History unearthed: What If Trump succeeded in ethnically cleansing Gaza?

"I've read 25 books" on the Middle East, Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, said in a 2020 interview. Such intellectual bravado wouldn't matter if it weren't for the fact that Kushner served as the President’s Middle East advisor, and was essentially the main architect of Trump's policies in the Middle East.

It goes without saying that Trump's policies in the region were a failure and, in fact, fueled the events that followed his departure, leading to the genocidal war in Gaza.

Trump's successor did not fare any better, as the Joe Biden Administration largely adhered to Trump's major mistakes and ultimately sustained the Israeli genocide, which killed and wounded, per the latest estimates, over 160,000.

Biden, too, proved to be a reader, although, unlike Kushner, he did not publicly brag about his intellectual prowess. On November 29, a photo emerged of him holding a book by Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi, entitled “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017”.

Though American leaders and officials claim to base their decisions on a thorough understanding of the complexity of the Middle East, they are repeating the same historical mistakes over and over again.

Trump's repeated comments about taking "ownership" of Gaza, displacing its population, turning their destroyed homeland into real estate opportunities, and threatening them with "hell", should they not follow his diktats, express more than callousness, they also reflect ignorance.

Trump is using such language based on the misguided idea that these threats would allow him to restore political leverage, which Washington lost over the course of 15 months of blind support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

No rational thinker, in the Middle East or beyond, would actually imagine a scenario in which Palestinians are leaving en masse due to Trump's threats. They have refused to do so after the dropping of over 85,000 tons of mostly US-supplied explosives that nearly destroyed all of Gaza. Empty threats will certainly not change that.

Even though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist government took advantage of Trump's words to repair, however temporarily, their struggling coalition, turning Trump's supposed new doctrine on Gaza into a reality is an impossible feat.

Israel has, in fact, tried to create the circumstances that would lead, in the words of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, to the ‘voluntary migration’ of Palestinians out of Gaza. On January 27, the opposite was achieved, as nearly a million displaced Palestinians, who were driven to southern Gaza, began their awe-inspiring march to the north.

It behooves the US administration to stop discounting history, as any wrong move or policy could lead to disastrous outcomes.

Historically, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has been the main objective of all Israeli policies, even before the establishment of the Israeli state over the ruins of historic Palestine in 1948, the Nakba, or the catastrophic destruction of the Palestinian homeland, leading to the depopulation of the majority of the country's Palestinian inhabitants.

Aside from the immorality of that act, the pain of which continues to be felt by generations of Palestinian refugees, the event was catastrophic to the Middle East region as well.

Aside from millions of refugees displaced in Palestine itself, millions more live in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, other parts of the Middle East, and around the world. Currently, there are nearly six million registered Palestinian refugees, according to the UN refugee agency for Palestine, UNRWA, though a large number of refugees remain unaccounted for.

That political earthquake of 76 years ago, remains one of the most decisive events that shaped, and continues to shape, the Middle East to this day. Its reversal will remain elusive unless justice finally prevails in Palestine, justice that is dictated by international and humanitarian laws, not impulsive statements from American officials.

Jordan, Lebanon and Syria were the Arab countries that hosted most Palestinian refugees, and whose political dynamics, as well as conflicts, were shaped by the mass displacement of Palestinians.

Palestinian groups became part of the political fabric of these societies, sometimes becoming involved in internal struggles and sometimes used to balance out pre-existing demographic conflicts. Hardly a major event in the Middle East didn't involve Palestinians, or the price of which was not disproportionately shouldered by Palestinians. Anyone who knows the fundamentals of modern Middle Eastern politics ought to know this.

One can only imagine what would happen if 2.2 million Palestinian refugees were pushed into Jordan, Egypt and other Arab countries, per Trump's proposal. It would arguably be the most earth-shattering event in the region since the Nakba. No Arab government can possibly entertain such a scenario under any circumstance.

While the prospects of another Gaza Nakba were born dead, the real fear is the fact that nearly 50,000 Palestinians have already been internally displaced in the West Bank. This ongoing ethnic cleansing is no less dangerous than the US-Israeli designs in Gaza.

The uninformed US policy on Palestine, which continues to be led by the extremely dangerous policies of the politically bankrupt government of Netanyahu, is unifying the Arabs, once again, around a common cause.

If the Americans insist on ignoring history, the Arabs know their history very well. It is time for them to prove to Israel that the lessons of history have been learned, and will never be repeated.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out’. His other books include ‘My Father was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net