sad, and regrettable that the head of a great country issues statements such as the one issued by President Trump when he received the Israeli prime minister.

Trump described the destruction of Gaza as if it was exposed to an earthquake on a scale of 10 Richter, or that the Mediterranean Sea flooded Gaza and drowned it.

He repeated that Gaza is unlivable and called on Jordan and Egypt to shelter its inhabitants. He did not address in his speech who destroyed Gaza, who annihilated its inhabitants, who abandoned its owners, and the source of the destructive weapons that destroyed, killed and killed children, women, and the elderly.

The statement by the President of the United States of America, the “leader” of democracy and human rights, to displace the population of Gaza.

It is an invitation to ethnic cleansing, and incitement to commit another war crime that will be recorded in the name of the current US administration, on top of the crimes committed against the people of Gaza from the American support for all kinds of destructive weapons that were the cause of the destruction of Gaza, and on top of the political crimes by using the veto right for any UN resolution to stop the war and stop the genocide that the people of Gaza have been and are being subjected to.

Donald Trump's statements advocating for the mass expulsion of Gaza's population are not only unrealistic but also deeply troubling from a legal and moral standpoint. Forcibly deporting civilians from occupied territories is a war crime under international law. When such actions are carried out systematically or on a large scale, they constitute crimes against humanity. By endorsing such policies, Trump risks shifting the United States from a position of complicity in Israeli actions that have been criticized as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, to that of a direct enabler or perpetrator. If he does not retract this stance, he could face personal accountability for these grave violations under international law.

I am surprised that the world has found Trump’s remarks odd. They are seen as odd only because we have short memories. The idea of deporting Palestinians from their lands is synonymous with the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. It is central to Zionist ideology, which views Palestine as a land with no people for a people with no land. Zionism is predicated on the idea of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from their homeland. As such, pro-Zionist schemes and plans to deport and ethnically cleanse Palestinians, or more diplomatically resettle them, have not stopped being proposed since the 1930s. They faded away from international discourse as a result of the momentum generated by the two-state solution idea during the past 30 years, but they never faded away. So, in reality, Trump did not come with anything new or was not thinking outside the box, but rather reiterated an idea circulated 50 years ago and proven to be a non-solution.

Commenting on the description of Trump’s remarks as creative, in being creative, and thinking outside the box, one cannot be doing so when he or she ignores basic laws of nature. There is a word for one who does so, and that is “insanity” or “madness.” In international politics, those basic laws are UN charters, human rights principles and conventions, the right of self-determination, the inadmissibility of the acquisition of others’ lands by force, the definition of the transfer of people from their homelands as ethnic cleansing and the designation of such ethnic cleanings as a war crime, and many others. Would someone dare tell Trump that his remarks were madness!

Many have attributed Trump’s remarks to the businessman and real estate developer’s mentality. I see that as the bully’s mentality. He views himself as the leader of the strongest and richest country in the world and acts accordingly. He does not understand that power has its limitations. Unfortunately, so far no one has stood up against him, so he continues to act as if he can go on doing whatever he likes. I believe the Palestinians will, and I hope the world does as well.

In his remarks, Trump has not served Israel. He may have made Israelis hear what they like to hear, and he may have opened the appetite of the religious Zionist right and gave some credibility to what it advocates, but this will not end the conflict. Trump’s remarks are a prescription for more bloodshed and loss of life for Israelis and others in the region, and even Americans if they put their boots on the ground in Gaza.

In fact, moving forward with these hallucinations is a prescription for a wider conflict in the entire Middle East. Palestinians will not accept the exacerbation of their Nakba, and if they are forced to, the world will witness a renewed wave of unrest and international “terrorism” similar to the Munich Olympics and plane hijackings in the 1970s.

If there is one positive thing to be taken from Trump’s remarks, it is renewed belief in the two-state solution. It is the only solution that can preserve the rights and dignities of the two peoples and save lives.

Trump is dealing with the Palestinians of Gaza as if they had infiltrated from a foreign place. They are known and protected by international law and enjoy rights, the most important of which is the right of return. As for Gaza, there are more than half a million experienced workers who can, if the materials are available, rebuild Gaza within two years. Trump is trying to make a mockery of international law and facilitate the issue of displacement and annexation. I believe that the people of Gaza are more aware than to let such tricks pass them by and will foil these plans. At the same time, we have several internal problems, namely, the positions of the Palestinian leadership in Gaza and the leaders in Ramallah. They need to work together and prioritize the issue of national unity, which is a basic element in protecting our Palestinian people.

[Trump’s] statements are rejected totally. They destroyed Gaza and the destruction was done by the Israeli occupiers supported by the US administration. Now they want the people of Gaza to leave their homes and towns where they have always lived. This is unacceptable and rejected by the Palestinian people in Gaza, the majority of which are refugees from their homes and villages during the 1948 Nakba.

Let me suggest that instead of forcing Palestinians to leave for other countries, the solution that is acceptable to all Palestinians is to let them return to their homes and towns where they were forced to leave back in 1948. Neither Trump nor Netanyahu have the right to cancel Palestinians’ right of return. Until then, the Palestinians are staying in Gaza.

Trump’s statements regarding the deportation of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip violate the most important principles of international law. The foundation of humanitarian justice are contrary to logic and the racism of the imperialist white man. The evidence is clear that the United States is a tool in the hands of Israel and the Zionist lobby.

