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What Country Is Going to Accept Relocated Gazans?
US President Donald Trump meets with Jordan’s King Abdullah at the White House in Washington, DC, Feb. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
JNS.org / The Investigative Project on Terrorism – When US President Donald Trump proposed to relocate more than 1 million people from Gaza while the area is being rebuilt, many derided it as a combination of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia. Others thought it too ridiculous to take seriously. But more people are coming around to his way of thinking. Journalist Liel Leibovitz now argues, “We must embrace this proposal, because at its heart is the one true and inescapable sentiment: Israelis can no longer be expected to live in proximity to those who desire nothing more than their death.”
Palestinians there who don’t want to fight Israelis and who have sought to leave the embattled strip of land are perhaps the world’s only genuine refugees not permitted to leave a war zone, but where to send them and their bloodthirsty neighbors who live for the opportunity to kill is perhaps the biggest problem with the proposal. Those who protest the loudest about Trump’s alleged “ethnic cleansing” plan are more interested in exploiting Gaza residents for the purpose of destroying Israel than helping them. Don’t expect Spain, Norway or Ireland to welcome any of them.
And what about Muslim and Arab nations? Are they, too, racist or “Islamophobic” for endorsing the plan? The United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the United States, Yousef Al Otaiba, recently told an interviewer, “I don’t see an alternative to what’s being proposed.”
The Wall Street Journal’s Sadanand Dhume took up the topic in a recent column titled “If Indians and Pakistanis can relocate, why can’t Gazans?” Dhume noted that “many population transfers have taken place over the last century … . Only in the Palestinian case has the refugee question festered endlessly.”
In a Jan. 26, press release, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called Trump’s proposal “dangerous nonsense,” invoking the ethnic cleansing trope. This is in stark contrast to the joy that CAIR executive director Nihad Awad expressed on Nov. 24, 2023, over the Oct. 7 attack which he likened to a jailbreak. Gaza is a “concentration camp,” and its people “decided to break the siege” and “throw … down the[ir] shackles,” he enthused.
Of course, the Gazans who carried out the Oct. 7 attack wanted out of Gaza. They wanted Israel. Now Awad wants them to stay in their “concentration camp” so that their resistance will continue.
Hamas supporters like Awad know that moving people out will make it more difficult for Hamas to survive. Without Palestinian children and Israeli hostages to use as human shields, Hamas doesn’t stand a chance of surviving the Israel Defense Forces’s efforts to eradicate it.
CAIR’s press release also claims that “the only way to achieve a just, lasting peace is to force the Israeli government to end its occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people.” A peaceful Gaza that is not part of a Palestinian state contradicts the generational imperative for a “Palestine from the river to the sea” and makes the chances of a “two-state solution” more remote. CAIR would love to see Hamas rewarded for the barbaric rape-torture-infanticide pogrom on Oct. 7, 2023, with a sovereign state.
The main reason for opposing Trump’s plan is sheer logistics. Where would the Gazans go while Gaza is being rebuilt, and which ones would be permitted to return? This is the thorniest problem because each time Palestinians have moved to a new diaspora they have caused trouble for their hosts. Throughout the Arab and Muslim world, Palestinian options are limited by their past conduct. Few nations are interested in taking the residents of Gaza because Palestinians have worn out their welcome wherever they have gone.
Egypt and Jordan are the two most likely destinations for Gazans relocated, either temporarily or permanently, due to propinquity and racial homogeneity. Aside from their desire to destroy and annex Israel, Gazans are ethnically, linguistically and culturally indistinguishable from Egyptians and Jordanians. However, both nations have been down this road before.
Egypt annexed Gaza after the 1948 War of Independence and refused to allow Arabs (who had not yet begun calling themselves “Palestinians”) Egyptian citizenship. It has had an uneasy relationship with both the PLO and Hamas ever since. Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (whom Trump once called his “favorite dictator”) has, from time to time, flooded Hamas tunnels, killing untold numbers of Gazans, because he felt threatened by their militancy. Unless it is forced into a corner, Egypt is unlikely to accept large numbers of Palestinians ever.
