Trump has suggested moving Palestinians out of Gaza to Jordan and Egypt in order to “clean out” the Gaza Strip. That is what Israeli far-right Zionists have always hoped for: to rid themselves of the Palestinian problem by getting rid of Palestinians altogether!
A similar proposal was made just after October 7 by the two far-right ministers in the Israeli government. They wanted to "encourage" Gazans to “emigrate”. And what did “encourage” mean to them? Bombing and starving Gazans for 15 months, killing over 45,000 people and reducing the Gaza Strip to rubble.
According to the French daily newspaper Libération, several Israeli ministers even considered deporting Gazans to the Congo in January 2024. More recently, the Trump administration has reportedly been working on a plan to "temporarily relocate" Gazans to... Indonesia while the area is being rebuilt!
As the ruthless real estate developer he is, maybe Trump thinks he can transform the Gaza Strip into Miami Beach. This is proof of his utter contempt for Palestinians, who have been fighting for over 75 years to preserve their fundamental right to live where they were born and who have endured unimaginable suffering to be able to stay on their land.
Ethnic cleansing policies are nothing new for dominant world powers. The United States has a long history of forcing populations to move and of exterminating them, especially with the Native Americans. European powers have engaged in similar practices by enslaving and deporting Africans to the Americas and by colonizing countless peoples.
Zionism shares the same colonial logic. Israel’s war did not begin with the massacre carried out by Hamas on October 7. Nor is it a war against terrorism. If we consider what terrorism actually means, there is no denying that the Israeli state has used it on a much larger scale than Palestinian suicide bombers.
This war began more than 75 years ago—and it’s a war against all Palestinians. It’s a war aimed at pushing them out and as far away as possible. It forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into exile in 1948 and 1967, turning them into refugees and forcing them to live in camps in neighboring countries or within their own homeland in Gaza and the West Bank.
Today, Israeli leaders are debating whether to fully or partially annex the West Bank. The Israeli army is already working to that end and ever since the ceasefire came into effect in Gaza it has increased the number of its military operations in the West Bank. Last week, fierce fighting took place around Jenin, an area supposedly under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Taking the fight against armed militias as a pretext, the Israeli army killed 11 Palestinians. It is bombing and destroying homes, bulldozing roads, setting up more and more checkpoints and making more and more arrests.
As for the Israeli colonizers, they act as if they are in conquered territory. They have committed a series of crimes, forced residents to flee and expanded their colonies—all with the army’s complicity and Trump’s blessing. In fact, Trump has symbolically lifted the sanctions imposed by the Biden administration against the colonizers accused of perpetrating violence against Palestinian civilians.
Hardcore Zionists can therefore act as they please. They can count on Trump’s support and on the silent complicity of France and the European Union, which issue statements of protest while actually backing Israel’s colonial policies.
Despite the ceasefire in Gaza, Palestinians will continue to suffer. As for Israelis, oppressing and brutalizing Palestinians will not bring them security or peace. The peace in the graveyard that Netanyahu seeks to impose is no peace at all. He claimed he was going to annihilate Hamas but through his policies he has served as one of their most effective recruiting agents.
As long as there is injustice, people will be angry and there will be revolts. This is true in Palestine and everywhere else. But even if Palestinians resist with all their might and fight like they have nothing to lose, they cannot end oppression and imperialist domination alone. It is also up to us—who live in major imperialist countries—to take up the fight to overthrow capitalism. And that starts, of course, with refusing to fall in line behind our own leaders, who are complicit in this barbarity.
Nathalie Arthaud