The Trump plan to deport the Palestinians

by Fouad Baker

The Trump plan to deport the Palestinian people from Gaza and the West Bank cannot be viewed in the same way as his rhetoric about purchasing Greenland from Denmark, merging Canada with the United States or controlling the Panama Canal and the Gulf of Mexico.
The plan to deport Palestinians is presented with high seriousness, and preparations for it are taking place behind the scenes to move the residents of Gaza to Egypt and from the West Bank to Jordan. This plan is based on communications between Donald Trump and his counterparts, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, King Abdullah of Jordan, as well as secret communications with other countries, such as Albania and Indonesia as well as some members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, especially Saudi Arabia.
During Donald Trump’s first presidential term, from 2016 to 2021, he altered the equations that Palestinians had established, which emphasised that no regional settlement could occur without resolving the Palestinian issue. Trump undermined this equation when he imposed the “Deal of the Century” in 2020, moving the American embassy to Jerusalem and recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights that Israel seized in 1967.
Trump also signed the Abraham Accords, which are treaties and agreements to normalise relations with Israel, that included Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, (UAE), Morocco and Sudan, as well as forming a military alliance under the guise of so-called economic peace.
With his new term, since assuming office on 20th January 2025, Trump has reintroduced the issue of resolving the Palestinian cause, this time with his desire to win a Nobel Peace Prize and end wars in the world. However, this also comes at the expense of the Palestinian people and their inalienable national rights, as outlined in international legal resolutions, including the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, the right to self-determination and the right of return as per [United Nations] Resolution 194.
Secret diplomatic moves
The new US administration, alongside Israeli diplomats, has quietly begun seriously discussing Trump’s vision of deporting Palestinians. They are engaging with several Arab capitals to push this plan forward and apply heavy pressure, through the gateway of accepting Palestinians as short-term humanitarian refugees, pending the reconstruction of Gaza.
This plan involves a period of taking in Palestinians for between six months to a year, with their return to Gaza in 2026 once the reconstruction is complete. The plan subtly includes, though not openly stated, the possibility that these Palestinians may not return to their cities and villages – much like in 1948, when their departure was intended to be temporary, but they still have not been allowed to return despite all international resolutions.
According to diplomatic sources, Israel is communicating with certain countries like Albania and Indonesia, to see if they will accept Palestinian refugees. The discussions are revisiting aspects of the 2020 Deal of the Century, particularly the integration of Palestinians displaced in 1948 into the countries that hosted them, such as Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
Israel has also opened a dialogue with some members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) over a plan to resettle 5,000 Palestinian refugees annually over a span of 10 years, totalling around 50,000 refugees.
Now the Trump administration is striving to engage with Saudi Arabia to normalise relations with Israel and to abandon its conditions relating to the two-state solution and the Arab Peace Initiative. According to sources close to decision-makers in Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom has become more flexible in its approach to the Arab Peace Initiative, under the pretext that it cannot be implemented all at once, but rather gradually, starting with normalisation with Israel, to open political dialogues and prospects related to the Palestinian issue.
The new Trump administration has returned to its previous tactics from the first term, exerting economic pressure on the Palestinian Authority. It has cut aid and support for American development projects in the West Bank and plans to use the reconstruction of Gaza as leverage against Hamas.
