Juan Cole
Ann Arbor
(Informed Comment) – First, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his
cabinet proposed ethnically cleansing Gaza of its Palestinian inhabitants in
the fall of 2023, following many years of such calls from the Israeli
equivalent of neo-Nazis.
Then last year
Joe Biden and Antony Blinken, dissatisfied with merely enabling an ongoing
Israeli genocide, picked up the ethnic cleansing project from the Israeli
extreme Right and ran with it, pressing it on Egypt’s strongman Abdelfattah
al-Sisi, who firmly told them to drop dead.
Then on Sunday
President Trump said, “I’d like Egypt to take people, and I’d like Jordan to
take people. You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we
just clean out that whole thing. It is literally a demolition site right now,
almost everything is demolished and people are dying there.” He said they could
be moved “temporarily or could be long term.”
Not that Trump
or anyone else in Washington, D.C., now cares, but the Fourth Geneva Convention
of 1949, article 49, reads: “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as
deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of
the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are
prohibited, regardless of their motive.” The same language was adopted into the
Rome Statute that came into force in 2002 and underpins the International
Criminal Court, so for Trump to follow through on his threat (that’s what it
was) would open him to indictment as a war criminal. Sanctioning the judges
won’t stop such an indictment, and indeed, would form the basis for a further
grave charge against him.
The thing that I
have never understood is why the Israeli far right even thinks this ethnic
cleansing project would be a solution to anything.
Let us say that
the people of Gaza were expelled to Jordan. It is a country of 11.5 million,
about 7.7 million of them citizens (about 69%). The over 3 million others are
Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian refugees without Jordanian citizenship.
Jordan’s Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) is only $53.57 billion, and its unemployment rate is 21%
(Great Depression levels). Its nominal GDP per capita is a little over $4,000 a
year per person, making it quite poor. It ranks 119th in the world on this measure.
People in Fiji and Guatemala are richer.
The political
elite of Jordan are the East Bank natives, who are loyal to the Hashemite
monarchy of King Abdullah II. They make up half the citizen population. The
other half of citizens are Palestinian refugees driven out of Palestine by
Zionist militias in 1948 or by the Israeli army in 1967. Although they were
granted citizenship on the whole, not all Palestinians were. And although they
are citizens they typically are very poor and have sometimes had contentious
relations with the king. In 1970-71 the East Bankers and the Palestinians
fought a Civil War.
Jordan is a
police state and so it is not easy to know what people actually think about
their government, though all the indications are that they have low levels of
trust in governmental institutions.
Jordanians are
on the whole absolutely furious about Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, and last
spring they surrounded the Israeli embassy. If public opinion counted for
anything in the country, Amman would rescind its peace treaty with Israel and
unrecognize it. Unlike Americans and Israelis, remember, Jordanians have seen
the war unfold daily on their televisions and smartphones and it would have
made anyone angry and upset to see the mangled bodies of 17,000 children.
So if you dumped
2.2 million Palestinians from Gaza into Jordan, there would be no jobs for
them. The unemployment rate is already 21%. They would be raw and angry, likely
not very happy about the Jordanian army silently looking on while they were
genocided. They’d join 3.4 million Palestinian-Jordanian citizens and tens of
thousands more Palestinian refugee non-citizens, who are among the poorest
segments of the population.
So why wouldn’t
there be another Black September, another Jordanian-Palestinian Civil War? And
this time, who knows if the monarchy could survive?
If Jordan’s
government were overthrown by Muslim fundamentalists, they’d have every reason
to seek a union with Syria, also now ruled by fundamentalists, taking us back
to before WW I when the European victors carved up the Ottoman Levant into
Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. There could once again be a Greater
Syria.
A Sunni
fundamentalist state of over 35 million people, in close alliance with
economically, scientifically and militarily advanced Turkey, could emerge as a
major regional power. Over time it might even pick up Sunni Iraq, as ISIL did
2014-2017. And then it might get petroleum and emerge as an economically
substantial regional power..
The displaced
Hamas leaders could reemerge as cabinet ministers alongside HTS figures in
Damascus, and would this time have a national army at their disposal.
So tell me, how
would moving Palestinians to Jordan and destabilizing it and potentially the
entire Levant be good for Israel or the United States?