Likewise, Jordan knows what admitting more than a million Palestinians will mean to Jordanian sovereignty.
After the 1948 war, Jordan (unlike Egypt and the other Arab nations that attacked the nascent Jewish State) admitted hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees. The 1954 Nationality Law granted Jordanian citizenship to “any person who, not being Jewish, possessed Palestinian nationality before 15 May 1948 and resides ordinarily in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on the publication date of this law.”
After the Six-Day War, Israel expelled the PLO to Jordan along with some 200,000 more Palestinians. There, they began a civil war that only ended after some 70,000 Jordanians were killed and the PLO was again expelled, this time to Lebanon, where it promptly started a civil war.
In 1988, Jordanian citizenship was revoked from Palestinians. As Anis F. Kassim, a Jordanian lawyer put it, “more than 1.5 million Palestinians went to bed on 31 July 1988 as Jordanian citizens, and woke up on 1 August 1988 as stateless persons.”
The current king of Jordan, Abdullah II, seems unwilling to accept any Gazans beyond the 2,000 “cancer children” he told Trump he would admit for treatment.
What about other Arab nations? Kuwait will never accept Palestinians. Before the first Persian Gulf War, thousands of Palestinians lived in Kuwait, working jobs Kuwaitis didn’t want. But when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded in 1990, Palestinians were on his side, and Kuwaitis have never forgiven them. Any post-Gulf war Kuwaiti advocacy on their behalf is motivated by hatred of Israel not love of Palestinians.
How about Indonesia, the country with the greatest number of Muslims in the world? “Indonesia’s stance remains unequivocal: any attempts to displace or remove Gaza’s residents is entirely unacceptable,” said the country’s foreign affairs minister, according to the Jakarta Globe.
Morocco, a signatory to the Abraham Accords, has also been mentioned as a potential destination, but it clearly doesn’t want Palestinians within its borders. Besides, the United States already recognizes Morocco’s sovereignty over the western Sahara, so that carrot has been eaten.
The most interesting and unusual choices made public are Puntland and Somaliland, two autonomous regions within Somalia.
Puntland, which declared itself autonomous in 1998 and claimed in 2023 that it would function as an independent state, could benefit from a deal to accept Palestinians. Likewise, Somaliland declared itself independent from Somalia in 1992 and operates autonomously, even though no country has recognized its independence. Accepting Palestinians might pave the way for either Puntland’s or Somaliland’s recognition as a separate country, but it would also leave their fledgling states vulnerable to violence and susceptible to being taken over by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, the PLO and all the rest. It seems unlikely that either putative nation would risk achieving its goals by accepting Palestinian refugees.
Thus, Palestinians are left to live with the consequences of their decisions. Their inability to destroy Israel and unwillingness to abandon their dream of victory has kept them stateless and condemned their children to a life of misery. As Commentary’s John Podhoretz put it: “Like the Japanese and Germans in and after World War II, they have to be broken before they can be put back together as a functioning polis.”
After eight decades of militancy and refusal to accept any deal for a state that does not eliminate the State of Israel, Palestinians find themselves unwelcome throughout the world.
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Examining Three Remarkable Women From Jewish History in These Turbulent Times
A Torah scroll. Photo: RabbiSacks.org.
Anyone interested in history will know that the Yalta Conference was a meeting between the leaders of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union that took place in February 1945 towards the end of the Second World War. There is a famous photograph of Roosevelt and Stalin sitting next to an unhappy Winston Churchill, who realized he was being marginalized. As we now know, Stalin suckered Roosevelt into believing him to be someone that could be worked with, when he was actually a murderous fanatic. And it seems so far that Putin is going to sucker Trump over Ukraine, and I fear Iran will too.
Like Roosevelt, Trump wants a deal. But as Barack Obama has shown, naive appeasement is the road to disaster. Only time will tell if the case with Iran is going to be another example.
