For the moment, we have not noted any reactions from NGOs or the United Nations regarding Donald Trump's proposal to ” to clean “ the Gaza Strip and to ask Egypt and Jordan to ” take “ refugees from the Palestinian enclave. It will be up to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to take up this issue or not. An arrest warrant has already been issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
To answer your question, legally, the “the correct term in international humanitarian law is “forced transfer””as explained to Monde in November Shai Parnes, spokesperson for the Israeli human rights NGO B'Tselem, who also uses the expression “ethnic cleansing”, “more familiar” for the general public. “Responsibility for these atrocities lies not only with Israel, but also with the international community which condones them”Mr. Parnes then specified.
Deportation and forced population transfer are crimes recognized by the ICC in the Rome Statute.
At this stage, neither Israel, Jordan nor Egypt have officially reacted to the American president's comments.
The idea is expected to be welcomed by Israel, where the prime minister's far-right partners have long advocated what they describe as the migration of large numbers of Palestinians and the reestablishment of Jewish settlements in Gaza.
Human rights groups have previously accused Israel of ethnic cleansing, which United Nations experts have defined as a policy designed by one ethnic or religious group and aimed at driving the civilian population of another ethnic group from certain areas. “by violent and terror-inspiring means”.
Before and during the 1948-1949 Arab-Israeli War, which began in the wake of Israel's creation, some 700,000 Palestinians – more than half the pre-war population – fled or were driven from their homes. , an event they commemorate under the name Nakba, an Arabic term meaning “catastrophe”.
During the 1967 Middle East War, when Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip, an additional 300,000 Palestinians fled, mostly to Jordan.
-The decades-old refugee crisis is a key driver of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and one of the thorniest issues in the failed peace talks in 2009. Palestinians demand a right of return, while that Israel claims they should be absorbed by surrounding Arab countries.
Many Palestinians view the latest war in Gaza, in which entire neighborhoods were bombed and 90 percent of the 2.3 million residents were driven from their homes, as a new Nakba. They fear that if large numbers of Palestinians leave Gaza, they too will never be able to return.
Resolutely staying on one's land is at the heart of Palestinian culture, and this was clearly demonstrated in Gaza on Sunday, when thousands attempted to return to the most destroyed part of the territory.
Egypt and Jordan fiercely rejected the idea of accepting refugees from Gaza at the start of the war, when the idea was mooted by some Israeli officials.
Both countries have made peace with Israel but support the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. They fear permanent displacement of the population of Gaza make this creation impossible.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi also warned of the security implications of transferring large numbers of Palestinians to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, which borders Gaza.
The World with AP
