What Trump does when he speaks of emptying Gaza

Donald Trump’s recent statements about “clearing out” Gaza and having the United States “take it over” have induced reactions of shock and outrage. However, though the idea of the US running Gaza — like one of his hotels — may sound outlandish, the notion of clearing Gaza of Palestinians resonates with a large percentage of the Israeli public and has deep roots in Zionist policy.

The language most often used by Israeli government officials and media and echoed primarily by Western mainstream media to describe the displacement of Palestinians — words like transfer, departure, resettlement or relocation — masks and normalizes the violation of fundamental international law principles. It also reinforces the Israeli narrative that Palestinians have no connection to their land and can live in any Arab or other country.

When a state leader like Trump presents an extreme idea like expelling all Palestinians — even if he eventually backs off the plan — it moves the goal post. So, maybe Israel backs off the idea of expelling the entire population of Gaza, but settlement expansion in the West Bank continues. It also makes it look like Israel is conceding and compromising, whereas the essential problems and injustice of the occupation remain — an occupation that international legal institutions, such as the International Court of Justice, said must end.

The prohibition on expulsion and population transfer had been codified into existence prior to 1948, when Palestinians were first driven out of their land, though their forced displacement also predates the outbreak of the 1948 war. Israel continues to violate these laws to the present day. 

The policy is consistent with the settler colonial framework that is the defining feature of Israel — displacing the indigenous population and seizing land to replace it with a settler population. It is not a single event, but an ongoing colonial process of erasure and elimination that dehumanizes and delegitimizes the indigenous population.

Part of the colonial process is the claim that the indigenous population is seen as incapable of self-rule. The same racist, colonial logic that led to the establishment of a British Mandate to govern Palestine in 1922 is what leads a figure like Trump to assert that the US could do a “good job” of rebuilding and running the Gaza Strip.

From the outset, central figures of the Zionist movement espoused the idea of Palestine without Palestinians. In 1940, Russian-born Yosef Weitz, who led the Jewish National Fund, wrote in his diary that “the only solution is Palestine without Arabs. There is no room here for compromises… Not one village, not one tribe should be left.” It was Weitz who, during the 1948 war, convinced Israeli military leaders to raze Palestinian homes to prevent the return of refugees.

And indeed, over 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed at the time and an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were expelled. Martial law was imposed to control and restrict the movement of some 150,000 Palestinians who had remained within the Armistice Lines (some of whom were internally displaced). The Israeli military was given orders to shoot any Palestinians seeking to return to their homes. It is estimated that nearly 5,000 Palestinian refugees — labelled “infiltrators” by Israel — were killed while trying to return to their homes.

The systems of control embedded in the occupation of Palestine persist today, creating a constant state of displacement. Palestinians often speak of the Nakba not as a single event, but as an ongoing process, reflected in their experiences of multiple displacements — whether internal displacement within the Armistice Lines, displacement following the 1967 War and Israel’s occupation, ongoing assaults on Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, or even the displacement they experience due to their statelessness and precarious legal status under host governments, as seen in their expulsion from Kuwait following Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion.

The current displacement of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is simply the latest manifestation of Israel’s same longstanding plan: to take over as much of the land with as few of the people as possible. The utter devastation of the Gaza Strip’s infrastructure — the destruction of some 70 percent of all structures, including homes, places of worship, schools, universities and hospitals — has rendered Gaza unlivable. This was intentional and part of that same plan.

Outside the Gaza Strip, Israel has deployed other mechanisms of control and subjugation in hopes of inducing Palestinian departure. Plans to “thin out” the Palestinian population in the West Bank were developed even prior to the 1967 War. The Shacham Plan, named after its author Israeli military colonel Mishael Shacham, was distributed to military units ahead of the war and implemented through the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank into Jordan, as well as the destruction of Palestinian homes in neighborhoods of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Following the war, Israel’s prolonged occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank and its policies and practices there have all created an environment that makes it increasingly difficult for Palestinians to remain. These practices include the transfer of Israel’s own civilian population — the settlers — into the West Bank and the confiscation of land for the building of settlements, the exploitation of natural resources for the benefit of settlers at the expense of Palestinians, the demolition of Palestinian homes, restrictions on their residence and movement, the failure to prevent or adequately punish settler violence against Palestinians, and the imposition of military law on Palestinians, which routinely results in their arrests and detention.

A fundamental tenet of international law governing occupation — including belligerent occupation — is that occupation is a temporary situation during which the occupying power is meant to preserve, to the extent possible, the status quo that existed at the beginning of the occupation. Consequently, all the policies and practices Israel introduced — demographic, geographic and political — violate international law.

These policies and practices entrench Israel’s control of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and have been designed to remain in place indefinitely and become irreversible. In effect, they make the annexation of the West Bank illegal under international law — a foregone conclusion.

This is something international legal scholars and practitioners have stated for decades. More recently, the ICJ reaffirmed it in an advisory opinion issued on 19 July 2024, which significantly addressed not only the illegality of certain Israeli practices as an occupying power but the illegality of the occupation per se. The court tells us that the occupation itself is illegal because it amounts to annexation and violates Palestinians’ right to self-determination. The ICJ unequivocally states that Israel is not entitled to sovereignty over, nor to exercise sovereign powers in, any part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Although the ICJ decision was issued during the current war on Gaza, it responded to legal questions submitted in 2022, before the war. The legal principles asserted in the court’s advisory opinion reaffirm Palestinians’ right to self-determination and their right to be governed by leaders of their choosing. This can only come about through negotiations and a political process that acknowledges this truth, not through continued violence, ethnic cleansing or the expulsion of Palestinians.

Among the rights that must be recognized is the right of return — a right to which every refugee is entitled, and Palestinians are no exception. The Palestinian right to return is not only underscored by UN General Assembly Resolution 194 but also is rooted in several fields of international law. The expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza only compounds the violation of this right, for which Palestinians have been struggling since 1948.  

For the past 16 months, the Israeli government has waged unrelenting violence against Palestinians in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, to the point that any reprieve is celebrated while the underlying issues remain unresolved. Israel’s disregard for the ICJ ruling, ongoing violations of international law, and the failure of the US and other states to hold it accountable undermine the credibility of these institutions and the entire international legal framework, normalizing egregious human rights and humanitarian law violations with grave repercussions for us all.