President Donald Trump’s suggestion that the United States should “take over” Gaza, displace its current population and turn the enclave into “the Riviera of the Middle East” is unsettling—in both a literal and, to Palestinians, a very personal sense. The remarks, which followed earlier comments in which the president expressed a desire to “clean out” Gaza, have been taken by some Middle East experts as a call to “ethnically cleanse” the strip of its 2.2 million Palestinian inhabitants. They worry that such talk will bolster the hopes of Israel’s far-right settlers and their supporters in government, who want to remove Palestinians from Gaza and build Jewish-only settlements on the enclave’s beachfront property.

Following Trump’s remarks, Riyad Mansour, Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, stated: “Our homeland is our homeland.” He added, “I think that leaders and people should respect the wishes of the Palestinian people.”

As a scholar of modern Palestinian history, I know that calls to remove the Palestinians from Gaza are not new—but neither is Palestinians’ determination to remain in their homeland. For almost 80 years, Palestinians in Gaza have resisted various proposals to displace them from the enclave. In fact, those plans have often spurred resistance to occupation and removal.

A people already uprooted

Most people in Gaza are the product of displacement in the first place. In 1948, over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes when the state of Israel was established and a war between the new country and its Arab neighbours erupted. These Palestinians became nationless refugees, placed under the care of the UN Relief and Works Agency. In the Gaza Strip, the agency set up eight refugee camps to care for over 200,000 Palestinians who had been forced out of over 190 towns and villages.

In December 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 194 stipulating that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.” While Israeli leaders initially expressed a willingness to allow some refugees back, they rejected the refugees’ wholesale return. They argued that doing so would undermine Israel’s security and dilute its character as a “Jewish state.” As such, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, looked for ways to “motivate the refugees to move eastward” towards Jordan. He hoped that by moving refugees further away from Israel, they would be less likely to return.

At first, the US called upon Israel to repatriate a substantial number of refugees. But with Israel consistently refusing to do so, leaders in Washington started turning to the idea of resettlement. They hoped that the promise of economic prosperity could induce large numbers of refugees to move to other Arab countries—and give up on the idea of returning home. For example, in 1953, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles drew up plans to resettle Palestinian refugees in Syria as part of a large water management project there.

Likewise in 1961, the recently formed US Agency for International Development began funding an irrigation project in Jordan, bringing in Palestinian refugees to work as farmers. US officials hoped that the refugees would start to identify as Jordanians, rather than as Palestinians and agree to permanently resettle in Jordan. But it did not work. A survey taken five years later found that the refugees still identified as Palestinians and wished to return to their homeland.

Rejecting resettlement

A further war between Israel and neighbouring countries in 1967 resulted in Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which had been under Jordanian rule, as well as the Gaza Strip, which had been previously administered by Egypt. It also sparked a renewed sense of Palestinian national identity, especially among younger generations who increasingly took up guerrilla-style tactics in a bid to force Israel, and the international community, to recognise their right to return.

In response, Israel looked to resettlement as a way to reduce the Palestinian population in territories it now occupied. In 1969, the Israeli government drew up secret plans to permanently transfer up to 60,000 Palestinians from Gaza to Paraguay. The scheme came to an abrupt halt when two Palestinians confronted the Israeli ambassador in Asunción about being brought to Paraguay under false pretenses. Meanwhile, between 1967 and 1979, far-right Israeli Jewish settlers established seven settlements in Gaza. They hoped to see Palestinians removed from the strip so the land could be incorporated into their vision of a “greater Israel.”

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Israeli officials proposed various plans to remove refugees from the camps and resettle them elsewhere. This included a 1983 plan to dismantle refugee camps in the occupied Palestinian territories and resettle their inhabitants in better housing in towns and cities. But Palestinian refugees firmly rejected the offer because it would have required them to give up their refugee status and relinquish their right of return. The Oslo negotiations of the 1990s rejected the notion of removing Palestinians from Gaza. In fact, keeping the refugees in Gaza was central to the premise of a two-state solution. At the same time, questions over the right of refugees to return to their original homelands in what is now Israel were shelved.

No money can ‘replace your homeland’

But with hopes of a two-state solution long since faded, resettlement plans have reemerged. Shortly after the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas gunmen in Israel that sparked the widespread bombing and siege of Gaza, the Biden administration asked Congress to fund “the potential needs of Gazans fleeing to neighbouring countries.” The news outraged many Palestinians, who saw it as giving Israel a green light to carry out what many viewed as an attempt to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

In October 2024, far-right Jewish settlers gathered on the border of Gaza and called for the reestablishment of Jewish settlements in Gaza that had been dismantled in 2005. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called upon Israel to “encourage emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza. He proposed telling the Palestinians there: “We’re giving you the option, leave to other countries, the Land of Israel is ours.” Palestinians have responded with their feet. As soon as the ceasefire went into effect on January 19, 2025, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had been displaced to southern Gaza walked for hours to reach their homes in northern Gaza. Hundreds posted videos of cleaning out their damaged homes so they can live there once again.

The road to recovery in Gaza will be long. The UN estimates that rebuilding Gaza will cost US$50 billion and take at least 10 years. I believe Palestinians want help rebuilding, not resettlement. Many of them have already vehemently rejected Trump’s call to move out. As one Palestinian told The Guardian newspaper: “We would rather die here than leave this land.” He insisted, “No amount of money in the world can replace your homeland.” Resettlement schemes have a long history, yet Palestinians have thwarted them at every turn. There is no reason to think that this time will be any different.

- The Conversation

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