The aim is to pressure Hamas not to reclaim authority over Gaza by stalling reconstruction efforts, holding back funds and donations from other countries and preventing them from being transferred to Gaza. The Trump administration also seeks to control the reconstruction fund, which is currently being organised by some European countries and certain Arab regimes that oppose Hamas’ control over Gaza.
According to technical experts, Gaza will require several years to rebuild, to erase the remnants of Israeli aggression and clear the rubble of destroyed buildings. In this context, the new Trump administration justifies the temporary humanitarian refugee status for Palestinians in Gaza for six months, while being fully aware that reconstruction would take at least eight years if it were to proceed – assuming there are no political obstacles or funding restrictions.
Possible scenarios
The scene of Palestinians returning to their homes in Gaza through the Netzarim checkpoint – now destroyed – illustrates the deep connection of the Palestinian people to their land, despite the widespread devastation. This shattered the illusion of absolute victory that Netanyahu spoke of.
Hamas, with a tactical move involving the release of the Israeli prisoner Arbel Yehud, achieved strategic success by securing the return of residents from northern Gaza. It has become increasingly difficult for Israel to resume the war, even if the ceasefire agreement  were to collapse, especially with the unsearched civilians walking through the Netzarim crossing.
Furthermore, the renewal of the war is no longer in the hands of Netanyahu or [Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich, who opposed the ceasefire agreement. The decision now lies with Trump, who seeks to rescue Israel from military defeat and turn it into a political victory by deporting Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.
This plan would continue the annexation of Palestinian territories, normalise relations with Arab countries — specifically Saudi Arabia — and undermine the two-state solution. The true deal this time will be an American-Saudi-Israeli deal.
Trump is attempting to replace the genocide that was inflicted on the Palestinian people [by the Israelis during the Gaza war] with political genocide. This time, it is not only aimed at the authority in Gaza, but also at the Palestinian Authority [that runs the “autonomous” West Bank zones].
By besieging the Jenin camp and confronting the Palestinian militias in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority seeks to present its credentials to the new US administration in an effort to maintain its political position and prevent its collapse.
In the absence of a unified Palestinian national strategy, Trump’s plan remains intact, and it is difficult to counter it. This first and foremost falls on the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which refrains from implementing the Beijing Declaration, calling for a meeting of the unified Palestinian leadership, and the PA’s failure to form a national unity government that includes everyone, thus avoiding collective responsibility in confronting the American-Israeli plans.
This calls for international efforts to confront the looming danger to the Palestinian cause, with the goal of pressuring the Palestinian Authority to implement the Beijing Declaration, form a national unity government that includes competent national figures, hold comprehensive Palestinian elections, rebuild Gaza and overcome external obstacles in order to block Israel’s questionable projects.
The Palestinian people have affirmed to the entire world, through the powerful scene of their return to northern Gaza, their unwavering attachment to their land and their rejection of the forced displacement plan, despite all the destruction and massacres committed against them.
No matter how much Israel tries to impose racist and colonial policies against them, the Palestinian people will resist until their last breath. As Israeli historian Ilan Pappe states in his book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: “the olive tree has pierced the trees imported by Israel from outside Palestine and planted in Palestinian land to reinforce their narrative that they are the rightful owners of the land”.
Similarly, the Palestinian people will defy all these plans with their will and rejection of colonial projects and policies of fait accompli. They will invent new forms of resistance, as they have done in previous stages, and they will amaze the world with their diverse strategies.

