The U.S. President has suggested that displaced Palestinians in Gaza be permanently resettled outside the war-torn territory and that the U.S. take ‘ownership’ of the enclave
A view of an area in Gaza City destroyed during fighting between the Israeli army against Hamas, in Gaza City, on Feb. 4.Palestinians will mark this year the 77th anniversary of their mass expulsion from what is now Israel, an event that is at the core of their national struggle.
After the war, Israel refused to allow them to return because it would have resulted in a Palestinian majority within its borders. Instead, they became a seemingly permanent refugee community that now numbers some 6 million, with most living in slum-like urban refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The war has forced some 1.7 million Palestinians – around three quarters of the territory’s population – to flee their homes, often multiple times. That is well over twice the number that fled before and during the 1948 war. Israel has long called for the refugees of 1948 to be absorbed into host countries, saying that calls for their return are unrealistic and would endanger its existence as a Jewish-majority state. It points to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who came to Israel from Arab countries during the turmoil following its establishment, though few of them want to return.
In Gaza, Israel has unleashed one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history, at times dropping 2,000-pound bombs on dense, residential areas. Entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to wastelands of rubble and plowed-up roads, many littered with unexploded bombs. Asi and others fear that if another genuine Nakba occurs, it will be in the form of a gradual departure.
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