Trump should not be allowed to torpedo Palestinian right to stay | Israel-Palestinian conflict

Prior to the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House, the President of the United States Donald Trump said that Palestinians have no “no alternative” but to leave Gaza. When the two leaders met in an oval office, Trump said that after Palestinians from Gaza’s belt move somewhere else, now “take over”. The president also expressed his desire to transform the Israeli occupied territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

These surrealistic statements were spoken on Tuesday because the Palestinians via the Gaza belt faced the unprecedented destruction left by the Israeli army. Many of the displaced and managed to return to their homes in the last two weeks, they found only ruins. According to the United Nations, the Israeli army bombed 90 percent of all residential units In the Gaza belt, leaving 160,000 units destroyed and 276,000 seriously or partially damaged.

While the dust is located and the image of the extent of destruction circulates on the main media, it became clear that the genocidal violence that Israel had liberated in Gaza had not only used to kill, emphasize and destroy, but also to underestimate the right of the Palestinian population to remain. And it is precisely the possibility of ensuring that the right that Trump’s -netyahu duo is now bent.

Staying as right

The right to stay is not formally recognized in the canon of human rights and is usually related to the refugees that have escaped from their country and are allowed to remain in the host country while seeking asylum. He was also called in the context of the so -called urban renewal projects, in which mostly marginalized and insecure urban inhabitants require their right to stay in their homes and among the community when they are facing the pressure of powerful actors who are committed to remodeling and gentrification. The right to stay is especially urgent in the colonial situations of immigrants in which colonizers actively dispute the indigenous population and try to replace them with the settlers. From the first nations in North America to the people of Aborigines and the island of Torres Stroit in Australia, immigrants used genocidal violence to denies native people.

The right to stay, however, is not just the right to “stay”. Instead, in order to enjoy this right, people must be able to stay in their community and have access to the material and social “infrastructure of existence”, including water and food, hospitals, schools, a place for worship and funds for life. Without this infrastructure, the right to stay becomes impossible.

In addition to the mere physical presence, the right to stay also includes the right to maintain historical and contemporary stories and networks of relationships which people and communities hold together and time. This is a key aspect of this right, because the colonial project of immigrants not only aims to have a physical removal and replacement of indigenous people, but also seeks to delete indigenous cultures, history and identities, as well as any attachment to the country. Finally, it cannot be allowed to remain occupied residents on besieged territory. The right to remain involved in people’s ability to determine their own destiny.

The history of permanent displacement

During the 1948 war, Palestinian cities were depopulated and about 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed because most of their residents became refugees in neighboring countries. In total, about 750,000 Palestinians from 900,000 inhabitants were displaced from their homes and ancestral land and were never allowed to return. Since then, a shift or threat has been displaced part of everyday Palestinian experience. Indeed, all over the occupied west coast, and even within Israel, in places like UMM al Hiran, the Palestinian communities are still forcibly triggering and removed from their countries and prevented from returning.

Israeli denial of the right to stay in Gaza’s belt, far supported by the US, it is far-up-not only because many communities are consisting of refugees and this is their second, third or fourth displacement-and because the shift has now become a tool from Genocide tool. As early as October 13, 2023, Israel issued a collective order for evacuation of 1.1 million Palestinians who live north of Wadi Gaza, and in the following months, similar orders were issued again and again, ultimately squeezed 90 percent of the population.

To be sure, international humanitarian law obliges the warring parties to protect the civilian population, which includes allowing crossing from war zones to safe areas. However, these provisions are informed by the assumption that the population has the right to remain in their homes and, therefore, to determine that evacuated persons must be allowed to return when the fighting is completed, making any form of permanent shift illegal. The transfer of the population must be temporary and can only be used for protection and humanitarian aid, and not, as Israel used, and Trump’s recent comments enhance, “” “humanitarian camouflage“To conceal the wholesale destruction and undoing of Palestinian spaces.

The right to remain self -determination

Now that the tribute has been proclaimed, the displaced Palestinians can come back to where they lived. Still, this movement in no way satisfies their right to stay. This is not a coincidence: the ability to stare is exactly what Israel aimed to eradicate in 15 months of war.

Problem of hospitals, schools, universities, mosques, shops and street markets, cemeteries and libraries with the destruction of roads, wells, electric networks, greenhouses and fishing ships not only in the service of mass murders and temporary cleaning of their residents, but also to create new reality on the new reality terrain, especially in the northern gauze. Therefore, it is not only that Palestinian homes have been destroyed, but also that only the existence of the population will be threatened and the years to come.

This is not a new thing. Throughout history, we have seen the settlers act on permanently ejecting and removing the indigenous population from their territories. We know learning from these stories that financial investments in the renovation of houses and infrastructure will not – by itself – ensure the right of the population to stay. The rest requires self -determination. In order to accomplish their right to stay, Palestinians must finally gain their freedom as self -determined people.

Israel has denied Palestinians their right to stay over 75 years. It’s high time to correct things. Every discussion of the future of gauze must be guided by the claims and aspirations of the Palestinian people. The promises of renewal and economic prosperity by foreign countries are not important unless they are explicitly related to Palestinian self -determination. The right to stay can only be guaranteed with decolonization and Palestinian release.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeere.