US President Donald Trump launched alarms this month when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House, he said that the United States “would take control of the Gaza Strip and reinstall the Palestinians in other countries.
Trump has supervised the expulsion of the Palestinian population of the strip – left unrecognizable by Israeli bombings – as an act of humanitarian necessity, citing the threat of unploded ammunition and unstable structures.
Palestinians should be able to live in “beautiful houses”, Trump added. Just not in Gaza herself.
But the Palestinians say that the promise of new developments in foreign countries bypassing the request at the center of their aspirations: the right to live with dignity and equality of rights in their historical homeland.
“My first reaction was disbelief. That a president would call to move two million people from their own country, “said Leila Giries, a Palestinian who lives in California.
For the Girries and other Palestinians, the call for expulsion invokes painful memories of dispossession and exile.
Gies herself is a survivor of the events that Palestinians call NAKBA, which means “disaster”.
The term refers to the forced expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians by Zionist paramilitaries during the Israel Foundation in 1948. Residents of many Palestinian cities and villages were prohibited from returning, considered as “infiltrators” by the newly founded Israeli State.
Gies keeps a bag that his mother transported by fleeing their village of Ayn Karim framed on the wall of his Californian residence, as well as a key to their house in historic Palestine which was demolished after their expulsion.
The elements are symbols of both the pain of exile and its determination to maintain links with its homeland.
“I left Palestine at the age of eight, but I cannot forget it. This is where my parents and my grandparents come from. I am connected to the earth, ”said Gies.
“When I see the photos of crowds of displaced people walking on the road in Gaza, it breaks my heart. He brings back memories, memories, memories. »»
“The Palestinians will not disappear and will not die”
After a fierce reaction from the Palestinians, rights defending rights and a coalition of country leaders such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, Trump attenuated his position by declaring that he would only “suggest” the adoption of his plan.
The American president had previously insisted that he “owns” Gaza, declaring that his place by the sea could transform it into an ideal place for high -end real estate.
This week, Trump even shared a bizarre video generated by AI on social networks showing Gaza filled with skyscrapers and luxury stations, with him and Netanyahu relaxing next to a swimming pool.
Particularly absent was the sign of the Palestinians who called Gaza at home for generations.
“Only a fool would think that it is possible to clean Gaza of the Palestinians so that you can build a real estate project,” explains Michael Kardoush, who fled his home in Nazareth after he was under Israeli control in 1948. The Palestinians inside Israeli territory lived under martial law without rights before 1966.
“The reality is that the Palestinians will not disappear and will not die.”
But Israeli leaders and civil servants have continued to promote Trump’s vision, seeing an opportunity to advance a long -standing ambition to depopulate the band.
In a statement last week, Netanyahu said that Israel was “engaged in the plan of the American president Trump for the creation of a different Gaza”, which he previously praised as “revolutionary”.
But Muhammad Shehada, a researcher invited to the European Council for Foreign Relations who grew up in Gaza, told Tel Aviv Tribune that Israeli and American efforts to force the Palestinians out of their land had been a coherent characteristic of the modern history of Gaza.
“When Israel resumed Gaza in 1967, one of the first things he did was to destroy the refugee camps to try to make people leave. They even offered money, foreign passports and shuttles to try to make people do it, “he said.
When such incitations would not work, he said that Israel has tried more coercive methods, fatal military raids to a blockade of several years which created disastrous living conditions in Gaza even before the last war.
“They tried every tip of the book,” said Shehada.
But he added that these efforts have rarely been successful and have often faced a strong opposition from the Palestinians, who see attempts to keep them away from the band as part of a greater effort to cancel their national claims.
Shehada stressed that in 1953, a plan to reinstall 12,000 Palestinians from Gaza to Egyptian Sinai was interrupted after a popular revolt in the strip.
Earth attachment
Even during the most recent 15 -month military campaign in Israel in Gaza, unprecedented for its destructiveness and human toll, many Palestinians remained firmly attached to their place in the place in Gaza.
Arwa Shurrab, a 58 -year -old woman who was born in Gaza but who now lives in southern California, says that family members who continued to live in the band refused to leave until they feel that they had little choice.
“I was trying to convince my sister to go to Egypt where it would be safe, but she said that she would only leave if a building in which she stayed was bombed,” said Shurrab.
She explained that her sister and family were moved several times during the war. They finally decided to leave when a tent where they stayed was bombed. Fortunately, they were not inside at the time.
“She is a pediatrician and wanted to stay in Gaza and help her people. For that, she lost everything, ”added Shurrab.
Even if the Israel’s bombing campaign was interrupted under a ceasefire tennu last month, many Palestinians in Gaza remain in precarious circumstances. The military assault has reduced many districts in rubble.
During the war, the Israeli forces were accused of deliberately destroying houses, agricultural land and infrastructure for medical care, water and electricity, in order to make the Palestinians impossible to return home after the end of the fighting.
But many residents of Gaza say they are determined to find a path to follow.
“The Palestinians are very linked to the earth. Everyone I know who left want to go back. This is to know if, not when, ”said Shurrab.
“Trump’s comments did not affect me at all. I do not take it seriously because I know my family and I know the people of Gaza. They will not be uprooted from their land, ”she added. “Thus, Trump can say what he wants, but that doesn’t.”
