[[link removed]]

PEACE IN GAZA DEPENDS ON PALESTINIANS’ RIGHT TO REMAIN—AND RETURN
 
[[link removed]]


 

David Vine
October 24, 2025
Foreign Policy in Focus
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Trump's peace plan includes a promise not to expel any Palestinians
from Gaza. Can that promise be kept? _

Displaced Palestinians return to their homes in Gaza City
(Shutterstock),

 

Amid some extremely cautious optimism for peace following a tenuous
and incomplete
[[link removed]]
ceasefire in Gaza, any hope for Gaza’s future depends significantly
on a little-noticed point in President Donald Trump’s original
20-point peace plan
[[link removed]].

The plan’s twelfth point says, “No one will be forced to leave
Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to
return.” The plan goes even further, saying, “We will encourage
people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better
Gaza.”

Although there are reasons to doubt many elements of the Trump
“peace plan”—which neither side has agreed to in full—the
assertion that no one will be forced to leave Gaza represents a major
reversal
[[link removed]]:
prior Israeli and U.S. government policy clearly aimed to force some
or all Palestinians from the Strip.

Indeed, Trump’s previous plan
[[link removed]]
to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” involved
[[link removed]]
displacing Palestinians outside the Strip. Last March, Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu stated
[[link removed]] his
support for the “realization of the Trump plan” and what some
Israeli and U.S. leaders euphemistically called “voluntary
migration.”

“This is the plan. We are not hiding it,” Netanyahu said. That
same month, the Israeli cabinet approved
[[link removed]]
the creation of a so-called Voluntary Emigration Bureau charged with
moving Palestinians out of Gaza and to other countries such as Libya,
Indonesia, and the Republic of the Congo.

The mass expulsion of Palestinians by the Israeli government has been
a major feature of the last two years of violence following the
October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas and allied forces, which resulted in
the deaths of around 1,200 Israelis and foreigners. In a new report
[[link removed]]
published by Brown University’s Costs of War Project, I compiled the
best available international data to document how the Israeli military
has displaced
[[link removed]]
almost everyone in Gaza over the past two years: 2,026,636 people or
around 92 percent of the Strip’s pre-war population. Many have been
displaced multiple times: on average, three to four times for every
displaced person. Around 45 percent of the displaced have been kids.

The displacement has extended to the West Bank, where some Israeli
leaders have also supported
[[link removed]]
ethnic cleansing. In the last two years, 43,624 Palestinians in the
West Bank and East Jerusalem have been displaced
[[link removed]] from
their homes by the Israeli military and police forces,
government-backed Israeli settlers, Israeli government demolition
orders, and other violent causes. Broader Israeli and U.S. wars in the
region have displaced an additional 3.2 million people in Iran,
Lebanon, and Israel itself, as well as what are likely thousands more
in Yemen and Syria.

According to numerous
[[link removed]]
experts
[[link removed]],
the mass displacement
[[link removed]]
of Palestinians—nearly 12,000
[[link removed]]
per day on average in Gaza alone—constitutes the war crime
[[link removed]]
of “forcible transfer,” which is a crime against humanity under
international law. Senators Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley
concluded
[[link removed]]
in a September 2025 report that “the facts demonstrated
overwhelmingly” that Israel was “implementing a plan to ethnically
cleanse Gaza of Palestinians and dealing a death blow to the vision of
a future Palestinian state that would include Gaza and the West
Bank.” Any implementation of the original Trump plan to displace
Palestinians to other countries would constitute further war crimes
and ethnic cleansing
[[link removed]].
It would also continue a pattern of ethnic cleansing dating to the
founding of the Israeli state in 1948 and Israeli military forces’
expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians in what Palestinians call
the _Nakba—_the catastrophe.

The lives of millions of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and
ultimately the lives of millions of Israelis, hang in the balance as
the world waits to see if Netanyahu’s government abides by the
current ceasefire and commits to a full end to its war or if it
re-commences its assault and genocide as it has in prior
[[link removed]]
ceasefires.

Since the announcement of a deal last week, thousands of displaced
Palestinians have filled roads walking in search of their homes in a
vast landscape of grey rubble. The sight of people trying to return
home amid such destruction offers a glimmer of hope while reflecting
the immensity of the challenges ahead.

“I’m going to Gaza City even though there are no conditions for
life there—no infrastructure, no fresh water,” one of the
displaced, Naim Irheem, insisted
[[link removed]]
to one of the few news outlets reporting from Gaza. “Everything is
extremely difficult, truly difficult, but we must go back. My son was
killed, all my daughters were wounded. Still, I want to return.
We’ll pitch a tent and live in it, however it can be done.”

Ending the displacement of Palestinians as well as the mass killing
and destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure are clear requirements for
anything approaching peace. Israeli and U.S. leaders must commit to
the Trump peace plan’s promise that no one will be expelled from
Gaza.

This promise—and the entire peace process—may prove to be yet
another cynical ruse
[[link removed]],
much like the Israeli government calling past expulsion “voluntary
migration.” For now, supporters of peace
[[link removed]] must work to ensure that no
one will be forced to leave Gaza, that the displaced can return home
as international law requires, and that they receive aid and
reparations for their displacement.

These must be among the first steps toward real peace and justice that
will require holding perpetrators accountable for their crimes and
addressing Palestinians’ rightful demands to return to homes from
which they were displaced beginning in 1948.

_Articles_ [[link removed]]_ by David Vine_

_Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) is a “Think Tank Without Walls”
connecting the research and action of scholars, advocates, and
activists seeking to make the United States a more responsible global
partner. It is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies._

_FPIF provides timely analysis of U.S. foreign policy and
international affairs and recommends policy alternatives on a broad
range of global issues — from war and peace to trade and from
climate to public health. From its launch as a print journal in 1996
to its digital presence today, FPIF has served as a unique resource
for progressive foreign policy perspectives for decades._

_We believe U.S. security and world stability are best advanced
through a commitment to peace, justice, and environmental protection,
as well as economic, political, and social rights. We advocate that
diplomatic solutions, global cooperation, and grassroots participation
guide foreign policy._

_FPIF aims to amplify the voice of progressives and to build links
with social movements in the U.S. and around the world. Through these
connections, we advance and influence debate and discussion among
academics, activists, policy-makers, and the general public._

_FPIF is directed by John Feffer, an IPS associate fellow, playwright,
and widely published expert on a broad array of foreign policy
subjects. Peter Certo, the IPS communications director, contributes as
an editor._

* Palestine
[[link removed]]
* Israel
[[link removed]]
* Gaza
[[link removed]]
* Palestinian right of return
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Bluesky [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]