Remember that
Netanyahu also instructed the Bush administration to invade and occupy Iraq,
promising paradise if they did so, and what we got was Shiite militias and
ISIL, forcing the Pentagon into another 3-year campaign in the teens. The
entire region is unstable and massive population movements would not help
stabilize it, to say the least.
As for
actually-existing Jordanians, all their branches of government angrily pushed
back against Trump. Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said, “As His Majesty has
repeatedly made clear, such proposals are categorically unacceptable. We say no
to displacement and no to compromising Palestinian rights.”
There is a final
consideration, of how much like Stalin’s USSR Trump really wants America to be.
I wrote in late 2023:
This blatant
project of ethnic cleansing recalls the ways in which the dictators of the
1930s and 1940s moved around entire ethnic groups. Stalin displaced the Soviet
Koreans to Uzbekistan or Siberia. I met some of their descendants in Tashkent
in the mid-1990s. The exile of the Crimean Tartars is recognized by Ukraine as
a war crime. Hundreds of thousands died in these paroxysms of ethnic cleansing.
Hitler ethnically cleansed millions, as well, and at the end of the war there
were 11 million displaced persons in Europe, 8 million in Germany.
Salman
Abu Sitta
The
war waged against the Palestinian people is the longest and most sustained in
recent history. For over a hundred years, since the Balfour Declaration, a war
of death and destruction has been waged against the Palestinian people in
Palestine and wherever they reside, raining death and destruction on them.
The
myth of Palestine as “a land without a people” in the 19th century has been
converted into a Zionist plan of action to make it so; a ruined land with its
people dead or expelled.
Since
the creation of the Zionist colonial project of establishing Israel on the
ruins of Palestine in 1948, I witnessed, indeed endured in my lifetime, three
historical stations worthy of contemplation. The first station is 1948 (Al
Nakba). The second station is 1967 (Al Naksa), the year of the Israeli invasion
of Arab lands, known as the Six-Day War of 1967
and the third station is the present Genocide of 2023-2025.
These
can be measured by three parameters: the area of the conquered territory, the
number of killed or displaced people, and the level of destruction of their
landscape.
Al-Nakba
In
Al-Nakba of 1948, the Haganah, the forerunner of the Israeli army, invaded and
conquered 20,500 km2 (including 1,400 km2 obtained through the British Mandate
collusion). This territory was 78% of Palestine. In the course of ten months,
120,000 Israeli soldiers in 9 brigades carried out 31 military operations and
attacked and depopulated 530 cities and villages. Their population, now 9
million people, are refugees living in exile since. Their landscape: houses,
structures, and historical features were totally destroyed. On the three
parameters, Israel – then just declared – scored full marks. Palestine became a
land without a people.
On
May 14, 1948, Israeli soldiers attacked and destroyed my village Al Ma’in, and
expelled my family. I became a refugee and have been one since. On the same
day, David Ben-Gurion declared the settlers’ state of Israel in Tel Aviv.
What
was the world’s reaction? The Arab world was shocked at the impotence of its
armies and the inaction of their leaders. In the following decade, between 1950
– 1960, two Arab leaders were assassinated, one was dethroned, two kingdoms
were converted to republics, and one changed rulers several times.
The
UN passed the famous Resolution 194, which calls for the refugees’ return, and
established UNRWA for their relief. The Western world was totally oblivious to
the plight of Palestinians, stripped of their historical patrimony by East
Europeans who arrived at their shores in smugglers’ ships.
Al-Naksa
In
the second historical station, the 1967 war, Israel occupied huge areas of Arab
lands: the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), the Gaza Strip, the Sinai, the
Golan Heights, and later, South Lebanon. The total area was some 68,000 km2 —
or more than three times the area of the newly declared state of Israel.
In
the early morning of June 5, 1967, I took the plane from Beirut to London. On
arrival, I learned that it was the last plane to leave Beirut airport. I
learned that Israel had waged an all-out war on several Arab countries. In the
London hotel, I was in a daze. I saw the news of the fall of Jerusalem,
al-Khalil (Hebron), Nablus, and Gaza. In the previous 19 years, we dreamed of
going in the opposite direction, returning to Jaffa and Haifa and hundreds of
villages. What was more devastating was the joy, the glee, the delighted crowds
in the streets under my window celebrating our dashed hopes of freedom and
branding us as the villains.
The
human casualty was measurable: several hundred Egyptian soldiers laid in rows
and were run over by Israeli tanks and 300,000 Palestinian refugees crossed the
River Jordan and became refugees for a second time, now in Jordan.
