Athens, Greece – Palestinians in the diaspora who were uprooted in previous crises fear they will witness the largest forced displacement of their lives.
“They are telling us to go to the south (of Gaza),” Salma Shawwa said, referring to Israel’s order for 1.5 million Palestinians living in the northern Gaza Strip to move towards the south last month.
“So slowly, slowly, we will go towards the border and then towards Sinai? Is this the solution? So Gaza will disappear too? And then (the Israelis) will go to the West Bank and Jerusalem, so we will all be gone?
Israel ordered the evacuation, saying it was trying to minimize civilian casualties as it launched a ground war against Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people.
But after telling Palestinians to leave their homes, Israel bombed sites in the south, including areas it had declared safe.
Since Israel declared war on Hamas, it has killed more than 14,100 Palestinians in Gaza, the densely populated enclave ruled by the Palestinian armed group.
Shawwa, whose father, grandfather and great-grandfather all served as mayors of Gaza, is not sure the evacuated Palestinians will ever be allowed to return.
His sister, who still lives in Gaza with her family, had to leave because her house was damaged by the bombings.
“My sister is not sure if they can go home. Some of them tried and were bombed,” Shawwa said.
Shawwa arrived in Athens in 2000 and now works for the Athens Bar Association.
Others have been here longer, in a community of about 13,000 residents.
Razan Simaan’s parents were forced to leave Palestine during the Nakba, or catastrophe, as it is called, of 1948.
Between 1947 and 1949, Palestinians were dispossessed and displaced during the creation of Israel, with Zionist paramilitaries forcibly evicting 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. Around 15,000 Palestinians were killed, including in several massacres.
Simaan was born in Beirut. His family moved to Athens during the First Lebanese Civil War.
The Hamas attack is not a surprise, she said.
“There’s nothing new happening, it’s just a lot more amplified,” Simaan said. “We’re a little shocked that this isn’t clearer to the rest of the world. For us, injustice is something we are born with and raised with.
Israel’s Western allies – the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union – have labeled Hamas a “terrorist organization.”
“Hamas doesn’t matter,” Simaan said. “Hamas would not exist without the occupation. This is a direct consequence of Israel.
Other Palestinians agree with her.
“Anyone who is under occupation has the right to use whatever means necessary to be free,” said Latif Darwish, professor of economics and crisis management at Cardiff Metropolitan University.
“Hamas simply launched a military attack, which the Palestinians are victims of every day. It was not a crime,” Darwish said.
Like many Palestinians here, Darwish believed that the Israelis knew the attack was coming and let it happen in order to invade Gaza.
He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently held up a map showing all of Palestine as sovereign Israeli territory at the United Nations General Assembly.
“There was a plan to eliminate Gaza or the population of Gaza. They were looking for an excuse,” said Ahmed Hassan, president of the Palestinian Association.
He highlighted reports that Egyptian intelligence informed the Israelis of an imminent attack on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War.
“Maybe (the Israeli government) welcomed this attack without realizing what the consequences would be,” Hassan suggested.
Palestinians who spoke to Tel Aviv Tribune believed there was still hope for Palestinian self-determination and peace with Israel, but were unsure what the formula should be.
“We don’t hate like Israelis… We don’t see Israelis as a different race. We even call them our cousins because we are similar,” Shawwa said.
She remembers sitting with her mother, an elected representative to the Palestinian Legislative Council, the legislative body formed under the Oslo Accords in 1996. The accords promised an eventual Palestinian state, and Shawwa saw Palestinians govern themselves— even in a time of hope.
“It was a truly democratic debate,” she remembers. “Even though Hamas did not officially enter, many of its members were there. There were members of Islamist leanings and Fatah, as well as other factions… There was something really special about that. »
She believes the Palestinians can recapture that shining moment, when they came so close to independence, but even she doesn’t believe the Oslo Accords can be revived.
“The two-state solution is dead. It’s too late for that,” she said.
She also did not believe in the possibility of a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation, which her grandfather had once proposed. Nor did she think the Israelis would be likely to invite the Palestinians into a unified state encompassing the West Bank and Gaza.
Darwish agreed that for such a “South African scenario” to occur, “Israel must feel in danger, that it will lose everything if it does not make any concessions.” And Hassan didn’t even think it was desirable. “Even the 1.5 million Palestinians (who are Israeli citizens) are third-class citizens,” he said.
So what is the solution? US President Joe Biden has said he remains committed to a two-state solution.
“Gaza and the West Bank should be brought together under a single governance structure… as we all work toward a two-state solution,” he wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece.
“What I know is that people really want peace,” Shawwa said. “We couldn’t communicate that to Israel. That’s the major problem.”
Darwish acknowledged that peace was the unifying factor.
“I would go back tomorrow, with all my children,” he said. “Tomorrow.”