President Donald Trump’s proposal for the U.S. to take over Gaza and remove the entire Palestinian population of 2 million souls is an outrage. It would be ethnic cleansing, pure and simple, and a blatant violation of international law.
J Street has condemned this proposal as a potential war crime. In a press release dated Feb. 5, J Street stated: “There aren’t adequate words to express our disgust at the notion of forcibly displacing millions of war-weary Palestinians with the backing of the United States of America. The President is proposing ethnic cleansing disguised as a real estate development.”
As reported by Amanda Taub in The New York Times, the proposal would violate international law in several ways:
“Forced deportation or transfer of a civilian population is a violation of international humanitarian law, a war crime and a crime against humanity. The prohibition against forced deportations of civilians has been a part of the law of war since the Lieber Code, a set of rules on the conduct of hostilities [that] was promulgated by Union forces during the U.S. Civil War. It is prohibited by multiple provisions of the Geneva Conventions, and the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II defined it as a war crime.
“The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court lists forcible population transfers as both a war crime and a crime against humanity. And if the displacement is focused on a particular group based on their ethnic, religious or national identity, then it is also persecution — an additional crime. (Because Palestine is a party to the International Criminal Court, the court has jurisdiction over those crimes if they take place within Gaza, even if they are committed by citizens of the United States, which is not a member of the court.)”
Sen. John Curtis was quoted in the Deseret News on Feb. 5 as responding to Trump’s proposal with a noncommittal statement: “To what extent the president wants to move on this, we shall see. But we have to be willing to think outside the box to bring peace and stability to Israel and the Palestinian people.”
We want to be clear that as Utah-based organizations devoted to promoting a negotiated settlement between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, we reject any “thinking outside the box” that involves ethnic cleansing, war crimes or crimes against humanity.
In a public statement published on J Street’s website on Feb. 5, J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami noted: “Thankfully, this hugely irresponsible, illegal and unworkable notion has already been rejected by any and all potential partners in the region.”
Utahns must add their voices to the worldwide condemnation of Trump’s reckless plan for Gaza.