The
destruction included ripping up Egyptian railway lines to Palestine and other
Egyptian installations in Sinai. Of the three parameters, the area conquered
was by far the largest.
The
world reaction was mute.
The
(Western) world approved the Israeli attack as justified, but voted for UN
Resolution 242, which called on Israel to withdraw from (all) occupied
territory.
However,
Israel gained unprecedented victory. Egypt opted out of the war against Israel
by signing a peace treaty with it in 1979. Sadat, who signed it, was
assassinated. Jordan did, too, by renouncing its rule over the West Bank. Both
countries recognized Israel, indicating that the land neighboring their borders
is not Palestinian, but Israeli.
That
was the height of Israeli victory; a reward for its attacks, occupation, and
massacres.
At
that same moment, a dormant element in the equation, the absent party, was
awakened. The Palestinian resistance movement was recognized in the form of the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Palestine Parliament, or the
Palestine National Council (PNC). In 1974, Arafat, as PLO leader, spoke at the
UN.
The
1967 war was the embodiment of the Israeli claim to legitimacy, the West’s
plain collusion with it, the failure of the Arab rulers, and the rise of the
Palestinian role in defending themselves.
Of
the three parameters, Israel conquered the largest territory, killed a number
of people, and caused little permanent damage. It was a victory for foot
soldiers.
The
Gaza genocide
The
third historical date, 2023- 2025, is still with us. It has new features and
new dimensions.
Of
its three parameters, the devastation and the scale of destruction are
unprecedented, even compared with WWII. The Gaza Strip, where 2.3 million
Palestinians, most of them refugees, lived in 365 km2 (1.3% of Palestine), has
become a literal pile of rubble. The human loss of life is unprecedented. An
estimated 200,000 have been killed and injured, but the true number is not yet
known. Still, that would equate to 35 million Americans on a U.S. scale. But in
the course of 15 months, Israel gained no new territory. This is a remarkable
departure from previous historical records and even a reversal of previous
precedents.
The
same, to a lesser degree, was seen on the Lebanon and Syria fronts: maximum
destruction, massive loss of life, and little gained territory.
Why
is this?
The
last Israeli war was a war conducted online: through F35 cockpits or by drones
sent by a click on computer boards in air-conditioned rooms. The Israeli foot
soldier is largely absent. There were no boots on the ground.
That
was for a reason. Video clips from Gaza showed Israelis moving only in tanks
with F35s above. When soldiers ventured out, they were shot down by Palestinian
snipers, killing some, while others ran away. We have seen social media videos
of Israeli soldiers dragged to the Gaza front. The myth of the invincible
Israeli army has been shattered, while the blood of slain women and children
has forever erased the myth of “the most moral army” in the world.
The
Gaza genocide took unusual dimensions beyond the mass murder of civilians: it
is the torture of the living. Israel starved the children, denying them water,
milk, and food, and inflicted attacks causing the amputation of the limbs of
thousands of children. Their families lived in torn tents in the mud under the
rain. Israel killed or humiliated doctors by parading them naked and
imprisoning them. Israel destroyed all the structures supporting life in Gaza.
Then
comes Trump’s call for yet another ethnic cleansing of Gaza, a seal of approval
for the incomplete genocide of Gaza.
But
it is the world’s reaction that has been among the most surprising and most
welcome after the recent genocide.
As
a child during al-Nakba, I can hardly recall anybody in the world knowing about
us. The Western world was busy celebrating the victory of the righteous few
over the savage many, who denied them “the right to recover their
2,000-year-old home.”
During
the 1967 war and after, the hostility in the West against us was no less than
the Israeli massacres on the ground. It took Edward Said more than ten years to
get recognition for his book, Orientalism, which described Western prejudice.
Today,
social media has broken all barriers. Young people in over 150 universities
spoke the truth long concealed. The young people are the first to expose
hypocrisy by shouting, “The Emperor has no clothes!” Streets in world cities,
even in Western countries, are filled with weekly demonstrations against the
Israeli genocide.
The
UN issued one resolution after another during this period. The ICC and ICJ
issued unprecedented judgments against Israeli war criminals.
