Trump would turn Gaza into beachfront property

Return to the north

This past weekend, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians began their return to the north of Gaza.

These scenes of joy and endurance against unspeakable brutality are what we’ve been fighting for since the beginning of the genocide — and they symbolize the beginning of a new stage of our fight, one where the question of rebuilding is central.

“This is literally the moment I have been waiting for since the day I got displaced from Gaza City.” Journalist Hind Khoudary spoke directly into a camera, walking north on a highway by the sea. Of the thousands around her, no one seems to have more than a backpack to bring with them. At the Netzarim Corridor, people stop to pick through the rubble in search of any belongings.

The Israeli military has done everything in its power over the last 15 months to render Gaza uninhabitable, and there is no question that Palestinians are returning to a landscape of utter devastation. Nearly every home has been destroyed or badly damaged. New reports from the WHO show that only half of hospitals in Gaza are even partly operational, following more than a year of the Israeli military carrying out direct attacks on hospitals, doctors, patients, and people taking shelter nearby.

At the same time, the death toll has been quickly rising as bodies of family members and loved ones are recovered from the rubble, a trend that will only continue as more and more people return to their homes. Drop Site News reported last week that more than 40% of families in Gaza are taking care of children that are not their own — and nearly 40,000 Palestinian children have been newly orphaned since the beginning of the genocide.

Ethnic cleansing by another name

Over the weekend, Trump cited this devastation to call for Egypt and Jordan to accept huge numbers of Palestinian refugees, saying of Gaza that it’s a “demolition site right now” and that Israel should “clean out the whole thing.”

This proposal is squarely in line with what U.S. and Israeli politicians have pushed since the beginning of the genocide: for neighboring states to accept Palestinian refugees. Egypt and Jordan once again firmly rejected this plan. The Israeli government’s refusal to allow generations of Palestinian refugees stuck in neighboring countries to return, many displaced since 1948 or 1967, makes it clear that Israel remains unlikely to allow displaced Palestinians to return to Gaza once they leave.

While referencing the destruction of Gaza, what Trump also neglects to mention is that the U.S. has armed and funded this demolition every step of the way. For the last 15 months, Israeli forces, with U.S. support, have sought to depopulate Gaza by any means necessary, carpet-bombing the region and establishing indiscriminate “kill zones” in order to displace and massacre Palestinians, part of an overall strategy to ethnically cleanse Gaza and re-establish Israeli settlements in the territory.

Trump’s comments may be aimed at supporters whose votes came from a belief that he would end the genocide in Gaza. But among Trump’s very first acts as President have been to lift sanctions on violent settler organizations in the West Bank, and to re-allow U.S.-made 2,000-pound bombs to be sent to Israel. This will, of course, increase the likelihood of greater death and destruction. To top that off, Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as Israeli politicians, have been eyeing an ethnically cleansed future Gaza as potential “beachfront property.”

As Palestinians return to the north of Gaza, the conditions of life are absolutely dire. People are walking back with their tents on their backs, knowing that they will find the flattened remains of their homes.

The Nakba, the ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Palestinians in 1948 during the creation of Israel, never ended — it only took on new forms. As the rebuilding of Gaza begins, the U.S. and Israeli governments will continue to push policies that seek to remove Palestinians from Gaza, using as an excuse the humanitarian crisis of their own making.

In this moment of return, under a ceasefire that remains fragile, we must remember that our movements still have power. It’s up to us to look for every opportunity to stand in solidarity with the long tradition of Palestinians remaining on their land and demanding to return home.

Published at the website of the Jewish Voice for Peace

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