The author is an international lawyer and a member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)

DFLP: Israeli war-crimes in the Gaza Strip

by Fouad Baker

Commander Abu Khaled of the DFLP

The barbaric Israeli aggression supported by the West, especially the United States, which has been continuing since the 8th October, was not the first. Rather, it was preceded by many wars on the Gaza Strip, resulting in thousands of martyrs in addition to the systematic destruction of homes and infrastructure.

Aggression, massacres and war-crimes are an inherent feature of the Zionist entity. The Gaza Strip is an area with the highest population density – 2.2 million people live in the 365 km enclave. Over the last 17 years, from the start of the brutal siege that began in 2006, on Israel has launched 12 incursions into the Strip, including six destructive invasions. Over 4,300 Palestinians were martyred in these wars and over 19,500 wounded while the number of Israeli deaths did not exceed 136 dead and about 4,000 wounded.

2006: 277 Palestinians were killed and 1,167 wounded in Israeli raids that continued for three months.

2008:125 Palestinians were killed and large numbers of wounded over the course

of five days of bombing.

2008 – 2009: 1,430 Palestinians were martyred, including about 400 children and 240 women, 5,400 wounded, in addition to the complete or partial destruction of more than 10,000 homes. In the Battle of the Shale Stones about 180 Palestinians were martyred, including 42 children and 11 women, and about 1,300 others were injured. In the battle of the Eastern Storm 2,322 Palestinians were killed and 11,000 wounded. In the Battle of the Cry of Dawn 34 Palestinians were killed, and more than 100 others were injured and some 250 Palestinians were killed and over 5,000 wounded in the Battle of Saif al Quds (the Sword of Jerusalem).

The Gaza Strip is an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories and it is not possible to create any kind of geographical or political separation between them. These territories are a single and unified territorial unit. Any dealing with them in a partial manner is an attempt to divide the Palestinian land  and divide the Palestinian people. We will fight to defend the unity of the land, the people, and the cause.

What must be emphasised repeatedly is that what happened on 7th October is an extension of what was happening before that date in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the city of Jerusalem in terms of criminal practices against the Palestinian people. Therefore, the battle of Al-Aqsa Flood must be seen in the context of responding to the massacres and crimes committed against our people in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and in the Gaza Strip. 

It was a response to the daily killings, arrests, theft of land for the purposes of

settlement, demolition of homes, the burning of entire towns and the storming and destruction of cities and refugee camps by the Israeli aggressors. 

  Therefore, we say that there is no solution to our national issue without recognising that the basic issue is the occupation and settlement of our land.

Israeli aggression is not against any Palestinian faction or party, but rather against all the Palestinian people and all their parties and political and social components.

It is a systematic aggression, a genocide, against an entire people – women and children, the sick and the elderly –  everything that lives and moves in the Gaza Strip.

It’s not just in Gaza. It’s all over Palestine. This year over 500 Palestinians have been killed on the West Bank –   200 martyrs since 7th October. This, the bloodiest year for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Jerusalem, confirms that the main problem is the physical presence of the Israeli occupation army and the Israeli settlers.

The United Nations and its resolutions consider the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem to be Palestinian lands occupied by Israel. International law allows persecuted peoples to resist invaders. The Palestinian people have the right and even the duty to resist the Zionist occupier, and the legal, political, moral and humanitarian duty of the international community is to support the people’s resistance.

The Palestinians struggles to liberate their land and enable them to freely exercise

their national rights free from occupation, subjugation and colonialism.

The Israeli occupation and the Israeli settlements are the main root of the problem, and any solution that does not take into account the national rights of the Palestinian people will perpetuate the conflicts in Palestine and the region.

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) calls on all parties of the world and its political and popular institutions to condemn the war of extermination pursued by the Israeli enemy against the Palestinian people, to take punitive and deterrent measures against Israeli war criminals, and to exert pressure on Western governments that support the aggression to stop their partnership in killing and crimes against civilians of the Palestinian people and to work from In order to stop the series of crimes against humanity.

A slap in the face for the Israeli security system

by Fouad Baker
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) 

