3 months ago
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It has been 11 months of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. The official death toll has exceeded 40,000 people but estimates put it much higher – in the hundreds of thousands. Intensifying starvation, and lack of sanitary conditions or clean water and medicines have caused mass death among the elderly, wounded, newborn, and chronically ill.
Gaza has been turned into such a death trap that even if Israeli bombing were to stop tomorrow, those numbers would continue to rise for years. Simply trucking in more food would not stem mass death.
Without clean water, toilets, and sewage disposal and treatment, without functioning hospitals and without an environment decontaminated from pathogens and poisons from Israeli bombs, people will continue to die from communicable diseases, chronic illnesses, and pollution.
Israel and its supporters have used such concerns to push forward “solutions” which involve the mass expulsion and dispossession of the Palestinian population in Gaza.
Palestinians have outright rejected such schemes, and rightly so. However, there is a way to carry out temporary evacuation to allow for the cleaning up and rebuilding of Gaza and the preservation of the health and wellbeing of its people that does not involve their relocation out of historic Palestine. That can be done by rehousing Gaza’s population to nearby areas in what is now Israel, which have the necessary infrastructure to sustain the temporary relocation of a large population.
No more exile: Palestinians must stay in Palestine
Evacuation, even temporary, is a fraught topic for Palestinians precisely because the unlivable conditions in Gaza have been openly and deliberately created by Israel and its allies in the West to force the population into exile.
Last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of “thinning” the Palestinian population in Gaza “to a minimum”, and his Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich spoke of getting it below 200,000 through emigration. “Our problem,” said Netanyahu, “is finding countries willing to accept them, and we are working on it.”
There have been various Israeli proposals to exile the Palestinian population to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Canada – thought to be especially suitable. Israeli government ministers, their US allies and pliant media have all openly endorsed such plans.
Last year, the White House asked Congress for funding to support “Gazans fleeing to neighbouring countries”, while US officials reportedly presented a plan for a tent city in El Arish in Egypt.
Cairo has been put under immense pressure by Israel and its allies to accept Palestinians into Sinai, but it has so far rejected such plans. Palestinian factions across the political spectrum have condemned any suggestion for expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland.
Recognising the injustice of expulsion, we, along with other Palestinians and Israeli anti-Zionists, have called for temporary and voluntary evacuation within historic Palestine. Instead of exiling Palestinian survivors of the war to other countries, we propose that they be housed in temporary accommodation in other parts of historic Palestine falling within Israeli borders while Gaza is rebuilt.
There is already a legal basis for such a relocation. Let us remember that some 74 percent of Gaza’s population are refugees and descendants of refugees from historic Palestine and they have the right to return.
In December 1948, a year after the Nakba began, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 194, which guaranteed the right to return for Palestinians expelled from their homes by Israeli forces. This right is further enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passed the same month. The Pinheiro principles, introduced in 2005, give guidance on how to implement housing and property restitution for returning refugees.
Israel’s admission as a member state into the UN in 1949 was conditional on the implementation of Resolution 194, which it never fulfilled. Now, it is time to correct this mistake.
Evacuate within Palestine: A just solution
While relocating Palestinians from Gaza into what is now Israel will be a challenge, there are some circumstances that will facilitate it.
First, there is space. Some 88 percent of the land in Israel is controlled by the military, is dedicated to nature reserves or is vacant; 87 percent of Israelis live on less than 6 percent of the country.
Second, there are many suitable sites with existing roads, water, sewage, and electric infrastructure that can be quickly expanded, as demonstrated by the research of Palestinian scholar Salman Abu Sitta.
Shelter and humanitarian aid can be scaled and distributed by UNRWA, and other local aid agencies, such as Palestine Red Crescent Society. It will be paid for by Israel and its allies in view of its obligations under international law to provide for the population it occupies, as the recent advisory ruling by the International Court of Justice has reaffirmed.
Importantly, proper housing does not mean concentration camps in the Naqab desert. During rehousing and rebuilding, the population from Gaza can maintain access to their extant homes in Gaza and have the right to move freely.
An international force can be deployed inside Israel to protect both the Palestinians and aid sent to them from Israeli attacks. The creation of such a force for the occupied Palestinian territory was already suggested by the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese in her March 2024 report and by South Africa last October. Importantly, this must not mean occupation by forces from any country.
The rebuilding of Gaza should be controlled by the Palestinian people and their political leadership. The people of Gaza should be employed in any necessary construction in Israel and the extensive, multiyear rebuilding of Gaza, as scoped out in numerous UN agency reports.
The question of who should be “in control” of Gaza during this process has already been addressed in the Beijing Declaration, signed in July by 14 Palestinian factions. They committed to unity under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the creation of an interim reconciliation government to carry out reconstruction in Gaza and prepare for elections.
The Israeli government will likely resist such a plan of relocation, which is why the UN must use all its power and tools of enforcement – including sanctions and suspension of membership – to force it to accept and fulfil its legal obligations. This is the least the UN can do to start correcting the errors it made in 1947 and after that.
Exile is traumatic, elaborate, costly and unjust. Evacuation within historic Palestine, over the fence, is simple, efficient, walkable, and just. International law gives us all the tools we need to save lives in Palestine by fulfilling the Palestinian right to return.
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
