What Solution For Gaza? Why The World Seems To Prefer Genocide To Expulsion

-Analysis-

CAIRO — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear in recent weeks that his country ultimately aims for long-term security control over Gaza. That would happen after Israeli forces eliminate Hamas, in order to begin implementing Donald Trump’s plan to displace Gaza residents outside its borders.

This came after the Israeli government approved the establishment of an authority to facilitate the “voluntary” migration of Palestinians from the enclave. At his White House visit Monday, Netanyahu repeated his vision of facilitating the “voluntary” displacement of Gazans to third countries.

Of course, it’s difficult to accept the description of the migration as voluntary in the light of the renewed aggression, which has caused massive civilian losses and the blocking of humanitarian aid — including food, fuel, water and medicine — for nearly a month. This places us in front of a “displacement plan,” regardless of how the Israeli government justifies or promotes it.

None of this seems to have altered the U.S. stance, as it continues to support the Israeli government in military, diplomatic and political terms, in its current efforts to reoccupy Gaza. This position hasn’t significantly changed from that of the Democratic Joe Biden administration — except perhaps in the tonnage of bombs used in the bombardment of civilians.

The irony is that while Israeli practices aimed at compressing Gaza’s population into confined areas (ranging from land occupation to killing and starving tens of thousands) enjoy implicit or explicit American support — and only provoke verbal condemnation from Arab and European countries — the idea of displacing Palestinians outside Gaza is instead met with real resistance, even among Israel’s allies, collaborators, or those indifferent to its plans against Palestinians.

A list of “host” countries

This was reflected significantly in Trump’s own position. After making loud proclamations about relocating Gaza’s residents to Egypt and Jordan and establishing a “Middle East Riviera” there, he began to reconsider and search for third countries willing to accept Palestinians. Hence, talk began about Morocco, then Sudan, Somalia and even the internationally unrecognized Republic of Somaliland.

But Trump’s plans were firmly rejected by the governments of the countries considered as potential alternative homelands for Gaza’s Palestinians — with the exception of Somaliland, which tied its consent to such a move to international recognition. Somaliland also denied that any talks on the matter had taken place with the Americans. The same applied to far-off countries like Indonesia.

The displacement plan hasn’t received open support from any state.

Trump then back-pedaled on his plan and the expulsion rhetoric has become less prominent in U.S. administration discourse — particularly in the statements of Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who shifted his rhetoric to focus on the importance of maintaining the stability of friendly Arab regimes in Egypt and Jordan, in an effort to reassure Trump’s right-wing supporters that the previous plans posed a threat to stability.

More notably, the displacement plan hasn’t received open support from any state, including Israel’s staunchest allies.Yet this opposition has little to do with the fact that the plan violates international law — because genocide or blocking humanitarian aid are far more serious violations.

Rather, the opposition to the massive displacement plan is driven by a global moment where the movement of people — even as individual refugees, asylum seekers, or migrant workers — is heavily restricted. So the optics of relocating millions collectively would be seen as a new catastrophe of our time.

Overwhelming support

It’s not true that the dream of eliminating all Palestinians is exclusive to the so-called Israeli right. Trump’s plan was supported by about 70% of Israeli Jews. That’s not surprising, as in their view, it’s the only way to save their settler-colonial project — which is fundamentally based on removing the native population, or at least reducing their numbers enough to permanently subjugate them (as if that was possible).

This overwhelming support stems from the extreme-right fantasies, once taken over only by the fringes, being now acceptable within the mainstream right, which has governed Israel for decades—and will likely continue to do so.

Arab and Islamic countries cannot align with this plan, as doing so could make them complicit in enabling the Zionist project.

Palestinians would remain close by, just as they were in Jordan and Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s.

Even so, not everything the Zionists hope for will come to pass. Because so-called voluntary displacement — which, in fact, is forced — requires the consent of countries willing to receive those displaced. That’s something entirely unlikely for Gaza’s neighboring countries. A repeat of what happened in 1948 and 1967 — the forced displacement of millions of Palestinians under bombardment and starvation into neighboring countries — would severely destabilize the region for years to come, ultimately undermining Israel’s own security.

A bureaucratic tool

Palestinians would remain close by, just as they were in Jordan and Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s. It would also lead to chaos in Egypt and Jordan, two states that have maintained peace treaties with Israel for decades and are pillars of U.S. security arrangements in the region.

For these reasons, the displacement project will most likely be reduced to the creation of a bureaucratic tool, like the authority the government recently approved, along with increased efforts to find third countries willing to adopt the plan. Even this doesn’t seem to be going down well, because it’s difficult to find any political context that would permit it in almost any country.

If we try to guess which country might one day accept implementing the displacement plan on its soil — and after excluding “Somaliland,” whose mere mention signals that no real countries are willing to participate — we’ll find that Arab and Islamic nations that are culturally closest to Palestinians and have sympathized with their plight for decades, cannot embrace the plan, as it would expose them to the risk of helping the entirety of the Zionist project take off the ground. As for high-income countries in Europe and North America, they’ve long leaned toward blocking immigration and asylum, not to mention their entrenched animosity toward Arabs and Muslims.

The Palestinians have become merely an Israeli problem.

Thus, returning to the major paradox — support for mass killing of civilians while rejecting displacement — we find ourselves in a situation that has deprived Palestinians not only of any political horizon to resolve their cause, but also of their lives and humanity in the most recent war, after a suffocating siege nearing two years that has left 7% of Gaza’s population either dead, wounded or missing.

This situation has become tacitly accepted at an international and regional level, as if the world’s governments are saying that Israel has the right to do whatever it wants to the Palestinians as long as they remain under its control — and keep them where they are. And so, the Palestinians have become merely an Israeli problem — nothing more, but certainly nothing less.