But here, by way of distraction, I am writing about a person. This Yalta was a distinguished lady from a noble and wealthy family who lived in Babylon between the end of the Second and the Third centuries. She had a strong sense of self-worth, and self-confidence in an era of almost total male dominance. She was, according to Rashi, the daughter of the Exilarch, the head of the Jewish community in Babylon. She was familiar with Jewish law. But she had a temper. When she thought she was being slighted, she smashed four hundred barrels of wine after a guest offended her and women in general (TB Brachot 51b.)
Yalta showed her expertise in kashrut matters. In a debate that hinted at current questions of what constitutes meat if it is produced artificially, she asked her husband about kosher food that would taste like meat cooked in milk. She argued the halachic case expertly. And he accepted the argument (TB Chullin 109b). She also argued the law in other matters such as purity.
Yalta was a doctor too. She personally took Rav Amram to the bathhouse to soak in hot water for a cure when he was stricken with an unknown disease (TB Gittin 67b). And she offered her husband counsel on how to deal with someone who was arguing with him disrespectfully (TB Kidushin 70b). Perhaps these were not in themselves major issues — but they were indicative of her importance in that society, where the only chance women had beyond the home depended either on independent wealth or a compliant husband.
The more famous Talmudic woman however, was Bruria, the daughter of the saintly Chaninah Ben Teradion (an outstanding scholar, from a very wealthy family and martyred by the Romans). She was the wife of Rebbi Meir, who lived in Israel during the second century CE. He is the third most frequently mentioned rabbi in the Mishnah.
She was admired for her breadth of knowledge. She was said to have learned 300 laws from the rabbis on a single cloudy day (TB Pesachim 62b) and was happy to challenge rabbis she thought less knowledgeable than she was. She was also renowned for her sharp wit and often caustic jibes, attacking males for underestimating women. Rebbi Meir was sorely troubled by local louts and prayed that they should die. Bruria argued that he should rather pray that evil disappear. Not people.
The third important woman is Rav Chisda’s daughter. Her actual name is never mentioned. She was gifted with the power of prophecy. She predicted her marriage to her father’s two students (consecutively). First, she was the wife of the Rami Bar Chama, and after his death she married Rava (both were Amoraim of the third generation). She is mentioned many times in the Talmud and commentaries in the Talmud and its commentaries only as “the daughter of Rav Chisda.” The Talmud (TB Bava Batra 12b) says she sat on her father’s lap as he taught Torah in the academy and taught her and her sisters Torah and laws, personally. There were rabbis in those days and later who recognized the value of female scholarship and empowerment — even in times when the rest of the world resolutely refused to encourage it.
Right now, we need people who demonstrate leadership through creativity and flexibility. Most are being silenced by the plague of conformity and the fear of stepping out of line. But the reality is that more and more women within the Orthodox world are studying to the highest levels and making their mark. There are signs of their campaigning to achieve political power too. More power to their elbows (so long as they are covered of course)! You can’t keep a good woman down forever. And more young men are volunteering to serve in the army.
Trump seems to have learnt the lesson of Yalta. But will his natural desire for a long-term deal end up with his being suckered by Iran’s ideology of deceit to achieve victory? Time will tell. Meanwhile, I pray Israel will take a long hard look at its divisive politics.
The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.
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Battling to Survive, Hamas Faces Defiant Clans and Doubts Over Iran
Hamas terrorists carry grenade launchers at the funeral of Marwan Issa, a senior Hamas deputy military commander who was killed in an Israeli airstrike during the conflict between Israel and Hamas, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, Feb. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Short of commanders, deprived of much of its tunnel network, and unsure of support from its ally Iran, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is battling to survive in Gaza in the face of rebellious local clans and relentless Israeli military pressure.
Hamas fighters are operating autonomously under orders to hold out as long as possible, but the Islamist group is struggling to maintain its grip as Israel openly backs tribes opposing it, three sources close to Hamas said.
