No to relocation of Palestinians from Gaza

Fresh from his inauguration as the 47th President of the United States of America, President Donald Trump said the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip should be relocated from the area to Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab countries in the region.

Trump made the suggestion during a media briefing in the White House along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was on a visit to the United States of America. In his statement, President Trump said, “The US would take over the Gaza Strip. We will 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…”

Trump’s statement, coming as it did after the recent ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, both of whom have been at war for the past 15 months, came as a surprise to many world leaders, especially those in the Middle East, who outrightly condemned and rejected such plans.

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The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, issued a statement strongly rejecting the proposal by President Trump warning “We will not allow the rights of our people to be infringed on.” Abbas further stated that “Gaza was an integral part of the State of Palestine” and that any attempt at forced displacement of the Palestinian people from Gaza would constitute a serious violation of international law.

The idea was also rejected by Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and even allies of the United States. The United Nation’s Secretary General António Guterres, wading into the issue, said the rights of Palestinians to live as human beings in their own land was getting further out of reach. The world has witnessed “….a chilling, systematic dehumanisation and demonisation of an entire people,” he said.

To put the issue in proper perspective, President Trump’s statement, which was his first pronouncement on the Middle East, came to many as an anti-climax. While the world was welcoming the recent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas with a deep sigh of relief, Trump’s statement put a dampener on expectations and efforts of parties that had strenuously worked to bring about the momentous development. What Trump’s statement meant in real terms is that the 2.1 million Palestinian residents of Gaza who had been streaming into Northern Gaza from the Southern part of the strip would have to endure another painful trauma, this time of a forcible relocation from their ancestral lands.

We believe that President Trump’s plan is objectionable for several cogent reasons.

It is a violation of international law, which prohibits the forcible relocation of people from their lands to areas that are alien to them. Secondly, it also violates the Two States Resolution of the United Nations, which granted a state each for Israelis and Palestinians existing side by side. Thirdly, Trump’s plan is a contradiction of history. The world has not forgotten that the United States of America, along with its allies championed the desire of Jews to relocate from Europe and settle in their ancestral land, where they met the Palestinians who had been living there uninterruptedly for centuries.

The question then is why will the Palestinians be forcibly relocated from the land their forefathers have been living on as proposed by Trump? Was the war against Hamas by Israel deliberately provoked to achieve this aim?

We recall that before the commencement of the bombardment and eventual destruction of Gaza, there were calls by extremists in Israel for the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) to destroy the entire Gaza Strip, making it uninhabitable for the Palestinian residents in order to make way for an Israeli takeover of the land. President Trump’s statement, which fits and supports that intent, indicates that this had been long in planning and that the war on Hamas had provided an opportunity for implementation.

Daily Trust joins the world in strongly condemning this sinister plan of America and Israel. It is not only a clear example of ethnic cleansing; it degrades the time-honoured principle of human co-existence. Throughout its 70-year existence, Israel has repeatedly denied the Palestinians their right to live as decent members of the human race.

The Palestinians have had their lands seized and denied the right of return. They have been caged in tight overpopulated areas with little or no access to basic rights, facilities and infrastructure enjoyed by other members of the human race. Denied a state of their own, they have been turned into refugees, with Gaza being termed quite rightly as the largest open prison in the world.

To seek to forcibly relocate the Palestinians from Gaza, as President Trump is proposing, will be the ultimate straw in the inhumanity meted out to the Palestinians and the world cannot stand by and watch this happening to an already traumatised people.

Accordingly, we strongly suggest that rather than embark on this course of action that will likely result in another war in the area, we call on America and the countries of the Middle East to strengthen the ceasefire and proceed vigorously with the original plan of massive reconstruction and rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip so that its Palestinian inhabitants will enjoy the peace that had eluded them for the past 15 months.