War crimes are being normalized as Trump gives green light to ethnic cleansing
Under the headline “The Demon of Ethnic Cleansing Has Been Let Out of the Bottle in Israel” Haaretz editor-in-chief Aluf Benn wrote on Feb. 9 that “Trump has released from the bottle the secret wishes of many Jews in Israel, who do not believe in the prospects of living alongside Arabs on the same strip of land….As one of the leaders of the Zionist left told me years ago: ‘In our hearts, we are all Kahane.’”
The virulently racist Rabbi Meir Kahane was the Brooklyn-born founder of the brutal Jewish Defense League in the US - which the FBI labeled a terrorist organization - and its Israeli offspring, the Kach party (later called Kahane Chai) which was at one stage banned in Israel and put on the US terrorist list, only to be removed in 2022. Kahane, who was elected to the Knesset in 1984, maintained that “Western democracy as we know it is incompatible with Zionism,” and repeatedly advocated the “transfer” of Palestinians out of Israel and the takeover by Israel of Gaza, the entire West Bank and parts of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.
Now, with Israel showing no sign of leaving Syria (where it is building outposts and has occupied 14 Syrian villages) and Lebanon (which is still subjected to Israeli air strikes), with Israel emptying refugee camps in the north of the West Bank and with the Israeli far right celebrating Trump’s plan for the US to “own Gaza”and transfer out its population in order to turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” there appears to be – in Aluf Benn’s words – “a clear trend indicating the fulfillment of the legacy of Rabbi Meir Kahane.”
Trump has doubled down on his plan to take over the Gaza Strip and remove its population since he introduced it at a Feb. 4th press conference with Netanyahu at his side. The plan, which was denounced internationally as the potential war crime of ethnic cleansing, and rebuffed by what Trump sees as the two leading destinations for expelled Palestinians, Egypt and Jordan, reportedly took his closest advisors by surprise and even dismayed some Republicans. A few Democrats immediately condemned it. In words posted on X, Senator Ed Markey called it “illegal, immoral, and indefensible. It would forcibly displace Gazans, violate international law, inflame tensions in the region, endanger the current Israel-Hamas ceasefire, and embroil the US in yet another overseas conflict, all while enriching his real estate developer friends and family.”
In subsequent days, while poll results in Israel showed that 80 percent supported his plan but polls in the US indicated that American voters overwhelmingly opposed it, Trump appeared to shrug off the Feb. 9th “categorical rejection” of the transfer of Palestinians expressed by Saudi Arabia, which he had hoped to induce to join the Abraham Accords. Undeterred, Trump stated in a Feb. 10 Fox News interview that Palestinians would not be able to return to Gaza and wouldn’t want to anyway, “because they’re going to have much better housing….In the meantime I would own this. Think of it as a real estate development for the future.”
The next day, in a tense meeting with Jordanian King Abdullah II, Trump declared that “with the U.S. being in control of that fairly large piece of land, you’ll have stability in the Middle East for the very first time and the Palestinians and people in Gaza will be living beautifully in another location….We're not gonna have to buy Gaza. There's nothing to buy. We will have Gaza .... It's a war-torn area that we're going to take and hold and cherish and get it going eventually. Lots of jobs to be created for people in the Middle East. It can be a diamond, a tremendous asset…”.
No mention was made of the natural gas field off Gaza’s shores and of the elaborate Israeli plan to rebuild Gaza with a coalition of Arab countries including Saudi Arabia and create an industrial port in Gaza for the export of Saudi oil. Rather, emboldened by Trump and seemingly no longer interested in normalization with Saudi Arabia which is insisting that Israel agree on a path to a Palestinian state, Netanyahu suggested that “the Saudis can create a Palestinian state in Saudi Arabia; they have a lot of land over there.”
At his meeting with Trump the King of Jordan would only commit to taking in 2,000 wounded children. He later added that the priority of Arab states would be rebuilding Gaza “without displacing the Palestinians and addressing the dire humanitarian situation.” The King was harshly criticized in the Arab world for not being more forceful when he met the US President. But given Jordan’s dependence on the $1.5 billion in aid from the US which is now suspended, along with all foreign aid apart from that given Israel and Egypt, it is unclear if it can long resist Trump’s arm-twisting.
Egypt, which was castigated by Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the US, for building up its forces in the Sinai Peninsula to block the forced displacement of Palestinians, has said it is working on a reconstruction plan with other Arab states which would involve the Palestinian Authority. In the effort to make it an ‘acceptable’ partner and get aid flowing again, the PA agreed on Feb. 10 to a long-standing US demand that it end its system of paying stipends to the families of Palestinian prisoners. Germany, France, the UK and Italy are reportedly working with Arab countries to present Trump with an alternative plan for the reconstruction – estimated to cost some $30 billion – and governance of Gaza. But it is unlikely to be of immediate interest to an Israeli government which now has Trump’s backing for the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip.
In the last two weeks, the fragile ceasefire has gone from crisis to crisis, with Trump warning that “all hell is going to break out” if all the hostages were not released by Feb. 15 and Israel and Hamas subsequently agreeing on the release of only three hostages as stipulated by the first phase of the ceasefire agreement. Hamas had threatened on Feb. 10 to withhold their release because of Israel’s ceasefire violations, including its killing of at least 26 people, its 29 military incursions, its failure to allow in the number of aid-bearing trucks, tents and mobile homes stipulated by the agreement, and its barring of heavy equipment needed to clear rubble. Hamas’ report on Israel’s ceasefire violations can be read here.