With a humanitarian crisis in Gaza intensifying international pressure for a ceasefire, Hamas badly needs a pause in the fighting, one of the people said.
Not only would a ceasefire offer respite to weary Gazans, who are growing increasingly critical of Hamas, but it would also allow the Islamist group to crush rogue elements, including some clans and looters who have been stealing aid, the person said.
To counter the immediate threat, Hamas has sent some of its top fighters to kill one rebellious leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, but so far he has remained beyond their reach in the Rafah area held by Israeli troops, according to two Hamas sources and two other sources familiar with the situation.
Reuters spoke to 16 sources including people close to Hamas, Israeli security sources, and diplomats who painted a picture of a severely weakened group, retaining some sway and operational capacity in Gaza despite its setbacks, but facing stiff challenges.
Hamas is still capable of landing blows: it killed seven Israeli soldiers in an attack in southern Gaza on Tuesday. But three diplomats in the Middle East said intelligence assessments showed it had lost its centralized command and control and was reduced to limited, surprise attacks.
An Israeli military official estimated Israel had killed 20,000 or more Hamas fighters and destroyed or rendered unusable hundreds of miles of tunnels under the coastal strip. Much of Gaza has been turned to rubble in 20 months of conflict.
One Israeli security source said the average age of Hamas fighters was “getting lower by the day.” Israeli security sources say Hamas is recruiting from hundreds of thousands of impoverished, unemployed, displaced young men.
Hamas does not disclose how many of its fighters have died.
“They’re hiding because they are being instantly hit by planes, but they appear here and there, organizing queues in front of bakeries, protecting aid trucks, or punishing criminals,” said Essam, 57 a construction worker in Gaza City.
“They’re not like before the war, but they exist.”
Asked for comment for this story, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said the group was working for an agreement to end the war with Israel but “surrender is not an option.”
Hamas remained committed to negotiations and was “ready to release all prisoners at once,” he said, referring to Israeli hostages, but it wanted the killing to stop and Israel to withdraw.
‘IT DOESN’T LOOK GOOD’
Hamas is a shadow of the group that attacked Israel in 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking another 251 hostages. Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas.
The damage inflicted by Israel is unlike anything Hamas has suffered since its creation, with most of its top military commanders in Gaza killed. Founded in 1987, Hamas had gradually established itself as the main rival of the Fatah faction led by President Mahmoud Abbas and finally seized Gaza from his control in 2007.
With a US-brokered truce in the Iran-Israel war holding, attention has switched back to the possibility of a Gaza deal that might end the conflict and release the remaining hostages.
One of the people close to Hamas told Reuters it would welcome a truce, even for a couple of months, to confront the local clans that are gaining influence.
But he said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s terms for ending the war – including Hamas leaders leaving Gaza – would amount to total defeat, and Hamas would never surrender.
“We keep the faith, but in reality it doesn’t look good,” the source said.
Yezid Sayigh, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said he believed Hamas was simply trying to survive. That was not just a physical challenge of holding out militarily, he said, but above all a political one.
“They face being eliminated on the ground in Gaza if the war doesn’t stop, but they also face being erased from any governing formula that ends the war in Gaza (if such a thing can be found),” he wrote in response to Reuters’ questions.
Palestinian tribes have emerged as part of Israel’s strategy to counter Hamas. Netanyahu has said publicly that Israel has been arming clans that oppose Hamas, but has not said which.
One of the most prominent challenges has come from Abu Shabab, a Palestinian Bedouin based in the Rafah area, which is under Israeli control.
Hamas wants Abu Shabab captured, dead or alive, accusing him of collaboration with Israel and planning attacks on the terrorist group, three Hamas sources told Reuters.
Abu Shabab controls eastern Rafah and his group is believed to have freedom of movement in the wider Rafah area. Images on their Facebook page show their armed men organizing the entry of aid trucks from the Kerem Shalom crossing.
Announcements by his group indicate that it is trying to build an independent administration in the area, though they deny trying to become a governing authority. The group has called on people from Rafah now in other areas of Gaza to return home, promising food and shelter.
