When Donald Trump proposed to relocate over a million people from Gaza while it is rebuilt, many derided it as a combination of anti-Palestinian Arab racism and Islamophobia. Others thought it just too ridiculous to take seriously. But more people are coming around to his way of thinking. Liel Leibovitz now argues that, "we must embrace this proposal, because at its heart is the one true and inescapable sentiment: Israelis can no longer be expected to live in proximity to those who desire nothing more than their death."
Gazans who don't want to fight Israelis and who have sought to leave the embattled strip of land are perhaps the world's only genuine refugees not permitted to leave a war zone, but where to send them and their bloodthirsty neighbors who live for the opportunity to kill is perhaps the biggest problem with the proposal. Those who protest the loudest about Trump's alleged "ethnic cleansing" plan are more interested in exploiting Gazans for the purpose of destroying Israel than helping them. Don't expect Spain, Norway, or Ireland to welcome any of them.
And what about Muslim and Arab nations? Are they, too, racist or "Islamophobic" for endorsing the plan? The UAE's Ambassador to the U.S., Yousef Al Otaiba, recently told an interviewer, "I don't see an alternative to what's being proposed."
The Wall Street Journal's Sadanand Dhume took up the topic in a recent column titled "If Indians and Pakistanis Can Relocate, Why Can't Gazans?" Dhume noted that "Many population transfers have taken place over the last century...Only in the Palestinian case has the refugee question festered endlessly."
In a January 26, 2025, press release, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called Trump's proposal "dangerous nonsense," invoking the ethnic cleansing trope. This is in stark contrast to the joy that CAIR executive director Nihad Awad expressed on November 24, 2023, over the October 7 attack which he likened to a jailbreak. Gaza is a "concentration camp," and its people "decided to break the siege" and "throw ... down the[ir] shackles," he enthused.
Of course, the Gazans who carried out the October 7 attack wanted out of Gaza. They wanted Israel. Now Nihad Awad wants them to stay in their "concentration camp" so that their resistance will continue.
Hamas supporters like Awad know that moving people out of Gaza will make it more difficult for Hamas to survive. Without Palestinian Arab children and Israeli hostages to use as human shields, Hamas doesn't stand a chance of surviving the IDF's efforts to eradicate it.
CAIR's press release also claims that, "the only way to achieve a just, lasting peace is to force the Israeli government to end its occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people." A peaceful Gaza that is not part of a Palestinian state contradicts the generational imperative for a "Palestine from the river to the sea" and makes the chances of a "2-state solution" more remote. CAIR would love to see Hamas rewarded for the barbaric rape-torture-infanticide October 7 pogrom with a sovereign state.
But - The main reason for opposing Trump's plan is sheer logistics. Where would the Gazans go while Gaza is being rebuilt, and which ones would be permitted to return? This is the thorniest problem because each time Palestinian Arabs have moved to a new diaspora they have caused trouble for their hosts. Throughout the Arab and Muslim world, Palestinian Araab options are limited by their past conduct. Few nations are interested in taking residents of Gaza because Palestinian Arabs have worn out their welcome wherever they have gone.
Egypt and Jordan are the two most likely destinations for Gazans relocated, either temporarily or permanently, due to propinquity and racial homogeneity. Aside from their desire to destroy and annex Israel, Gazans are ethnically, linguistically, and culturally indistinguishable from Egyptians and Jordanians. However, both nations have been down this road before.
Egypt annexed Gaza after the 1948 War of Independence, refused to allow the Arabs living there (who had not yet begun calling themselves "Palestinians") Egyptian citizenship, and has had an uneasy relationship with both the PLO and Hamas ever since. Egyptian strong man Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (whom Trump once called his "favorite dictator") has, from time to time, flooded Hamas tunnels, killing untold numbers of Gazans, because he felt threatened by their militancy. Unless it is forced into a corner, Egypt is unlikely to accept large numbers of Palestinian Arabs ever.
Likewise, Jordan knows (from bitter experience, ed.) what admitting over one million Palestinian Arabs will mean to Jordanian sovereignty.
After the 1948 War, Jordan (unlike Egypt and the other Arab nations that attacked the nascent Jewish State) admitted hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees. The 1954 Nationality Law granted Jordanian citizenship to "any person who, not being Jewish, possessed Palestinian nationality before 15 May 1948 and resides ordinarily in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on the publication date of this law."
After the 6-Day War, Israel expelled the PLO to Jordan along with some 200,000 more Palestinian Arabs. There, they began a civil war that only ended after some 70,000 Jordanians were killed, and the PLO was again expelled, this time to Lebanon, where it promptly started a civil war there.
In 1988, Jordanian citizenship was revoked from Palestinian Arabs. As Anis F. Kassim, a Jordanian lawyer put it, "more than 1.5 million Palestinians went to bed on 31 July 1988 as Jordanian citizens, and woke up on 1 August 1988 as stateless persons."
The current king of Jordan, Abdullah II, seems unwilling to accept any Gazans beyond the 2,000 "cancer children" he told Donald Trump he would admit for treatment.
What about other Arab nations? Kuwait, for one, will never accept Palestinian Arabs. Before the first Gulf War, thousands of Palestinian Arabs lived in Kuwait, working the jobs that Kuwaitis didn't want. But when Saddam Hussein invaded in 1990, Palestinian Arabs were on his side, and Kuwaitis have never forgiven them. Any Post Gulf War Kuwaiti advocacy on their behalf is motivated by hatred of Israel, not by love of Palestinian Arabs.
How about Indonesia, the country with the greatest number of Muslims in the world? "Indonesia's stance remains unequivocal: any attempts to displace or remove Gaza's residents is entirely unacceptable," the Foreign Affairs Minister said according to the Jakarta Globe.
Morocco, a signatory to the Abraham Accords, has also been mentioned as a potential destination, but it clearly does not want Palestinian Arabs living within its borders. Besides, the U.S. already recognizes Morocco's sovereignty over Western Sahara, so that carrot has already been eaten.
The most interesting and unusual choices made public are Puntland and Somaliland, two autonomous regions within Somalia.
Puntland, which declared itself autonomous in 1998 and claimed in 2023 that it would function as an independent state, could benefit from a deal to accept Palestinian Arabs. Likewise, Somaliland declared itself independent from Somalia in 1992 and operates autonomously, even though no country has recognized its independence. Accepting Palestinian Arabs might pave the way for either Puntland's or Somaliland's recognition as a separate country, but it would also leave their fledgling states vulnerable to violence and susceptible to being taken over by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, the PLO, and all the rest. It seems unlikely that either putative nation would risk achieving its goals by accepting Palestinian Arab refugees.
Thus, Palestinian Arabs are left to live with the consequences of their decisions. Their inability to destroy Israel and unwillingness to abandon their dream of victory have kept them stateless and condemned their children to a life of misery. As John Podhoretz put it, "Like the Japanese and Germans in and after World War II, they have to be broken before they can be put back together as a functioning polis."
After eight decades of militancy and refusal to accept any deal for a state that does not eliminate the state of Israel, Palestinian Arabs find themselves unwelcome throughout the world.
(Ed. note: For another idea about where Palestinian Arabs could live, see here.)
Chief IPT Political Correspondent A.J. Caschetta is a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum where he is also a Milstein fellow.
Reposted from the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)