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Letting Palestinians Leave Gaza

(JNS) Jonathan S. Tobin - President Donald Trump has suggested that both Egypt and Jordan should admit some of the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza as refugees. "Almost everything's demolished, and people are dying there. So, I'd rather get involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change." It's an inherently sensible solution both because of the devastation in Gaza and the likelihood that no matter how much aid is poured into the Strip in the coming years, most of it will be used by Hamas to prepare for the next round of fighting with Israel. The idea of giving Gaza Palestinians shelter and new lives elsewhere is the most humanitarian approach to their plight. The idea is the opposite of what the international community and the Palestinian Arabs themselves have said is acceptable. The international consensus is that the Palestinians who live there must remain in place. The belief that the Palestinian Arabs who fled their homes in 1948 must stay where they are contrasts with the treatment of every other refugee population of that era. Some 50-65 million people were displaced by wars and the partitions that accompanied the post-colonial era in Europe, Asia and Africa. There are no remaining refugees from that period who have not found homes and the chance to start new lives. But the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), established to help 700,000 Arab refugees, did not resettle Palestinian Arabs, but rather ensured that they stayed in refugee camps all these years, keeping open the theoretical possibility that they would return to their former homes. Both Egypt and Jordan are technically at peace with Israel, but Jordan's King Abdullah is in constant fear of the Palestinians conspiring to overthrow him, much as they tried to do to his father Hussein in the 1970s. Egypt, too, is deathly afraid of allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian supporters of Hamas into their country since the government believes they would join forces with the Muslim Brotherhood who seek to overthrow Egyptian President Sisi. Staying in Gaza means not only a difficult struggle for survival in a devastated, war-torn area. It also means continuing an existence in which their only purpose is to suffer and die so that the war on Israel's existence can go on. In a world where Palestinians were not committed to Israel's destruction, granting the Palestinians statehood might make sense. But we don't live in such a world. There is no way that the intransigent Palestinians will ever get a state until they find a way to move away from a national identity inextricably linked to the war to destroy Israel. In the meantime, the truly humanitarian thing to do would be to start the process of resettling Gaza civilians who want a better life elsewhere, an option they have always been denied until now. Those who consider themselves to be sympathetic to the Palestinian people ought to support that stand.
2025-01-30 00:00:00
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