Trump’s call to 'clean out' Gaza is a direct threat to Palestinians

Yesterday, President Trump rolled out the red carpet for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces arrest by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity. As if it weren’t bad enough to welcome an alleged war criminal to the White House, Trump then said the U.S. should “take over” and “clean out” Gaza — what many are saying is a coded call for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Before his meeting with Netanyahu, Trump mused: “If we could find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places with plenty of money in the area. … I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza.”

And during his post-meeting presser, the president explicitly called for up to 2 million Palestinians to be resettled permanently outside of Gaza.

“I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza,” Trump stated. “Gaza is not a place for people to be living, and the only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is because they have no alternative. … If they had an alternative, they’d much rather not go back to Gaza and live in a beautiful alternative that’s safe.”

In fact, there is an alternative. Approximately two-thirds of all Palestinians in Gaza are refugees whose families were driven from their homes or who fled in fear for their lives in advance of the approaching Israeli military during and after Israel’s establishment in 1948. Despite a United Nations resolution passed in December 1948 calling for Palestinian refugees to be allowed to return home, Israel has denied them this right, anchored in international law, for more than 75 years.

Palestinians refer to their national dispossession by Israel as the Nakba — “catastrophe” in English. Rather than Trump and Netanyahu inflicting another Nakba, Palestinians should be allowed not only to rebuild their homes in Gaza, but to return to the homes from which Israel expelled them in 1948.

Trump also issued an executive order yesterday permanently defunding UNRWA, the international agency tasked with providing health care, education and food to Palestinian refugees since 1949. UNRWA is the only service provider with the infrastructure in Gaza to address the overwhelming needs faced by Palestinians who survived Israel’s persecution and starvation. Defunding UNRWA will undoubtedly exacerbate the humanitarian crisis there.

In advance of Netanyahu’s visit, Trump had laid the groundwork for Israel expelling Palestinians from Gaza by supplying it with $1 billion in additional weapons, including $700 million in 1,000-pound bombs and $300 million of armored bulldozers, a prospect which is currently being blocked by Democrats in Congress.

Trump also lifted the Biden administration’s hold on deliveries of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, reportedly delivering 1,800 of these devastating behemoths in a matter of days. This bomb was the only weapon the Biden administration (belatedly) denied Israel during its 15 months of genocidal violence, only after shipping more than 10,000 of these bombs to Israel as of June 2024.

Israel repeatedly used these bombs to inflict atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza. To take but one example of many, the New York Times found that Israel killed dozens of civilians and injured hundreds when it dropped two 2,000-pound bombs on a densely populated area of Jabalia in October 2023. Trump’s unblocking of these weapons signals an even greater permissiveness than Biden showed in enabling Israel to attack Palestinians with this weapon, whose use in civilian areas is both indiscriminate and disproportionate, furthering U.S. complicity in potential future war crimes.

In addition, on Inauguration Day, Trump rescinded the Biden administration’s Executive Order 14115, which sanctioned violent Israeli settlers and settlement organizations responsible for driving Palestinians off their land. Although the Biden administration failed to sanction Israeli governmental ministers and members of the Israeli military responsible for Israel’s colonization and theft of Palestinian land, the sanctions against individuals and entities nevertheless was the only tangible step taken by the U.S. to hold accountable Israelis for their violations of international law.

Extremist Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich praised Trump’s revocation of the sanctions, an act which he interpreted as giving Israel a free hand to “expand settlement,” perhaps as a prelude to Israel’s formal annexation of the West Bank.

Undoubtedly, previously sanctioned Israeli settlers and settler organizations will also view Trump’s recission of sanctions as a green light to continue violently driving Palestinians away. In 2024, according to the United Nations, settler attacks against Palestinians spiked to their highest level ever recorded, displacing approximately 4,250 Palestinians from their homes.

Providing Israel a freer hand in the West Bank also raises the specter of Israel replicating there the violence it inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza. After Trump revoked sanctions on settlers, the Israeli army invaded the West Bank city of Jenin, killing at least 10 people, including two-year-old Laila al-Khatib. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ominously stated that the attack on Jenin incorporated lessons learned from Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.

Reportedly, it was only due to the pressure exerted by the incoming Trump administration — and in particular by its special envoy for Middle East Peace, Steve Witkoff — that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu felt compelled to sign a ceasefire agreement. This is no small feat; Trump was able to accomplish what the outgoing Biden administration could not in 15 months.

However, if the Trump administration deserves plaudits for its role in brokering a ceasefire agreement, policies adopted and statements made by the president since his inauguration undermine the possibility of solidifying the ceasefire and using it as a springboard to a political process to establish a just and lasting Palestinian-Israeli peace.

If Trump is sincere in his desire that “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker,” he must jettison these outlandish policies and statements. Peace will come only as a result of the Palestinian people being free from Israeli military rule and apartheid policies, and Palestinian refugees being allowed to return to the homes from which Israel exiled them more than 75 years ago.

Josh Ruebner, Ph.D., is an adjunct lecturer in justice and peace studies at Georgetown University and policy director of the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project.

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