In response to Reuters’ questions, Abu Shabab’s group denied getting support from Israel or contacts with the Israeli army, describing itself as a popular force protecting humanitarian aid from looting by escorting aid trucks.
It accused Hamas of violence and muzzling dissent.
A Hamas security official said the Palestinian security services would “strike with an iron fist to uproot the gangs of the collaborator Yasser Abu Shabab,” saying they would show no mercy or hesitation and accusing him of being part of “an effort to create chaos and lawlessness.”
Not all of Gaza’s clans are at odds with Hamas, however.
On Thursday, a tribal alliance said its men had protected aid trucks from looters in northern Gaza. Sources close to Hamas said the group had approved of the alliance’s involvement.
Israel said Hamas fighters had in fact commandeered the trucks, which both the clans and Hamas denied.
IRAN UNCERTAINTY
Palestinian analyst Akram Attallah said the emergence of Abu Shabab was a result of the weakness of Hamas, though he expected him to fail ultimately because Palestinians broadly reject any hint of collaboration with Israel.
Nevertheless, regardless of how small Abu Shabab’s group is, the fact Hamas has an enemy from the same culture was dangerous, he said. “It remains a threat until it is dealt with.”
Israel’s bombing campaign against Iran has added to the uncertainties facing Hamas. Tehran’s backing for Hamas played a big part in developing its armed wing into a force capable of shooting missiles deep into Israel.
While both Iran and Israel have claimed victory, Netanyahu on Sunday indicated the Israeli campaign against Tehran had further strengthened his hand in Gaza, saying it would “help us expedite our victory and the release of all our hostages.”
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that great progress was being made on Gaza, adding that the strike on Iran would help get the hostages released.
A Palestinian official close to Hamas said the group was weighing the risk of diminished Iranian backing, anticipating “the impact will be on the shape of funding and the expertise Iran used to give to the resistance and Hamas.”
One target of Israel’s campaign in Iran was a Revolutionary Guards officer who oversaw coordination with Hamas. Israel said Saeed Izadi, whose death it announced on Saturday, was the driving force behind the Iran–Hamas axis.
Hamas extended condolences to Iran on Thursday, calling Izadi a friend who was directly responsible for ties with “the leadership of the Palestinian resistance.”
A source from an Iran-backed group in the region said Izadi helped develop Hamas capabilities, including how to carry out complex attacks, including rocket launches, infiltration operations, and drones.
Asked about how the Israeli campaign against Iran might affect its support for Hamas, Abu Zuhri said Iran was a large and powerful country that would not be defeated.
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Israeli Strikes Targeting Hezbollah Pummel South Lebanon Hilltops
Smoke billows from the Nabatieh district, following Israeli strikes, as seen from Marjayoun, in southern Lebanon, June 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Karamallah Daher
More than a dozen Israeli air strikes battered a row of hilltops in southern Lebanon on Friday, security sources said, with the Israeli military saying it had attacked a damaged military site that terrorist group Hezbollah was seeking to restore.
The simultaneous strikes hit a mountainous strip near the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh, according to the Lebanese security sources, who said Iran-backed Hezbollah likely still had arms depots there. There was no immediate comment from the Islamist group.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets had attacked a site used to manage Hezbollah’s “fire and defense system.” It said the site was destroyed in last year’s war but that Hezbollah was attempting to resume activities there in breach of the November truce that ended the conflict.
Lebanon‘s President Joseph Aoun on Friday fired the same accusation back at Israel, saying it was continually violating the US-brokered ceasefire deal by keeping up strikes on Lebanon.
The ceasefire deal stipulates that southern Lebanon must be free of any non-state arms or fighters, Israeli troops must leave southern Lebanon as Lebanese troops deploy there. and all fire across the Lebanese-Israeli border must stop.
Israeli troops remain in at least five posts within Lebanese territory and its air force regularly kills rank-and-file Hezbollah members or people affiliated with the group.
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