The Arab World Wants To Force Gazans To Stay--Isn't That Also A Violation Of International Law? (Daled Amos) ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

The Arab World Wants To Force Gazans To Stay--Isn't That Also A Violation Of International Law? (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

The Associated Press cheerfully reports that the Egyptian plan for Gaza is moving right along:

Egypt is developing a plan to rebuild Gaza without forcing Palestinians out in a counter to President Donald Trump's proposal to depopulate the territory so the U.S. can take it over.

Egypt's state-run Al-Ahram newspaper said the proposal calls for establishing "secure areas," equipped with mobile houses and shelters, within Gaza, where Palestinians can live initially while Egyptian and international construction firms remove and rehabilitate infrastructure.

Ever since Trump first announced his idea of permanently removing all Palestinian Arabs from Gaza, the media has been attacking his plan as a major violation of international law. The New York Times pulled out all of the stops when it condemned Trump's idea:

The forced deportation or transfer of a civilian population is a violation of international humanitarian law, a war crime and a crime against humanity.

Even so, the article admits that Trump's plan can be salvaged by allowing the Gazans to return at some point. That would allow for "the strongest legal defense of his plan: It is legal under the laws of war to temporarily evacuate civilians for their own safety."

Actually, the insistence on the automatic illegality of forced displacement is being overstated. Forced displacement is not by definition a violation of international law. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR):

Forced displacement is often, but not always, unlawful. While international law provides numerous safeguards against forced displacement, there may be circumstances in which it can serve a legitimate purpose. Even in such cases, however, it must meet certain minimum safeguards and take place in conditions of safety and dignity.

This is followed by a note indicating that not only can forced displacement be legal--preventing people from leaving their country can be just as much a violation of international law:

Limiting a person's freedom to leave their country also violates international law.

And the New York Times will be the first to admit that Gaza is not safe for its inhabitants:

Even with a cease-fire in place, Gaza remains extremely dangerous to civilians because of unexploded bombs, many of them hidden beneath rubble or underground, as well as catastrophic damage to civilian necessities like shelter, water, and power.

This right to leave the territory is also enshrined within the Geneva Convention:

But wait. Do Palestinian Arabs really want to leave Gaza?

According to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research:

24% of the public say they want to emigrate due to political, security, and economic conditions. The percentage in the Gaza Strip stands at 32% and in the West Bank at 19%. Three months ago, 20% of West Bankers expressed a desire to emigrate and 30% of Gazans expressed the same desire.

This was in March 2023, before the Hamas massacre and the beginning of the war. The number of Gazans who want to emigrate has likely increased since then. Also, this number may undercount how many Gazans want to leave. After all, how many Palestinians would openly admit that they want to leave?

More than that, Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch suggests other reasons why even more Gazans want to emigrate:

Facing years of life in tents and rubble, breathing dust and hearing endless construction noise, the number wanting to leave today, especially among the youth who desire to start a life and build a future, will be far above 50%.

The Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD), published a September 2024 survey that indeed showed that the number of Gazans who wanted to leave Gaza had gone up to just short of 50%.

Marcus points out that whatever that number is, once the opportunity to leave Gaza presents itself, even more Palestinian Arabs will want to emigrate:

Once people start leaving, those left behind will feel jealous of those already out of the Gaza hell. Once those who are resettled start sending messages about their new lives and pictures of their new homes, the floodgates will open.

Yet despite the desire of half of Gazans to leave, not only does Egypt, and the rest of the Arab world, insist on their staying, they claim--as do the international law experts quoted in the media--that they all have only the best interests of Gaza at heart while Trump is ignoring international law.

Natasha Hausdorff, a British barrister and expert in international law exposes this farce in a recent interview:

Trump has, perhaps uniquely exhibited a humanitarian concern for those Palestinians that have otherwise been trapped in Gaza as a result of the international community's decision to say, uniquely, Palestinians may not be permitted to leave a war zone and that has been a really extraordinary state of affairs over the last year and a half...A change by this American Administration does, I think project some form of hope to those Palestinians who have been so neglected and abused not just by the terrorist proxies of this Iranian regime but also seemingly by the complicity of the international community. [at 5:40 of the interview]

The Arab world has shown they will go to any length to keep Palestinian Arabs trapped in the Gazan war zone. The international community needs to take the initiative that Trump has started and find homes for the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza. And the media, which shows pictures of Gaza in ruins, needs to face up to the implications of those images for the future of Gazans.