But
the Israeli society in occupied Palestine in 1948 and 1967 is still oblivious
to the real world. They still want Gaza and its people to be eliminated, with
the dream of building beach houses on Gaza’s shores. Trump’s daydream of
emptying Gaza and dumping its people in Egypt and Jordan, at the behest of his
son-in-law Jared Kushner, echoes the
same desire. It qualifies him to be presented at the Hague for war crime
intent.
However,
many Jews in the West changed their mind. They saw the ugliness of Israeli
crimes and spoke about it. They gathered courage in increasing numbers to
denounce Israel and Zionism. The whole world now sees Israel exposed as it is:
a criminal colonial project.
Can
this flood of support for Palestine across the world overcome the residual
blind support for Israel in the United States, the UK, and Germany? Time will
tell.
The
lesson Israel refuses to learn
The
glee and joy shared among the absolute majority of Israelis at the death and
destruction in Gaza and the calls for more are sure signs of a sick Israeli
society that is dangerous to the world. Indeed, these dimensions of Israeli
crimes will be an indelible mark in Jewish history, superseding any in their
past.
But
also, the sight of tens of thousands of Palestinians pushed to the south of
Gaza now trying to return to the north after the ceasefire, carrying their
belongings on their backs, waiting for the news of the release of one hostage,
to return to the rubble in the north which was their home, will also be
indelible in the Zionist records.
The
lesson that the war criminals have never learned is the resilience of the
Palestinian people. The innocent lives we have lost and our daily suffering
beyond description are the price we have paid, and are paying, for a singular
aim we have maintained for 76 years: the Right to Return home. This return home
includes even returning to a previous refuge in a refugee camp on the soil of
Palestine, if not yet to the historical home in Palestine before 1948.
This
lesson is incomprehensible to the war criminals, but this calling is the fuel
to the survival of the Palestinians. For Palestinians, the Right of Return is
and will always be the issue.
I
recall a letter sent by a Quaker relief agent in Gaza as early as October 12,
1949, to his office in Philadelphia. He wrote:
“Above all else, they
desire to go home—back to their lands. This desire naturally continues to be
the strongest demand they make; sixteen months of exile has not diminished it.
Without it, they would have nothing for which to live. It is expressed in many
ways and forms every day. “Why keep us alive” — is one expression of it. It is
as genuine and deep as a man’s longing for his home can be.”
This
remains the same 76 years later today.
The
inevitably of Return
A
reviewer of Palestine’s history will come to the conclusion that the Right of
Return must be inevitably implemented and the Palestinians shall return home.
This right is sacred to any Palestinian, legal in every line of international
law, and feasible when implemented. In the studies we made over the years, in
figures and maps, we showed it is feasible with minimum displacement of
peaceful Jews. The study showed that 88% of Israeli Jews live in 7% of Israel
or 1400 km2. The rest is held by the kibbutzim to prevent the return of the
refugees and mainly by the Israeli army. When Zionism is abolished, most
refugees can return home to their emptied land.
This
case is more striking in Gaza. Gaza refugees were expelled from 247 villages in
the southern half of Palestine by scores of massacres. They live in Gaza
concentration camps at a density of 8,000 persons per km2. When north Gaza was
pushed by Israel to the south, the density became 20,000 persons/km2, a hell on
earth.
Only
150,000 settlers live on their land in the kibbutzim at a density of 7 persons
per km2. Some of those were taken hostage on October 7.
These
comparative figures shake the foundation of any justice.
So,
will Return be achieved?
The
struggle of the Palestinians will no doubt continue. The popular world support
will continue but may fade unless solidified in organizations. The colonial
West will continue to feed bombs, money, and political support to Israel.
But
the worst present enemy of Palestinians lies in an unexpected corner: the Arab
rulers. Not only have they recently failed Palestinians on every occasion, but
they frequently acted with Israel against them and against the wish of their
own people.
My
prediction is that, just like after 1948, the Arab people will respond
accordingly in their countries.
At
our doorstep, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has acted plainly as a Palestinian
quisling, a plain agent of the enemy. It is not surprising that the West and
Arab rulers prevented, by threats and bribes, the election of a new Palestinian
National Council representing 14 million Palestinians, two-thirds of whom were
born after the ill-fated Oslo Accords. True representations of the Palestinians
must take place.
But
as any Palestinian will tell you, we never lose hope nor give up our struggle
for freedom. If you do not believe me, look at Gaza in the last 15 months. Look
at Gaza in the next ten years, when 18,000 orphans today join the resistance
movement.
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