Trump idea evokes dark historical memories of ‘Nakba’
Palestinians will ‘foil such projects’ as they have done to similar plans over decade
GAZA CITY: Hamas and militant allies Islamic Jihad on Sunday reacted with fury and defiance to a plan floated by US President Donald Trump to “clean out” Gaza, where a fragile truce between Israel and Hamas aimed at permanently ending the war enters its second week.
There was no immediate reaction from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but a far-right minister welcomed Trump’s “great” idea.
Israel and Hamas accused each other of ceasefire breaches linked to the latest hostage-prisoner swap that occurred on Saturday under the truce deal that came into effect on January 19.
The swap saw four Israeli women hostages, all soldiers, and 200 Palestinian prisoners released to joyful scenes, in the second such exchange so far.
But after 15 months of war, Trump called Gaza a “demolition site” and said that he had spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about moving Palestinians out of the territory.
A history of displacement
Before and during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, some 700,000 Palestinians — a majority of the prewar population — fled or were driven from their homes in what is now Israel, an event they commemorate as the Nakba — Arabic for catastrophe.
Israel refused to allow them to return because it would have resulted in a Palestinian majority within its borders. The refugees and their descendants now number around 6 million, with large communities in Gaza, where they make up the majority of the population, as well as the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
In the 1967 Mideast war, when Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 300,000 more Palestinians fled, mostly into Jordan.
The decades-old refugee crisis has been a major driver of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and was one of the thorniest issues in peace talks that last broke down in 2009. The Palestinians claim a right of return, while Israel says they should be absorbed by surrounding Arab countries.
Many Palestinians view the latest war in Gaza, in which entire neighbourhoods have been shelled to oblivion and 90% of the population of 2.3 million have been forced from their homes, as a new Nakba. They fear that if large numbers of Palestinians leave Gaza, then they too may never return.
‘Deplorable’
Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, told AFP that Palestinians would “foil such projects” as they have done to similar plans “for displacement and alternative homelands over the decades”.
Gazans, he said, “will not accept any offers or solutions, even if their apparent intentions are good under the banner of reconstruction, as proposed by US President Trump.”
Islamic Jihad, which fought alongside Hamas in Gaza, called Trump’s idea “deplorable” and said that it encourages “war crimes and crimes against humanity by forcing our people to leave their land”.
Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who opposed the Gaza truce deal, said that Trump’s suggestion of “helping them find other places to start a better life is a great idea”.
He added: “Only out-of-the-box thinking with new solutions will bring a solution of peace and security.”
The vast majority of Gaza’s people have been displaced, often multiple times, by the Gaza war that began after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
The United Nations says close to 70 per cent of the territory’s buildings are damaged or destroyed.
Gaza war toll 47,306
Meanwhile, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Sunday the death toll from the war with Israel had reached 47,306, with numbers rising in spite of a ceasefire as new bodies are found under the rubble.
The ministry said hospitals in the Gaza Strip had received 23 bodies in the past 72 hours - 14 “recovered from under the rubble”, five who “succumbed to their injuries” from earlier in the war, and four new fatalities.
It did not specify how the new fatalities occurred.
The ministry said the war had also left 111,483 people wounded.
Some Gazans have died from wounds inflicted before the ceasefire, with the health system in the Palestinian territory largely destroyed by more than 15 months of fighting and bombardment.
The ministry again reiterated its appeal for Gazans to submit information about dead or missing people to help update its records.
The war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas was sparked by the militant group’s October 7, 2023 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
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