Gaza needs a new paradigm.
The world must develop a solution to deal with groups like Hamas. There has to be a better way than an endless cycle of atrocity, bombing, and rebuilding, only to repeat the cycle again.
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This is a guest essay written by Rachel Peck, a retired editor and proud Zionist.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza ⎯ clearing out its inhabitants and rebuilding it as a resort ⎯ created shock waves around the world.
Most reactions were negative, with some calling the proposed relocation of Gazans “ethnic cleansing.” The few positive reactions have been mostly from Israelis.
(If I were a cynic, I would point out that part of the military war against Israel, fought off the battlefield, has been to accuse it of violating human rights norms. Terms like “genocide” and “apartheid” have been falsely applied to Israel, because they influence world opinion so negatively. Calling resettlement, even if voluntary, “ethnic cleansing” is one more instance of this tactic.)
Was Trump serious? Both he and his advisors have already walked back some aspects of his original proposal. Like many of Trump’s proposals, this one may have been meant more to shake up people’s existing notions of how things “should” be than to actually be implemented.
Either way, Trump is forcing the world to deal with an inescapable truth: It’s time for a new paradigm for Gaza. No more giving Palestinians better economic opportunities, while Israel spends billions building fences and Iron Dome shields. No more “mowing the grass” every few years and waiting for the next terror attack. That paradigm was shattered to pieces on October 7th.
And in response to Trump, Arab leaders who have done nothing constructive about this problem in 75 years, let alone since October 7th, recently met in Egypt and formulated a plan for Gaza reconstruction. While it didn’t pass muster with Israel, the very fact that they made the effort was a start. A paradigm shift.
A paradigm shift is defined as a fundamental change in basic concepts. The most radical changes in human history have involved paradigm shifts; think the printing press, changing communication from oral to written, or, more recently, the shift from hard to soft copy in written and visual communication.
In a world where a terrorist organization like Hamas can attack its neighbor, using both its own and its neighbor’s civilians as human shields, a new paradigm is needed.
Only two questions must be asked: Is the proposed resettlement really ethnic cleansing? And, will it work?
While no legal definition of ethnic cleansing exists, most experts agree that it is the attempt to get rid of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group to establish a homogenous geographic area. The online Encyclopedia Britannica defines ethnic cleansing as:
“the attempt to create ethnically homogeneous geographic areas through the deportation or forcible displacement of persons belonging to particular ethnic groups. Ethnic cleansing sometimes involves the removal of all physical vestiges of the targeted group through the destruction of monuments, cemeteries, and houses of worship.”
(Such as, incidentally, Jordan expelling all Jews from Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem in 1948 and destroying Jewish synagogues and cemeteries.)
Examples of ethnic cleansing include the forced expulsions of Armenians from Turkey in the early 20th century, the forcible removal of Muslim Bosniaks by Bosnian Serbs and Croats, Nova Scotia’s removal of French Catholic Acadians, forced resettlement of Native Americans by the United States, and Hitler’s attempt to rid the world of Jews. As such, ethnic cleansing has often gone hand in hand with genocide.
But the lines get blurry, because sometimes what we call “ethnic” cleansing is not really about ethnicity or religion. Historically, humans have tended to group themselves by ethnic or religious membership. If one such group wants territory or resources that the other group holds, does not tolerate the other group’s culture or practices, or fears an internal “fifth column,” expulsions can look like ethnic or religious hatred.
And if a group’s leaders covet territory, or need a scapegoat to maintain their hold on power, they will not be transparent about these motives; rather, they will claim that the other group wants to destroy an important religious symbol, such as Al-Aqsa Mosque, or that it has stolen land that is theirs by divine right, whipping up religious or ethnic hatred where there was none before.
The Hutus of Rwanda did not hate the Tutsis because of some immutable racial characteristic; they hated them because colonial powers had given the Tutsis, already grouped by ethnic ties, power over the Hutus.
So, one test of whether resettling Gazans constitutes ethnic cleansing would be if Israel simultaneously attempted to expel Israeli Arabs, who make up 20 percent of the population of Israel. But neither Trump nor the Israeli government has suggested this.
