In chilling remarks made following his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, President Donald Trump declared that the United States should seize control over Gaza, after forcibly transferring Palestinians living there to other countries – a declaration he doubled down on social media.
It was a reckless display of ignorance and arrogance that echoes the same disdain for Palestinian lives and dignity that has been the hallmark of U.S. policy in the region. And it should not be taken lightly.
As a Palestinian American who calls Gaza home, I have watched in horror for the past 16 months as Israel, under Netanyahu’s leadership, slaughtered my family members and obliterated their way of life. This unrelenting onslaught has been so devastating that many legal experts and human rights organizations have called it a plausible genocide ‒ one that has been aided and abetted by former President Joe Biden, prompting me, along with individual Palestinian and organizational plaintiffs, to sue them for complicity.
Now, Trump threatens to continue what the Biden administration started.
Trump’s plan is illegal and immoral ‒ and profoundly dangerous
Trump’s plan is not only illegal and immoral; it is deeply irresponsible and dangerous, dismissing the rights and humanity of the people in Gaza.
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It also obfuscates the underlying cause of their suffering: Israel’s more than half-century-old violent military occupation ‒ which predates Hamas’ existence by decades ‒ its brutal siege and its repeated assaults on the Gaza Strip. These actions have choked the population, denied them freedom and dignity, and destroyed their livelihoods and futures.
And it is the U.S. government, through unwavering military funding and diplomatic cover, that has allowed this to continue unchecked.
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After Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Netanyahu regime declared their intent to make Gaza unlivable by turning it into “islands of ruins” and to roll out another Nakba, which refers to the 750,000 Palestinians – more than 50% of the population in 1948 – who were expelled or fled from their homes after the creation of the state of Israel.
Israeli forces then proceeded to systematically destroy everything that sustains life in Gaza: schools, hospitals, places of worship, roads, water sources, and the vast majority of farmland and fishing fleets, leaving nothing but devastation in their wake.
This long-standing Israeli objective of maximizing control over the land while minimizing the Palestinian population has been a driving force behind Israeli policy for years. After the Hamas attack, Netanyahu encouraged his Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer to “thin” the population of Gaza, according to the Israel Hayom newspaper ‒ a chilling euphemism for forced transfer, or ethnic cleansing by any other name.
International community can’t turn its back on Gaza
On Tuesday, I joined four other Palestinian Americans in submitting a letter to the Human Rights and Special Prosecution Section of the Department of Justice, urging them to investigate Netanyahu for genocide, torture and war crimes, and to enforce the outstanding arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court against him.
Instead of facing accountability, Netanyahu was welcomed to Washington, D.C., with red-carpet treatment: $1 billion in a new weapons deal, a promised additional $8.7 billion and a commitment from the United States to fulfill what I believe is his ultimate goal: the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza.
Trump continues in Biden’s path by shielding and providing diplomatic cover for Israel ‒ setting a dangerous precedent that war criminals can operate with total impunity.
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Listening to Trump, one might think Palestinians exist in some kind of vacuum, trapped in an endless, nightmarish “Groundhog Day” from which there is no escape. But the reality is far more painful.
The majority of Palestinians in Gaza have already been violently displaced ‒ not once but multiple times. Most are refugees or the descendants of refugees who were ethnically cleansed in the 1948 Nakba from their towns and villages in the greater Gaza district of historic Palestine. They have been denied their right to return to their homes and are now threatened with renewed expulsion.
Growing up as a stateless Palestinian in Saudi Arabia, my mother worked tirelessly to maintain our Palestinian residency status by making regular visits to Gaza, safeguarding our identity status and our right to return home.
Many of our relatives were not so fortunate ‒ denied homeland after Israel’s occupation in 1967. In the same vein, my family who have survived Israel’s most recent onslaught in Gaza say they would rather die in the rubble of their homes than be forced to leave. Never did we imagine that within our lifetime, we would witness an open declaration to eradicate our society and ethnically cleanse what remains of our people.
More than 100 years after the Balfour Declaration in 1917 that established a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and decades of Palestinians struggling for their freedom and rights, we are now witnessing yet another overt act of dispossession, with Trump’s proposal to remove Palestinians from Gaza and place it under U.S. control. It’s a blatant effort to strip people of their land and sovereignty, mirroring that same colonial theft that continues till this day, but with even more audacity and disregard for the Palestinian people who have lived there for generations.
Trump’s plan must be forcefully rejected by the international community, for the sake of Palestinians in Gaza, and for what little remains of the rules-based order.
Laila El-Haddad is a Palestinian American Writer and author from Gaza.