The Israeli prime minister has an arrest warrant issued [in his name] by the highest judicial body in the world—the International Criminal Court—for his responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

Trump, with his usual arrogance and arrogance, gives him a gift, which only a few on the Israeli extreme right have dared to speak out about so far.

Instead of punishing the perpetrator responsible for the destruction of Gaza, Trump wants to punish the victims by displacing them from their homeland. The victims of the Israeli aggression are mostly refugees who were displaced from their homeland in 1948, and their only possible destination is to return to their displaced homes, which are now inside Israel.

Trump’s statements are unfortunate; I will not say that they are shocking, because they are expected, given our experience with him during his first term and the twisted logic behind the “Deal of the Century.”

On the positive side, I hope that his statements will be a golden opportunity for the whole world to wake up from its deep slumber to confront this fundamental danger to everything. The world has built a global spirit that secures and preserves human rights, human dignity, and global partnership in preserving a world that is consistent with the shared values of dignity, peace, the right to self-determination, and prosperity. Trump’s statements mean the absolute collapse of any civilizational logic and a return to the law of the jungle supported by antihuman forces.

If Trump and Netanyahu succeed in implementing this plan without resistance from Egypt and Jordan, this would be very unfortunate, because the world, not just the Palestinians, will continue to submit to the forces of evil and money, not caring about the fates of the people or realizing that what happened to the Palestinians could happen to them. I hope that the world will wake up and that a global front will be formed to defend logic, values, and justice. Resistance is now more urgent than ever, and the Palestinian situation is the global moral standard. Either the world rises up or surrenders to this madness.

For three decades, Israel’s siege has meticulously engineered a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, methodically dismantling its economy, infrastructure, and livability. After 16 months of genocide, the conditions have been set for external actors to propose so-called solutions that amount to ethnic cleansing under the guise of humanitarian relief. The logical course of action, under these conditions, is not the repeated forced displacement of Palestinians but rather their return to their original homes, towns, and villages inside what is now the State of Israel. Any alternative would legitimize and reward a long-standing Israeli policy of genocide and demographic engineering aimed at erasing Palestinian national identity.

It is clear that President Trump was a useful tool for Netanyahu during the latter’s visit to him in the White House. His statement regarding the displacement of the people of Gaza was a reward for what Netanyahu provided to Trump’s election campaign by not stopping the aggression on Gaza during the period of former US president Biden. This contributed to the fall of the Democratic Party’s candidate, as it appeared before the world that the one who stopped the war was Trump.

Trump knows that his statement about Gaza was hot air and does not advance or delay [anything] and that the displacement of the people of Gaza is difficult to achieve.

It is clear that President Trump is not sufficiently aware of the extent of the Palestinians’ attachment to their land, their rights, and their history of struggle over the last 100 years for liberation and independence. Perhaps his somewhat strange statements for a man in his position, and his proposal to displace two million people from their land, are an opportunity for the world, and not just the Arab and Islamic world, to hear what it needs to hear about international law, the system of international legislation and agreements, and UN resolutions, so that he may wake up a little from his colonial imperialist world and come down to earth from his ivory tower. Trump is a strong and decisive person, but he and his team are misled and brainwashed in everything related to Israel and the Middle East.

It is too early to assess the status of the Palestinian issue after Donald Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States.

Trump has priorities for his domestic and foreign policy, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict may be at the bottom of his list of priorities, so he is primarily concerned with extinguishing the fire of the conflict and freezing everything related to it until he is surrounded by everything he needs to follow up to impose a solution to the conflict. Of course, Lebanon and Syria are included in his vision for the solution.

Netanyahu will not be able to deceive him again with his methods that have become exposed to Trump himself. Netanyahu will find himself more isolated than before, and he and his government will fall before any solution.

Implementing the first phase of the ceasefire agreement and the US commitment to implementing the terms of the ceasefire by completing the complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip will pave the way for forcing the Israeli government without Netanyahu to enter the political process to find a sustainable peaceful solution in the Middle East.

What is important is the unity of the position of the Arab countries on implementing the Arab peace plan and reviving it again, which constitutes a basic factor for the US administration and with it the international community to achieve a just and peaceful solution to the Palestinian issue and end the conflict.

I am not sure if this project is viable or not, but there will be no reconstruction in Gaza under these conditions, which will lead to voluntary migration of the population. Some have declared Gaza a disaster area without proposing a solution; can they propose solutions after they have thrown Gaza and its residents into the eye of the storm?

The proposal is obnoxious, to say the least. It’s also a storm in a teacup and will never happen. How’s he proposing to depopulate two million people to countries that clearly state that such a move is against their national security? The icing on the cake is that after reconstruction, the people of the world can live in Gaza. Seriously, Orange man?

Gaza is an integral part of the future Palestinian state. The people of Gaza are our people and an integral part of the Palestinian people who want their freedom, independence, and dignified living.

We were hoping to hear from Trump about how he plans to end the occupation and stabilize the Palestinian Arab people on their land in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem.

I hope that the international community will rebuild Gaza and the Palestinian Authority areas to prepare them for freedom. Just as America supported the war, today it must support the Palestinian people to stand firm on their land in Palestine and realize their legitimate hopes according to international legitimacy.