Trump must not be allowed to torpedo the Palestinian right to remain
A drone view shows Palestinians walking past the rubble of houses and buildings in Jabalia, northern Gaza, on19 January 2025
Naama Blatman and Neve Gordon write in Al Jazeera on 5 Feb 2025:
Before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, United States President Donald Trump said Palestinians have “no alternative” but to leave Gaza. When the two leaders met in the Oval Office, Trump declared that after Palestinians from the Gaza Strip are moved elsewhere, the US will “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 uttered on Tuesday as Palestinians across the Gaza Strip are facing unprecedented destruction left behind by the Israeli army. Many of those who have been displaced and have managed to go back to their homes in the past two weeks have found only ruins. According to the United Nations, the Israeli army has bombed 90 percent of all housing units in the Gaza Strip, leaving 160,000 units destroyed and 276,000 severely or partially damaged.
As the dust settles and images of the extent of the devastation circulate on mainstream media, it has become clear that the genocidal violence Israel unleashed in Gaza was not only used to kill, displace and destroy but also to undercut the Palestinian population’s right to remain. And it is precisely the possibility of securing this right that the Trump-Netanyahu duo is now bent on preventing.
Remaining as a right
The right to remain is not formally recognised within the human rights canon and is usually associated with refugees who have fled their country and are permitted to stay in a host country while seeking asylum. It has also been invoked in the context of so-called urban renewal projects in which largely marginalised and insecurely housed urban residents demand their right to stay in their homes and among their community when faced with pressure from powerful actors pushing for redevelopment and gentrification. The right to remain is particularly urgent in settler-colonial situations where colonisers actively displace the Indigenous population and try to replace them with settlers. From First Nations in North America to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia, settlers have used genocidal violence to deny Indigenous people this right.