No one expected that this would be the response of the Palestinian resistance to the plan of the fascist and racist Israeli occupation government based on Judaisation, displacement, expansion of settlements, annexation of lands, storming the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Palestinian camps in the West Bank, administrative arrests, and the liquidation of the Palestinian cause and the national rights of the Palestinian people.
  Although Israel possesses the latest technologies, its security system failed to protect the settlers living on stolen Palestinian land. A number of Palestinian resistance fighters were able to cross the border fence separating the Gaza Strip and the settlements killing dozens of settlers and taking others prisoner back to the Haza Strip.
  Some  5,000 missiles  were fired from the Gaza Strip towards these illegal settlements, which paralysed the Israeli ‘Iron Dome’ and the Israeli security system. The joint Palestinian operations room, which includes all the Palestinian factions, took part in this military operation. The most prominent of which were Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine...
The news was greeted with astonishment in the West Bank. Astonishment at the success of  the military operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip. Celebratory marches in Palestinian cities in the occupied territories soon led to clashes with Israeli troops.
  Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinian demonstrators in towns throughout the West Bank and an Israeli police station was torched in Jerusalem
The Palestinian resistance called the attack on the Israeli settlements located on the border of the Gaza Strip ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’.
The offensive was designed to regain the initiative and block Saudi-Israeli normalisation, which aims to liquidate the Palestinian cause and deprive them of their national rights. Rights which include the right of the refugees to return to their land, ending the Israeli occupation, establishing an independent Palestinian state.
The Israelis called the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation a terrorist operation, ignoring the fact that they are the occupiers of lands belonging to the Palestinian people. If they want real peace in the Middle East they must end the occupation.
The Palestinian operation exposed the weakness of Israeli intelligence that failed to discover the resistance plan despite all the support from the USA, and the failure of Israel’s surveillance and espionage programmes such as their Pegasus spyware which they’ve also sold to some Arab regimes.
The operation’s success was down to the full coordination between the Palestinian resistance factions working in complete secrecy. 
The Palestinian bet on using parachutists to penetrate the border fence in the Gaza Strip to destroy Israeli tanks and open the way to the advance towards the illegal settlements worked.
     The emergence of a qualitative development in the work of the Palestinian resistance, which transformed primitive rockets and simple shells into semi-precise missiles that reach deep into Israel enabled it to capture Israeli soldiers to use in negotiations for the release of the Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli prisons for decades.
The Al-Aqsa Flood operation was launched only after all diplomatic means had been exhausted. It was a specific confrontation due to the racist policy implemented by the Israeli occupation government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. It was a move to prevent the Arab regimes from signing peace agreements with Israel and derail American attempts to build economic blocs in the region to besiege China, Iran, and Russia – the most recent of which is the India-Middle East-Europe ‘corridor’.
The Israeli response to the Palestinian offensive has been to bomb the Gaza Strip including residential tower blocks and other civilian targets resulting in over 250 Palestinian martyrs and hundreds more wounded.
But the fascist Israeli government wants to avoid a long and multi-fronted conflict as it knows that any military operation that crosses the red line will ignite the Middle East in defence of the Palestinian people, as happened in the October War of 1973.
In the occupied territories, the refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan and the Palestinian communities in Europe the people are rallying behind the defence of the Gaza Strip. Support is coming from Iraq, Yemen and Syria and the Lebanese resistance has already intervened...
Around the world social networking sites are ablaze with congratulations to the Palestinians for this qualitative military operation while the Arabs took to the streets with fireworks and sweets to celebrate a Palestinian victory that has been seen since the birth of Israel in 1948.
Those who think that the Palestinian people can be fobbed of with email messages of support or agree to becoming political pawns of the Great Powers are only fooling themselves. The deluded are those who think that the Palestinian people will accept political settlements that do not meet demands that recognise their legitimate national rights. And the most delusional are those who think that peace in the Middle East can be achieved without real justice and an end to the Israeli occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories.
Just as the Battle of Saif al-Quds in Gaza in 2021 ended a stage in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Al-Aqsa Flood operation opened a new page in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Palestine: Absent justice...