The reason for resettling Gazans is that, as a group, they have made war on Israel and refuse to have Jews as neighbors or even fellow citizens of a single state. On October 7th and since, not only Hamas but much of the civilian population looted, raped, kidnapped, kept hostages, and murdered. At best, Gazan civilians turned a blind eye and did nothing. It is not their Arab ethnicity or Muslim religion that Israel objects to, but their murderous ideology and behavior.
If, as Hamas attempted and has said it will attempt again, one group tries to ethnically cleanse another, is it ethnic cleansing to remove the threat? If you kill someone who is trying to kill you, it is not murder but self-defense.
Will resettling Gazans work?
That depends. You cannot forcibly remove a population without violence. This is why almost every past attempt at ethnic cleansing has resulted in real or attempted genocides.
But Israel has shown no signs of attempting forcible removal, and it is highly unlikely that it will. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, in a recent France 24 interview, stressed that any departures of Gazans will be voluntary. Israeli minister Idit Stillman echoed Sa’ar, calling her policy proposal “encouraging immigration.”
Israel’s defense minister has ordered the army to prepare plans allowing Palestinians who wish to leave to do so. It is the insistence of Hamas and the larger world that Gazans cannot — must not! — leave, and the refusal of other Arab countries to admit those who wish to do so, that is immoral here.
Resettling Gazans will not necessarily change them from enemies to partners for peace, but it will take away their geographical base for acting on genocidal ambitions.
The problem that Israel faces isn’t unique to Israel. There are genocidal groups around the world. We have seen what ISIS has done in the Middle East. There are smoldering ethnic and religious conflicts in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia.
When a private citizen commits murder, most countries have a system of laws, police, and courts to ensure the offender is removed from society. There is no corresponding international mechanism to deal with genocidal terror groups. (The United Nations and International Criminal Court have limited jurisdiction and powers and have proven spectacularly useless, from Lebanon to Rwanda.)
International law seeks to minimize harm to innocent civilians. Yet in recent years, extremist groups have sought safety by hiding among those civilians. In Mosul, where ISIS embedded among civilians, Iraq and allies (including the U. S.) basically had to destroy the city to save it. Israel has the additional problem that civilians in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank frequently cooperate in atrocities and war crimes with the terror group governing them.
The world needs a solution to deal with such groups. There has to be a better way than an endless cycle of atrocity, bombing, and rebuilding, only to repeat the cycle again.
Would it not only be preferable but moral to remove genocidal groups from proximity to their targets? If the UN Security Council, instead of countless resolutions condemning Israel, resolved that groups such as ISIS and Hamas have no place among the nations, and came up with a mechanism to deal with this threat?
But this is unlikely. Israel, with U.S. backing, will have to act itself, not because it hates Arabs or Muslims, but so its people will be safe. Self-defense is not murder, and this precept can be applied to resettling hostile populations as well.
The challenge will be to facilitate resettlement voluntarily, in the case of civilians, and by any means necessary in the case of Hamas fighters and enablers. This can be done by economic incentives and finding countries willing to take them in for the former, and military action for the latter.
Naturally, critics will condemn Gazan resettlement. But nothing Israel does will gain their approval. When Israel moved civilians out of harm’s way, they were accused of displacing them; but if they hadn’t moved them, they’d have been accused of genocide. As they were anyway.
The world condemned Israel when it bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981, but today nobody mentions it, because they can see that it was a positive thing. If Israel can halt the endless cycle of terror attacks by Hamas, while improving the lives of Gazans Hamas holds hostage to its drive for genocide, the world will come to see that as a net positive, too.
And the paradigm of terror groups holding the civilized world hostage will have been broken.
"Naturally, critics will condemn Gazan resettlement. But nothing Israel does will gain their approval." That is it right there. NOTHING Israel does will ever be met with approval, even when they finally save the world from a nuclear Iran--they'll still shit on Israel.
Well written and the sad reality. Things will not change until a significant majority of people living around Israel want a paradigm change. Enough Arabs must WANT to coexist and cooperate with Israelis to allow for change that will be beneficial to all living in the Middle East. Can you imagine if less money was spent on armies and weapons and more on housing, schools and hospitals. And that means schools that did not teach hatred, but math, language, history.