Trump and Gaza
When is a refugee not a refugee, when they are Gazans of course
President Trump’s suggestion that the population of Gaza should leave while Gaza is turned into ‘a middle eastern Riviera’ has provoked the predictable outcry from Palestinian advocates around the world of ‘ethnic cleansing’. More interesting was the statement from the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, who said Gazans wanted to return to their homes in Gaza and rebuild ‘because this is where they belong and they love to live there’.
But hold on. According to the UN, nearly 80% of the population of Gaza are refugees. Now, I may have a wrong idea of what a refugee is, but I assume that it is somebody who ,by definition, is not living in the place that they belong. Whereas somebody who is living in the place that they belong is not a refugee. So how is it that Gazans can be both refugees and not refugees? It is because, unlike any other displaced people in the world, the residents of Gaza inherit refugee status. There are hardly any people left alive from the original population displaced during the war with Israel in 1948, yet millions of Palestinian Arabs have, under a UN mandate, the right of return to places in Israel. To maintain that the population of Gaza, and the West Bank and some in Jordan, are both refugees and not refugees at the same time can only prolong any settlement in the Middle East and bring endless strife. If it is the case that Gazans wish to stay ‘where they belong’ then they will have to do something about Hamas, because nobody is going to invest in a place run by armed terrorists.
Hamas responded to Trump by saying ‘What is required is an end to the occupation and aggression against our people, not their expulsion from their land’. This is rich from Hamas, given that there was no Israeli occupation of any kind in Gaza between 2005 and 2023, despite Hamas and other Islamists regularly rocketing southern Israel. Had Hamas not invaded Israel on 7/10 and murdered, raped and kidnapped people there would be no Israeli forces in Gaza now. Gaza has been largely destroyed and is not going to be rebuilt any time soon, while Hamas is holding sway.
President Trump’s musings on the future of Gaza after his meeting with President Netanyahu may or may not change the reality on the ground in the Middle East. There is a logic to his suggestion that Gazans go and live somewhere else while Gaza is rebuilt. But Trump sees Gaza, in the words of the former US ambassador to Israel, Dennis Ross, ‘as a real estate building problem. It’s not a political problem ‘. Unfortunately, politics trumps logic and the problem that Gaza is being run by Hamas, and that middle eastern states are not keen on importing a Jihadi influenced population cannot be wished away.