the horror of Sabra and Shatila

by Fouad Baker

Though 41 years have passed we can still smell the stench of death and hear the voices of the martyred men, women and  children when we pass through the streets of the Shatila camp and the Sabra neighbourhoods in West Beirut.
  The massacre,  carried out by the Israeli army and their Lebanese militia allies, lasted for three continuous days during the Israeli occupation of the Lebanese capital in 1982. Some 3,000 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were killed. Their mothers and children are still waiting for international accountability and justice for the victims.
When a Palestinian refugee visits the Sabra and Shatila camp, the scenes of the massacre still come to mind. They have become engraved in the conscience of every Palestinian. The images of the victims being butchered while militiamen stopped ambulances entering the camp and refused to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to provide relief supplies for the refugees makes the Palestinians even more determined to return to their land.
The Israeli goal was to eliminate the Palestinian refugees who fled after the pogroms organised by Zionist extremists drove them from their lands in 1948. Their plan continues to this day but the features have changed as the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon no longer have the right to live in dignity. They are deprived of their rights to education and health services, work, or own property, ... especially with the decline in international financial support for the United Nations relief agency, UNRWA.
The Sabra and Shatila massacre is not the only massacre committed by Zionist and Israeli gangs against the Palestinian people. We have not forgotten the Qana massacre or the massacres in Deir Yassin, Haifa, Balad al-Sheikh, Jerusalem, Abbasiya and Jaffa... and with the absence of justice and accountability of the Israeli occupation government, these pogroms continue every day against the Palestinian people.
These massacres show that the Israel wants to eliminate the Palestinian people in order to prove to the world the false narrative of the Zionist movement that Palestine is ‘a land without a people for a people without a land’, which is refuted by all historical and scientific evidence.
What Israel is doing is a real holocaust to annihilate the Palestinian people wherever they are, whether inside or outside Palestine. But when the Palestinians want to hold the Zionists accountable, they are accused of “anti-Semitism” even though the Palestinian people are Semites themselves
We saw how the Belgian government amended its laws, when charges were made against General Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Defence Minister, over Sabra and Shatila, to prevent him from being tried for war-crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. We saw this repeated at the International Criminal Court when the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda when she announced the opening of an investigation into Israeli war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip in 2014.  When Attorney-General Karim Khan took over, the investigation was frozen in 2020 and it remains like that today..
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (1969-1974) said when she was asked about peace in Palestine that the old die and the young forget, but how can the young forget their martyred fathers, their wounded brothers, and their prisoners’ mothers? How can they forget how the Israeli occupiers demolished their homes and displaced them from their homes? 
They are still refugees to this day. They do not have the right to self-determination and establish their independent state. We are talking about peace while justice is absent, the land is still usurped, and thousands of settlers live in homes of Palestinians, stealing Palestinian land and falsely ascribing Palestinian food, heritage culture to themselves! 
Despite all these crimes and massacres committed by the Zionist and Israeli gangs against the Palestinian people, the major powers are still trying to force the Palestinian people to give up their legitimate rights that are recognised by international law.
Some Arab regimes have now normalised relations with Israel as if nothing had happened while the Israelis impose a siege on Gaza Strip, depriving Palestinians of benefiting from the natural resources the Israelis have stolen.
But when the Palestinian people resist the occupation some countries accuse them of  violence and terrorism. They ignore the Palestinians’ non-violent struggles, such as the boycott of Israeli goods movement, which they criminalise. They ignore the prisoners’ hunger strikes. There are 5,000 Palestinians jailed in Israel without charge or fair trial, including women, children and the elderly. They are living martyrs sentenced to life imprisonment, because they struggle against injustice and the occupation.
The countries that support Israel refuse to hold Israel accountable. Rather, they support it with weapons and money to kill the Palestinian people and commit more massacres and crimes against them. Not only did the countries that financially and militarily support Israel fight the Palestinians, but they also take control of the media to spread the false Israeli narrative over the true Palestinian narrative, and restrict content supporting the Palestinian question on social media. 
Our hope lies with the freedom fighters and the free people of the world who reject injustice wherever it exists. As  Che Guevara said “wherever there is injustice, this is my homeland,” and we call on them to put pressure on their governments with the aim of boycotting Israel, imposing sanctions on it, withdrawing investments from it, and stopping its support financially, militarily, and politically... and holding it accountable for its crimes committed against the Palestinians, and supporting the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, establishing their independent state with Jerusalem as its capital, and the return of refugees to their homes.

The author is a member of the  international criminal court bar association and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)