On Feb. 15, the sixth exchange of three Israeli hostages for 369 Palestinian prisoners took place without a hitch. The Israelis were not as emaciated as those released on Feb. 8, whose appearance sparked an outrage that ignored the famine conditions to which Gaza had been subjected and Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners, which was denounced by the Red Cross. Most of the Palestinian prisoners -- many of whom had been swept up by Israel during the war -- were sent to the Gaza Strip, and several others, including those with life sentences, are being exiled to Egypt.
Israel has still not allowed foreign journalists to enter the Gaza Strip where the death toll compiled by the Ministry of Health had reached 48,189 by Feb. 9 as mass graves were being discovered. The bodies of more than 14,000 of the missing have yet to be found. On Feb. 16, three Palestinian police officers were assassinated by a drone as they secured aid convoys near Rafah. Trump’s closure of USAID which had provided funds for humanitarian aid, the crippling of UNRWA and the delay in the delivery of tents and other forms of temporary housing that could give some protection from the freezing rain drenching the Strip might push up the death rate in the days ahead, whether or not the fragile ceasefire is maintained. Negotiations for Phase 2 of the agreement have yet to get underway and the Israeli far right is urging the agreement to be scuttled and the war to be resumed.
Meanwhile in the West Bank, at least 44 Palestinians had been killed by Feb. 14 – more in subsequent days - in Israel’s ‘Operation Iron Wall’ invasion of northern refugee camps that began on Jan. 21. UNRWA reported on Feb. 10 that some 40,000 Palestinian refugees had been forcibly displaced from their homes in Jenin, Nur Shams, Tulkarm and El Far’a in Tubas. In the nearby town of Tammoun, ten Palestinians were killed in an airstrike on Jan. 30. On Feb. 9, soldiers shot at a car in which a couple were trying to flee Nur Shams camp, critically injuring the husband. When his wife - who was eight months pregnant - tried to leave the car she was killed along with her fetus. One woman who fled her Tulkarem home barefoot carrying two young children reported being told by soldiers when she tried to re-enter her house to retrieve heart medication that she should “leave this place and forget the camp. You will never return. Move now before we destroy it completely.” As in Gaza, expelled residents have sought refuge in schools, wedding halls and the homes of relatives.
In its press release, issued from Amman because of the closure of its East Jerusalem headquarters, UNRWA wrote that “under the Knesset laws implemented on 30 January, UNRWA no longer has any contact with the Israeli authorities, making it impossible to raise concerns about civilian suffering or the urgent need for the delivery of humanitarian assistance.” It stated that “the use of air strikes, armored bulldozers, controlled detonations, and advanced weaponry by the Israeli Forces has become commonplace – a spillover of the war in Gaza.” Replicating the “fire belt” strategy used to demolish entire Gaza neighborhoods, the army wired with explosives 20 apartment buildings in the Jenin refugee camp and blew them up. It is now building military installations in largely empty camps. Israel has declared that its ‘Operation Iron Wall’ campaign will be extended to the entire West Bank, a move seen as Netanyahu’s gift to ethnic cleansing proponent Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s settler Finance Minister, for not bringing down his government when Israel signed onto the ceasefire agreement. Stop the Wall activist Jamal Juma’a believesIsrael is “aiming to prepare the infrastructure for the annexation of land.”
Elsewhere in the West Bank settlers appear newly energized by Trump’s lifting sanctions that Biden had imposed on 33 individuals and groups responsible for violence against Palestinians. They have not just been staging near-daily attacks on the 60 percent of the West Bank classified as ‘Area C’ under Oslo with no PA presence, but have been forcibly displacing Palestinian Bedouin from rural land in ‘Area B’ where the PA is supposed to maintain civilian control. The relentless West Bank repression has received scant international attention, with the exception of the arrest on Feb. 9 of the owners of East Jerusalem’s Educational Bookshop by Israeli police who “took every book with a Palestinian flag on it” including a child’s coloring book entitled “From the River to the Sea,” according to the owners’ relative.
Can the “demon of ethnic cleansing” be stopped from emptying the Gaza Strip, a process Smotrich has said he hopes will start in a few days, and erasing Palestine? Can the resumption of the war be prevented? Invoking international law appears unlikely to deter either Israel, which just followed the US in ending its participation in the UN Human Rights Council, or the Trump administration, which on Feb. 6 leveled sanctions against the International Criminal Court.
Trump, who bypassed the Congressional review process when he announced an additional $7 billion weapons package for Israel, is showing little interest in either abandoning his plan or ensuring that Phase 2 of the ceasefire agreement unfolds in early March. There is some push back in Congress, where, on Feb. 10, a group of 10 Democratic Senators sponsored S.Res.68 affirming the right of Palestinians “to self-determination and their own independent state” and opposing Trump’s plan to take over Gaza and “forcibly relocate its people,” while 145 House Democrats signed a Feb. 13 letter to the President calling his plan “morally indefensible” and a violation of the Geneva Convention. On the same day, an ad in the New York Times signed by more than 350 rabbis strongly condemned the Trump plan. And, for what it’s worth, public attitudes are shifting. A recent Economist/YouGov poll indicates that 35 percent of Democrats now sympathize more with Palestinians and only 9 percent sympathize more with Israelis.
Palestinians may not be able to rely on the Arab world for much support, despite regional alarm about the instability that forced expulsion will unleash. But the steadfast attachment to the land they have demonstrated over the past 77 years suggests a resilience and staying power which could well trump efforts to remove them.
Nancy Murray, Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine