President Donald Trump was contemplating, and, as he often does, set off a firestorm.
Gaza is, he said, “literally a demolition site, almost everything is demolished, and people are dying there.” On the other hand, “Gaza is interesting. It’s a phenomenal location, on the sea. The best weather, you know, everything is good. It’s like, some beautiful things could be done with it, but it’s very interesting.”
That was the simple part. But then he said he would clean out Gaza and that Jordan and Egypt take some Gazans. How many? A lot of them. Temporarily? During a rebuild? Or permanently?
Without pretending to know what is in the president’s mind, it is clear that he has hit on some very sensitive and never-discussed points. But if he succeeds in forcing an assessment of the reality of “Palestinian refugees,” he will have done a service for the Palestinians and for the rest of us.
First is the question of why there are multigenerational refugees at all. The long answer is in the brilliant book, “The War for Return” by Einat Wilf and Adi Schwartz. The short answer is that the Arab States told the original refugees that their dispossession was temporary; that Israel would be erased. Therefore, no Arab country would agree to have Palestinians except as temporary “refugees.”
But that raises another difficult question. If Palestinians believe the West Bank and Gaza are (at least part of) the Palestinian State-in-waiting, shouldn’t all the people living in those places be citizens of (part of) “Palestine?” They are governed by Palestinians and there hasn’t been an Israeli living in Gaza since 2006 – except for hostages the past 15 months.
The answer, of course, is money. If they are citizens, the entire UNRWA farrago — and all the money ($1.46 billion in 2023 plus the emergency funds for the war Hamas started in 2023) — would stop. Palestinians, like people in emerging countries everywhere, would have to build, produce, and sell to make money — and the billions shifted off to Hamas’s military budget would stop also.
Those who make money and arms off the self-inflicted misery of the Palestinian people won’t give it up unless required to.
The second unspoken-until-Mr. Trump-mentioned-it problem is that neither Jordan nor Egypt will have them, nor will any other Arab state.
Jordan first.
Jordan is part of historic Ottoman “Palestine” and was presumed to be a Palestinian Arab State by the League of Nations and UN.
But Jordan only permitted a percentage of Palestinians to become citizens and call themselves Jordanians. Another percentage is still considered “refugee,” living in “refugee camps.” It is convoluted and involves the uprising of Black September, the PLO, expulsion, and other things.
But whatever their status, Palestinians are Palestinians and King Abdullah II is not.
The King is an Arabian from the Hejaz region of Saudi Arabia. In addition, he is a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, giving him impeccable Sunni credentials and making him an obvious target of Shiite expansionist Iran. So, in addition to the majority Palestinian population that would like to oust him, he has larger, regional problems. It is not surprising that his father, King Hussein, wrote a book entitled, “Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown.”
The U.S. doesn’t want him to fall for obvious American (and Israeli) reasons and so supports his increasingly shaky regime.
Egypt won’t take them because Hamas is entirely Muslim Brotherhood — and so are a lot of other Gazans — or they’re Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a Shiite terror org beholden to Iran. Egypt spent decades, with Israel’s help, rooting out the Brotherhood before and after the brief, chaotic reign of Mohammed Morsi — brought to you in 2012 by President Barack Obama after the U.S. ousted the secular Hosni Mubarak.
The current president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is secular as well and won’t have anything to do with Palestinians. He even refused them safe haven at the height of the fighting in Gaza, a perversion of International Humanitarian Law.
Jordan expelled tens of thousands of Palestinians after Black September. Lebanon expelled thousands in 1982 and closely controls the rest. Syria kept them in camps. Kuwait had them as refugees until Saddam invaded in 1990 — then it threw out about 287,000 Palestinians who were on Saddam’s side. Saudi Arabia not only won’t take them, but reduced its support funds for the PA starting in 2016. In 2017, Iraq revoked rights it had given to Palestinians. UAE won’t take them. Qatar will only take the rich ones.
So — here we are.
Could it be time to address the REAL problem of people who left parts of Palestine in 1948-49 and the fourth and fifth generation of their descendants who never had a chance to be productive citizens of anything — and were subjected to the worst sorts of lies about how they got to be where they are?
Could be.
It shouldn’t be put past President Trump.
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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