Will They Add Another Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine to Their List of 21st Century Crimes?
By S. Amjad Hussain
Mar/Apr 25
After 15 months of relentless bombing of Gaza in which much of the walled-off territory was reduced to rubble and more than 64,000 civilians were killed (as calculated by The Lancet journal in January 2025), Israel has agreed to a ceasefire. In essence, the conditions of this ceasefire render it identical to the proposal that then-U.S. President Joe Biden announced last summer.
Why did it take more than six months to implement a proposal that had already been agreed upon? It seems that Israeli domestic politics got in the way. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government depends on the support of six extreme right parties that together make up 64 of the ruling coalition’s seats in the 120-seat Israeli Knesset.
These parties were set against the ceasefire and vowed to leave the government if Netanyahu agreed to it. Israel’s avowedly fascist Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was true to his word in this case and resigned his position in protest, but most of the others within the coalition stayed and saved the government from collapse.
The question remains: What made the Israeli government agree to a ceasefire in the first place? Israel felt pressured by the return of Trump.
In the final negotiation, Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff (who is not a diplomat, but a New York real estate investor), played a pivotal role in pressuring Netanyahu to accept the deal that he had rejected many times before over the past year. Allegedly, Netanyahu was ultimately convinced to accept the deal when the Trump team also promised to empty the Gaza Strip of Palestinians.
The ceasefire calls for phased release of Israeli hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. But Palestinians in Israeli prisons are, in fact, hostages. When innocent men, women, and children are kidnapped from their homes in Gaza and on the West Bank and kept in administrative detention without being charged with any crime, they are hostages held by the occupying state. And when these hostages are “tried” in Israeli military courts, the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Israeli military courts have a higher than 95% conviction rate for Palestinian defendants since 1967.
The ceasefire also calls for an increase in the flow of food into the Gaza strip. During their assault on Gaza, Israel allowed in a fraction of the food that was ready to enter the Strip. In December 2024, Human Rights Watch stated that Israel was using starvation as a weapon. In the first three days after the ceasefire, though, at least 2,400 food and aid trucks entered Gaza.
However, the ceasefire is, at best, a murky arrangement as Israel continues its aggression in what is left to Palestinians in the West Bank. And considering the power held by the Israeli lobby on the American political establishment, it cannot be ruled out that Israel would find some flimsy excuse to restart their genocide against the Palestinians once all of its people have been retrieved.
One wonders why Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken were not able to accomplish what Trump did even before becoming president? The simple answer is pressure.
Biden refused to use America’s enormous leverage against Israel and continued sending billions in military aid to a state committing genocide until the very end of their administration. But as the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz put it succinctly, Israel only understands force. By not using political leverage while at the same time repeating the fatuous mantra of two-state solution, Biden and Blinken were really talking from both sides of their mouths. As a result, over the course of the past four years, we have seen precious little accomplished by the Biden administration to achieve any sort of peace in the Middle East.
On Jan. 15, 2025, Blinken addressed the Atlantic Council think tank, stating: “It is time to forge a new reality in the Middle East in which all people are more secure, all can realize their national aspirations, all can live in peace. Is that hard to achieve? Yes. Peace in the region has always been. Is it impossible? No. Is it necessary? Absolutely, yes.”
The ad nauseum repetition of a two-state solution has become a joke, especially coming from the former U.S. Secretary of State. More than any other person in Biden’s circle, Blinken knew that Israel would never agree to a two-state solution.
Trump injected another element into this complex equation when he suggested the idea of having Indonesia take in one million-plus Palestinians. No sooner had he made that ridiculous suggestion than he lobbed another idiotic bombshell, asking Jordan and Egypt to take refugees from Gaza. Upon finding no response, he even brought up the possibility of bringing Albania into the deal.
Trump is parroting the views of Israeli, American, British, and European right-wing politicians. They want to build Jewish settlements in Gaza by “voluntary” repatriation of Gazans to other Arab countries. In common parlance, Trump’s proposal is nothing more than ethnic cleansing.
For Palestinians it is a double whammy. First a genocide with the tacit approval of the United States and now an attempt to ethnically cleanse Gaza for good.
It is said that Arab countries have sold their honor and traditions to the interests of the United States. Following this line of thought, the Jimmy Carter engineered Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt was the first step in this surrender. Subsequently other Arab countries – typically ruled by despots – have also given up on solidarity with Palestine mostly in exchange for American military products and/or protection.
And now the Abraham Accords have brought most Arab countries into the United States’ sphere of interest and in turn, into Israel’s. The only notable regional hold out so far is Saudi Arabia.
Considering Trump’s propensity to retaliate against those who refuse to buckle under his dictates, it is not beyond him to issue an ultimatum to his Arab client states to either toe the line or be ready for retaliation.
That is why it is time that all Arab countries come together and devise a common strategy for the future of the Middle East that is based on their shared history and values. Only then Palestine will have a true ally in the region.
S. Amjad Hussain, MD, FRCSC, FACS, D.Sc. honoris causa, is Emeritus Professor of Cardiothoracic surgery at the College of Medicine and Life Sciences; and Emeritus Professor of Humanities, College of Arts and Letters University of Toledo.
An earlier version was published in The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, on January 29, 2025.