By Eric Levine, JNS
Do the Arab and Muslim worlds want a solution to the Palestinian problem? Or do they just want to cling to an ideology with which they can bludgeon Israel?
U.S. President Donald Trump’s statement that resettling Palestinians living in Gaza “could be temporary or long term” has raised many eyebrows.
Calling Gaza “literally a demolition site right now,” he said, “I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change …. You’re talking about a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing.”
He went on to say, “You know over the centuries it’s had many, many conflicts. And I don’t know, something has to happen.”
Although Trump’s statement is controversial and an abhorrent nonstarter to some, his suggestion is quite rational.
The history of the Middle East and other regions around the world is full of examples of resettling refugees to give them a chance at a better life for themselves and future generations.
In 1947, Great Britain ended its 300-year presence in India. As part of its withdrawal, it created two states: a Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan. Millions of Muslims found themselves in India. Similarly, millions of Hindus and Sikhs found themselves in the newly created Pakistan. Not wanting to live in a hostile land, members of both groups left. Some 12 to 15 million people walked across the new border. The Muslims left India for Pakistan, and the Hindus and Sikhs left Pakistan for India.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was created after the Second World War to help settle the “stateless” and dispossessed. Today, UNHCR boasts it has 18,879 personnel working in 137 countries. And says it has “helped more than 50 million refugees to successfully restart their lives and continue to protect and provide support for the 89.3 million people who are currently displaced.”
The success of UNHCR can be traced directly to its mission, which is to “safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. In its efforts to achieve this objective, the office strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another state, and to return home voluntarily.”
Among the beneficiaries of the agency’s work were Holocaust survivors. Approximately 140,000 Jews came to the United States in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust. For hundreds of thousands of others, there was no place to go except the newly established modern-day State of Israel, which welcomed them with open arms.
Israel has provided a haven for Jews from all over the world. For instance, when the Jewish state was created in 1948, about a million Jews lived in Iran and surrounding Arab countries. Today, only about 15,000 Jews remain in that part of the Diaspora, a handful left on their own. The majority were forced out as a matter of official government policy. They overwhelmingly fled to Israel. They arrived in such large numbers that Israel is a majority “minority” country. More Israelis can trace their roots to the surrounding Muslim and Arab world than to Europe. That fact alone puts the lie to the myth that Israel is a white, neo-colonial, apartheid, racist state that oppresses its people of color.
It is instructive to compare these examples to how the Arab and Muslim worlds have dealt with Palestinian refugees.
When the British left the Middle East in 1948, the United Nations established two states in British Mandate Palestine: one Arab and one Jewish. Instead of accepting the U.N. Partition Plan, the Arabs declared war and attacked Israel. The war they started displaced hundreds of thousands of their Arab brethren and created the refugee problem that persists today.
In the wake of that defeat, Palestinian refugees, rather than being resettled by UNHCR, were placed under the auspices of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. UNWRA has long been known as an anti-Israel entity dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Lest there was ever any doubt about this, many UNWRA workers actively participated in the Oct. 7 attacks against Israel. Countless others have aided and abetted terrorism against Israel for years.
When UNRWA began operations in 1950, it was responding to the needs of about 700,000 Palestinian refugees. By 2023, some 5.9 million people were registered as eligible for UNRWA services.
When Israel conquered the Gaza Strip in 1967, approximately 400,000 Palestinians lived there. When Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Gaza was home to some 2.1 million Palestinians. So much for the allegation of a “genocide” by Israel.
The Palestinian refugee problem continues to this day because it is an integral part of the strategy of Israel’s enemies to delegitimize and destroy the Jewish state. Moreover, it is a problem they do not want to solve because a solution would deprive them of a critical weapon in their war against Israel.
Without the claim of Palestinian victimhood, the war against Israel will be seen for what it truly is, an effort to destroy the one Jewish state in the world and an excuse to kill more Jews.
Trump’s statement about resettlement is achievable if the Palestinians’ fellow Arabs and co-religionists have the will.
There are 21 Arab countries with a total population of about 475 million. There are 49 countries where Muslims constitute more than 50% of the population. Those are the same countries whose governments have for decades claimed to champion the Palestinian cause. Now is the time for them to save the lives of innocent Palestinians and offer them refuge.
Israel will eventually win this war. Hamas will eventually be destroyed. But what about Palestinian civilians? That is the question the Arab and Muslim worlds should ask themselves. Do the Arab and Muslim worlds want a solution to the Palestinian problem? Or do they just want to cling to an ideology with which they can bludgeon Israel?
The early responses of Egypt and Jordan are not encouraging; they are refusing to accept any Palestinian refugees. While disappointing, the responses are enlightening. After failing to destroy Israel in 1948, Egypt captured and illegally annexed Gaza, while Jordan captured and illegally annexed the West Bank. They remained in control of those territories until June 1967 when Israel conquered them in the Six-Day War.
At no time during their nearly 20-year respective occupations did the international community demand that either Egypt or Jordan withdraw from those territories and create a Palestinian state. They waited for the Jews to conquer them before making the demand.
Trump has offered a possible solution. It is unlikely to gain any traction. But let’s not pretend that this would be something unique in history.
