Trump has kicked off a new wave of dehumanizing Palestinians. Let’s remember who the real enemies are
It’s Hamas, not Palestinians at large, who are responsible for all this suffering
Two boys amid the rubble in Firas Square, Gaza City, on Feb. 8. Photo by Abood Abusalama / Middle East Images via AFP / Getty Images
After President Donald Trump this week revealed his outlandish vision for Gaza during a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, I was taken aback by the reactions I saw from individuals whom I otherwise consider reasonable partners in working to build bridges when it comes to Israel and Palestine.
Because what I saw was rancor that entirely overlooked the nuance of this complicated situation — one in which many Palestinians are just as furious with Hamas as Israelis are. Worse, I saw many whom I know crave peace go out of their way to rationalize this incoherent and impractical proposal, simply because it seems like it could fulfill a deeply held desire to see Palestinians go away.
What if, instead, those people devoted their energy to envisioning real and practical solutions for dislodging Hamas and promoting a different pathway forward in Gaza?
Trump’s declaration that the United States will take over Gaza and transform it into a real estate heaven was preceded by his insistence that the 2 million-some Palestinians who live in Gaza be removed from the coastal enclave and rehoused in Egypt and Jordan, among other destinations. His announcement sent hordes of pro-Israel social media accounts across the political spectrum into frenzied jubilation that, somehow, the Palestinians were going to simply disappear.
There were memes promoting the plan as the ultimate punishment for Palestinians in Gaza; dehumanizing language suggested that those Palestinians inherently lack the capacity to develop and evolve.
This is particularly painful, because what Palestinians in Gaza have already experienced is dehumanizing enough. Not just at the hands of Israel, but at those of their own leaders.
Scores of Palestinians in Gaza and beyond are furious at Hamas for using the ceasefire to proclaim victory. The terror group turned Gaza into ruins with its futile armed resistance project, squandering billions of dollars of aid money and valued property and resulting in the needless death of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. That is no victory. Their despicable propaganda charades during hostage handovers, and a well-orchestrated and financed effort by Qatari-funded media and influencers to show defiant pro-resistance attitudes in Gaza, have generated a new swell of resentment among Israeli and Jewish audiences.
My own brother returned to the site of our family’s destroyed home in Gaza City, witnessing unimaginable levels of destruction on the way, and finding a lifeless, uninhabitable territory. I asked him and many of my contacts in Gaza what they were hearing, and almost all shared two common messages: Gazans everywhere are cursing Hamas and holding the group responsible for their annihilation, and people feel hopeless about the prospect of life in the territory for the foreseeable future.
Their cause has been further hurt by some Palestinians in Gaza who, calling themselves “journalists,” have amassed audiences in the Western world by sharing the most unhelpful and unrealistic attitudes about a supposed “victory” of the “resistance” in Gaza and the impending return of Palestinians to all of Palestine. Most of these social media personalities have nothing to say to their fellow Palestinians in Gaza, who are experiencing the horror of Israeli bombardment and the terror of life under Hamas’s nefarious behavior. Instead, these influencers and personalities gained immense clout with hordes of ill-informed and ignorant “pro-Palestine” spectators in Europe, Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey, Australia, the United States and beyond.
Their statements have fueled further dehumanization of the Palestinian people, with the narrative shifting overnight from that of “genocide” to “we won” — as if hundreds of thousands of people are not still actively living through a disaster.
Palestinians do not represent a problem to be solved or a cause to be won; they are people. Yet it seems, in the wake of Trump’s announcement, that many are intent on not seeing them as such.
In Israel, Gaza’s population is portrayed as supportive of Hamas and hellbent on perpetual war. The message is that peace is impossible; renewed war is inevitable; and no amount of empathy and humanity will change the seemingly inhumane nature of Palestinians in the coastal enclave.
There are numerous reasons why this line of thinking, regardless of how tempting it might be, is misleading and inaccurate. It is true that Hamas has some levels of ideological support among a segment of Palestinians. But that absolutely does not equate to the inevitability of all Palestinians being fundamentally unwilling to focus on nation-building and becoming a prosperous people — an end that, in reality, is desired by the grand majority of Gazans.
This is nothing new. Gaza has long been seen as a troublesome area by many in Israel, especially after it defied Israeli attempts to pacify it after its occupation following the Six-Day War in 1967. Fierce Marxist-Leninist guerillas in the strip regularly attacked Israeli troops; then Hamas formally launched in Gaza in the 1980s, launching ruthless operations against the Israeli occupation of the territory.
The renegade territory has proven so difficult to control that, in the 1990s, former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin famously wished that one day he might wake up to find Gaza had been swallowed by the sea. When Hamas ejected the Palestinian Authority from Gaza in 2007, it became clear that the territory was headed in a newly problematic direction for which the Palestinian people would pay a heavy price. Some in Israel thought that a sort of peaceful stalemate could be established with Hamas in control, but that belief was clearly shattered by the Oct. 7 attack, further bolstering the idea that Palestinians in Gaza will always pose an existential threat to Israel, and that they must all be expelled.
Jewish and Israeli grievances about the violence Hamas has unleashed are justified. But those grievances do not justify support for the racist and deeply offensive foreign policy Trump has proposed, and which Netanyahu has endorsed. The desire to see Gazans simply vanish violates many Jewish values, and risks Israel inviting further alienation, division, and isolation from other communities.
Instead of investing in this dangerous fantasy, it is time for those who cheered Trump’s plan to look inward, and ask what a real path toward a peaceful future might look like. That might involve asking why Netanyahu allowed Hamas to become entrenched in Gaza and even gave them forms of indirect support in hopes that propping them up would keep Palestinians politically divided, and undermine the prospect of the two-state solution.
It might involve questioning why Israel has refused to allow the Palestinian Authority and other Palestinians to be involved in shaping a different pathway forward in Gaza amid discussions about the end of the war. It might involve examining how Netanyahu’s mismanagement of the war can be seen as a direct contributor to Hamas remaining in control — an outcome that I warned of in this very outlet in November, 2023.
I wish that my Jewish and Israeli allies would acknowledge the absurdity of celebrating the idea of forced displacement of a people who are powerless to get rid of Hamas. I wish they could accept that it was Hamas, not Palestinians as a monolith, that chose to start a war on Oct. 7. At a time when charges of “genocide” and “apartheid” have fomented deep divisions, adding genuine ethnic cleansing to the mix — even if it’s disguised with terminology such as “voluntary emigration” — is the last thing that Israelis or Palestinians need.
Those who are throwing all of their eggs in Trump’s basket risk sinking to new lows and causing irreversible damage to prospects of healing, reconciliation, tolerance, peace, and coexistence.
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