Why is the world not helping Gazans flee a war zone?
In most contemporary conflicts, global efforts are made to facilitate the evacuation of refugees. Gaza is proving to be the exception
Palestinians with dual citizenship seeking permission to leave Gaza at the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, Nov. 1, 2023. Photo by Ahmad Salem/Bloomberg via Getty Images
For all its professed care for Palestinians, the world has a funny way of showing it. Despite the devastation wrought in the Gaza Strip in the last four and a half months, the international community has essentially trapped Palestinians in the enclave, leaving them no way to escape the horrors of war.
Historically speaking, this is quite the anomaly, as war consistently produces refugees. As George Mason University’s Eugene Kontorovich recently observed, “months after the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022, 3.5 million Ukrainians had applied for temporary residence in countries such as Poland and Germany. The Syrian civil war,” he writes, “produced five million refugees.” The American invasion of Iraq, meanwhile, “produced two million international refugees.”
World leaders, it seems, didn’t get the memo. Since Oct. 7, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has repeatedly asserted variations of the demand that Palestinians “must not be pressed to leave Gaza.” On Feb. 13, United Nations relief chief Martin Griffiths said Gazans have “nowhere safe to go,” while a spokesperson for U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres declared that “the United Nations will not be party to any forced displacement of people.” On Feb. 12, discussing calls to evacuate Gazans, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell asked, “They are going to evacuate? Where? To the moon?”
There are concerns that Gazans fleeing the Strip would enable Israel to resettle it, and understandably so. On Jan. 30, Israel’s Channel 12 published a poll in which 38% of respondents supported reestablishing Jewish settlements in Gaza, with 51% opposed. Were Gazans to flee en masse, many of them would likely never return. For those who are already descendents of Palestinian refugees from previous wars, this may well represent a second Nakba — the Arabic word for the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s War of Independence — which would be an immense trauma, to say the least.
Nevertheless, choosing to flee a war zone where 1 in every 100 Gazans have reportedly been killed is a decision for Palestinians, and Palestinians alone, to make. The world should be facilitating refugee corridors for Gazans, because Gazans are the only ones who have the right to decide their future.
So why can’t they leave?
Citing everything from security concerns to solidarity with the Palestinian cause, Egypt, the only nation besides Israel that shares a border with the enclave, has shut its border and refused to welcome any meaningful number of Gazan refugees. “We are prepared to sacrifice millions of lives to ensure that no one encroaches upon our territory,” Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said in October. And the world barely batted an eyelid.
It’s quite an astonishing feat of hypocrisy, when you think about it. For months, countless politicians, human rights groups and others have decried the civilian death toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza, yet few, if any, have shown even the slightest interest in helping Gazans do what millions in previous conflicts have: Find refuge in a third country.
Well aware they’ve been abandoned, Gazans are finding their own ways to escape. In January, The Guardian reported that “Palestinians desperate to leave Gaza are paying bribes to brokers of up to $10,000 (£7,850) to help them exit the territory through Egypt.” Speaking to The Guardian, a United Kingdom-based Palestinian who has lost family in Gaza during this war bemoaned that “no schemes have been introduced, nothing to evacuate people. I don’t even hear humanitarians talk about this any more.” For Gazans, they explained, the world’s message is clear: “We’re not going to protect you or give you safety, we’re just going to give you some food and water while you are bombed.”
Inexplicably, the world is denying Palestinians one of the most fundamental human rights, that of being allowed to flee war zones — one that’s enshrined in multiple United Nations conventions — when they need it most.
The most logical places of refuge for Gazans, of course, are surrounding Arab and Muslim countries, many of which have no shortage of Palestinian inhabitants. But when they’ve been pressured to accept Gazan refugees, it hasn’t been well received.
“You want us to take one million people? Well, I am going to send them to Europe. You care about human rights so much — well you take them,” an Egyptian official reportedly told a European counterpart in October. “The Egyptians are really, really angry” at pressure to accept refugees, the European official told the Financial Times. (Recently, however, while officially denying it, Egypt has begun constructing an enclosure to host between 50,000 to 60,000 Gazans should they flee into the Sinai.)
The brutal truth, which public figures seem unwilling to admit, is that from Egypt, to Jordan, the Gulf states, Turkey, or Iran, none of these nations care enough to absorb significant numbers of refugees from Gaza. In other words, nobody wants them.
As for the United States, beyond repeatedly rejecting any forced displacement of Gazans, Blinken has had little to say about their lack of options to leave. Ultimately, as Eugene Kontorovich writes, such comments from the U.S. have “distracted from its unconscionable silence about the deadly reality that Gazans are trapped against their will in what has now become the world’s largest open-air prison.”
Allowing Gazans to leave wouldn’t just reduce the civilian death count; it would simultaneously aid Israel in ridding Gaza of the genocidal death cult that is Hamas — a goal no decent person can oppose. One of Israel’s greatest challenges in this war has been neutralizing Hamas’ fighters and military infrastructure while doing its best to avoid harming innocents in a war zone that for nearly two decades has been specifically designed by Hamas to maximize civilian casualties.
Since Hamas seems exceedingly unlikely to unconditionally surrender — undoubtedly the quickest way to end the violence and begin working on a better future for Israelis and Palestinians — the next best option is for Israel to uproot Hamas from Gaza. The fewer civilians in the way, the better for everyone involved, except Hamas. But in a grotesquely ironic twist, world leaders and human rights advocates have unwittingly united with Hamas in keeping Gazans in harm’s way.
Perhaps the reason nobody has explained this stance is because it’s indefensible. If in every other major conflict, millions of refugees flee their homes in an attempt to find safety, there is no moral justification for denying this option to Palestinians. World leaders need to decide: either they genuinely care for Gazans’ wellbeing, in which case they must find a way to enable would-be refugees to leave, or the crocodile tears over civilian casualties must end. They can’t have it both ways.
To contact the author, email [email protected].
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
