"This is our homeland," said one Gaza City resident. "Neither I, my children, nor my grandchildren will ever leave it."
Trump and Netanyahu on February 4, 2025 - public domain image
By Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams
Palestinians reacted with derision and defiance to U.S. President Donald Trump's Tuesday call for the ethnic cleansing and American takeover of the Gaza Strip.
Speaking alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a fugitive from the International Criminal Court—at the White House in Washington, D.C., Trump said the U.S. will "take over" the strip.
"We'll own it," he said, adding that U.S. developers will "level it out" and build the "Riviera of the Middle East" after Palestinians—"all of them"—leave Palestine's coastal enclave. Asked if his plan involved sending U.S. troops to Gaza, Trump replied, "If it's necessary, we'll do that."
Forced removal of people by an occupying power is a war crime according to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, under which Israel's apartheid settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are also illegal. Leaders of Egypt and Jordan, where Trump has proposed sending Gazans, vehemently oppose the plan.
While far-right figures in the United States and Israel—which would not exist in its current form without the ethnic cleansing of around 1 million Palestinians in 1947-48 and 1967—were thrilled by Trump's comments, Palestinians decried what one forcibly displaced Gaza City resident called the Republican's "delusional" plan.
"We will not allow the rights of our people, for which we have struggled for decades, to be infringed upon," Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement. "These calls represent a serious violation of international law, and peace and stability in the region will not be achieved without the establishment of the Palestinian state."
Abbas added that Gaza "is an integral part of the Palestinian land" and that "the legitimate Palestinian rights are non-negotiable."
Hamas—which governs Gaza despite the 15-month Israeli bombardment, invasion, and siege that obliterated the strip and killed tens of thousands of its people—blasted Trump's proposal as "a crime against humanity and a reinforcement of the law of the jungle at the international level."
Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters that Trump's plan is "ridiculous and absurd," warning that "any ideas of this kind are capable of igniting the region."
Um Tamer Jamal, a 65-year-old mother of six from Gaza, told Reuters that "we will not leave our areas."
"We have brought our kids up teaching them that they can't leave their home and they can't allow a second Nakba," she added, referring to the 1947-48 expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians—sometimes via massacres, death march, and other acts of ethnic cleansing—to make way for Jewish settlement in the new state of Israel.
Reuters also interviewed Samir Abu Basel, a 40-year-old father of five in Gaza City, who said that "Trump can go to hell, with his ideas, with his money, and with his beliefs. We are going nowhere. We are not some of his assets."
Nizar Noman, a 64-year-old Gaza City resident still waiting to return to what's left of his home, told Middle East Eye that "President Trump is delusional to think that the people of Gaza can leave, even if it is a mess as he described."
"He now cares about the people in Gaza and thinks about our future?" he asked. "Where was he when we were being killed by Israeli missiles funded by American taxes?"
"As I belong to my homeland, my homeland belongs to me," Noman added. "I regret the day I left my house and went to the south. I now prefer to die under the rubble of my home than leave it again, even for another city in Palestine. This is our homeland. Neither I, my children, nor my grandchildren will ever leave it."
Zaid Ali, a 42-year-old northern Gaza resident, told Middle East Eye: "My family and I have been steadfast in northern Gaza. We never even thought about leaving."
Ali said he and his five brothers could not convince their 85-year-old father to flee Gaza, even after Israeli airstrikes killed three of his grandchildren.
"He witnessed the Nakba and left his home once as a child when they were forcibly displaced from Haifa," Ali explained. "He would never repeat his father's mistake... For him, Trump's words are a joke."
Diaspora Palestinians also condemned Trump's proposal.
The Westland, Michigan-based American Federation of Ramallah Palestine—one of the oldest Palestinian American advocacy groups—said in a statement that "President Trump's suggestion to ethnically cleanse Gaza is not only unacceptable and criminal, but also morally bankrupt, contemptible, and repugnant."
"We should aspire for peace, equality, and humanity, rather than this mere suggestion of displacing an already traumatized community" the group added. "It reveals the moral depravity of our country's leadership."
Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
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