Before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, United States President Donald Trump said Palestinians have “no alternative” but to leave Gaza. Trump stated that the US would “take over” after Palestinians from the Gaza Strip were relocated to a different country when the two leaders met in the Oval Office. The president also expressed his desire to establish the “Riviera of the Middle East” in the area of Israeli occupation.
As Palestinians across the Gaza Strip are inundated with the remnants of unprecedented destruction left behind by the Israeli army, these unbelievable statements were made on Tuesday. Many people who have been displaced and have been able to return to their homes in the last two weeks have only discovered ruin. According to the United Nations, the Israeli army has bombed 90 percent of all , housing units in the Gaza Strip, leaving 160, 000 units destroyed and 276, 000 severely or partially damaged.
It has become clear that the genocidal violence that Israel used in Gaza was intended to kill, displaced, and destroy as well as undermine the Palestinian people’s right to remain as the dust settles and images of the extent of the destruction become widely known. The Trump-Netanyahu duo is now intent on preventing this right by examining the possibility of securing it.
Remaining as a right
Refugees who have fled their country and are permitted to remain in a host country while seeking asylum are typically associated with the right to remain, which is not explicitly stated in the human rights canon. In response to pressure from powerful actors pushing for gentrification and redevelopment, it has also been used in the context of so-called urban renewal projects where mostly underprivileged and insecure urban residents demand their right to remain in their homes and among their neighbors. In settler-colonial settings where colonisers actively retake the place of the Indigenous population with settlers, the right to remain is especially urgent. Native Americans have been denied this right by settlers who have used genocidal violence in Australia, including Native Americans from First Nations in North America and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
The right to remain, however, is not merely the right to “stay put”. Rather, to enjoy this right, people must be able to remain within their community and have access to both material and social “infrastructures of existence”, including water and food, hospitals, schools, places of worship and the means to a livelihood. Without these infrastructures, the right to remain becomes impossible.
Beyond just having physical presence, the right to remain includes the preservation of both historical and contemporary narratives and interconnected histories. Because the settler-colonial project aims to physically remove and replace Indigenous people with new ones, as well as any attachments to land, this is a crucial component of this right. Finally, it is unacceptable to allow it to continue to exist as an occupied occupier within a besieged territory. A person’s ability to choose their own destiny is a part of their right to remain.
A history of permanent displacement
Palestinian cities were depopulated during the 1948 war, and about 500 villages were destroyed as a result of the majority of the population’s displacement. In total, about 750, 000 Palestinians out of a population of 900, 000 were displaced from their homes and ancestral lands and were never allowed to return. Since then, the Palestinian experience has included displacement or the threat of displacement. Palestinian communities are still forcibly displaced from their lands and prevented from returning throughout the occupied West Bank and even within Israel in places like Umm al Hiran.
The Gaza Strip’s continued denial of the right to remain in the country is worse because many communities are refugees, and this is their second, third, or fourth displacement, as well as because displacement has now evolved into a genocide tool. As early as October 13, 2023, Israel issued a collective evacuation order to 1.1 million Palestinians living north of Wadi Gaza, and in the following months, similar orders were issued time and again, ultimately displacing 90 percent of the Strip’s population.
In addition to allowing them to relocate from warzones to safe areas, international humanitarian law requires warring parties to protect civilian populations. These provisions, which assume that populations have a right to remain in their homes, require that evacuees be permitted to return when the fighting ends, making any form of permanent displacement prohibited. A “humanitarian camouflage” must be used to cover up the widespread destruction and destruction of Palestinian spaces, as Israel has done and Trump’s recent comments reinforce. It cannot be used for protection or humanitarian relief.
The right to remain and self-determination
Palestinians who have been displaced by the declaration of a ceasefire can now return to their former homes. However, their right to remain is in no way satisfied by this movement back. In 15 months of conflict, Israel has been aiming to eradicate the ability to remain, which is no coincidence.
The razing of hospitals, schools, universities, mosques, shops and street markets, cemeteries and libraries alongside the destruction of roads, wells, electricity grids, greenhouses and fishing vessels was not only carried out in the service of mass killings and the temporary cleansing of areas of their inhabitants but also to create a new reality on the ground, particularly in northern Gaza. Therefore, Palestinian homes have been destroyed, and the population’s very existence will also be in jeopardized for years to come.
This is not a new thing. Over time, how settlers permanently displaced and eliminated Indigenous populations from their territories has been a reality. In light of these tales, we are aware that financial investment in rehabilitating homes and infrastructure won’t, by itself, guarantee the population’s survival. Remaining requires self-determination. Palestinians must finally be granted their right to remain in order for them to be able to exercise their right to remain.
Palestinians are denied the right to remain in Israel for more than 75 years. It is high time to set things straight. The aspirations and claims of the Palestinian people must be the guiding principles for any discussion of Gaza’s future. Except in writing that they are directly related to Palestinian self-determination, foreign countries’ promises of reconstruction and economic prosperity are unimportant. Only decolonization and the liberation of the Palestinians can guarantee the right to remain.
Source: Aljazeera
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