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| THE WEAPON OF DAVID AGAINST ZIONIST TANKS |
Wilfred Chan
Wed, November 1, 2023
The open letter, published in Artforum on 19 October, declared: “We support Palestinian liberation and call for an end to the killing and harming of all civilians.” It was signed by thousands of artists, scholars and cultural workers, including the art world magazine’s editor, David Velasco.
A week later, Velasco was fired from the publication he had worked at for 18 years, reportedly after pushback from Martin Eisenberg, a major arts patron and Bed Bath & Beyond heir. In a post on Artforum that evening, the magazine’s publishers said that the pro-Palestine letter, which initially did not mention Hamas’s attack that killed 1,400 Israelis, was “not consistent with Artforum’s editorial process”. At least four Artforum editors have resigned in protest against Velasco’s firing.
While sympathy for Palestine has long been a minority position in the United States, supporters are being punished for speaking out at a disturbing new level as Israel pummels Gaza, killing thousands of Palestinians in the weeks following the 7 October Hamas terror attacks.
Some, like Velasco, have lost their jobs. A Philadelphia sports writer was fired after tweeting “solidarity with Palestine” in criticism of a 76ers post that offered support to Israel after Hamas’s initial attack. In another high-profile incident, a University of California, Berkeley, professor was sacked as editor-in-chief of the scientific journal eLife after he retweeted an Onion article that, he said, “calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians”.
A spokesperson for Palestine Legal, a civil rights group, says it has responded to more than 260 “incidents of suppression” against Palestinian rights activists over two weeks of October – more than it did in all of last year. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), a civil rights non-profit, says it received 774 complaints between 7 October and 24 October – the largest wave of complaints it’s handled since Donald Trump announced his “Muslim ban” in 2015. This wave has targeted professional activists as well as ordinary people who have spoken in defense of Palestinians. It has reportedly escalated into death threats, assaults and visits from the FBI to Muslim individuals and mosques.
In the United States, the highest levels of power have long supported voices backing Israel and its military. Now, supporters of Palestine fear the war presents an opportunity for supporters of Israel’s government to further crush dissent in the US. “We know that Israel-aligned organizations are going to push to have their full wishlists granted,” says Diala Shamas, a staff attorney at the non-profit Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which supports pro-Palestinian activists. She says Palestinian rights attorneys “know the playbook” and are bracing for the onslaught.
Wed, November 1, 2023
The open letter, published in Artforum on 19 October, declared: “We support Palestinian liberation and call for an end to the killing and harming of all civilians.” It was signed by thousands of artists, scholars and cultural workers, including the art world magazine’s editor, David Velasco.
A week later, Velasco was fired from the publication he had worked at for 18 years, reportedly after pushback from Martin Eisenberg, a major arts patron and Bed Bath & Beyond heir. In a post on Artforum that evening, the magazine’s publishers said that the pro-Palestine letter, which initially did not mention Hamas’s attack that killed 1,400 Israelis, was “not consistent with Artforum’s editorial process”. At least four Artforum editors have resigned in protest against Velasco’s firing.
While sympathy for Palestine has long been a minority position in the United States, supporters are being punished for speaking out at a disturbing new level as Israel pummels Gaza, killing thousands of Palestinians in the weeks following the 7 October Hamas terror attacks.
Some, like Velasco, have lost their jobs. A Philadelphia sports writer was fired after tweeting “solidarity with Palestine” in criticism of a 76ers post that offered support to Israel after Hamas’s initial attack. In another high-profile incident, a University of California, Berkeley, professor was sacked as editor-in-chief of the scientific journal eLife after he retweeted an Onion article that, he said, “calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians”.
A spokesperson for Palestine Legal, a civil rights group, says it has responded to more than 260 “incidents of suppression” against Palestinian rights activists over two weeks of October – more than it did in all of last year. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), a civil rights non-profit, says it received 774 complaints between 7 October and 24 October – the largest wave of complaints it’s handled since Donald Trump announced his “Muslim ban” in 2015. This wave has targeted professional activists as well as ordinary people who have spoken in defense of Palestinians. It has reportedly escalated into death threats, assaults and visits from the FBI to Muslim individuals and mosques.
In the United States, the highest levels of power have long supported voices backing Israel and its military. Now, supporters of Palestine fear the war presents an opportunity for supporters of Israel’s government to further crush dissent in the US. “We know that Israel-aligned organizations are going to push to have their full wishlists granted,” says Diala Shamas, a staff attorney at the non-profit Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which supports pro-Palestinian activists. She says Palestinian rights attorneys “know the playbook” and are bracing for the onslaught.
‘Tarring Palestinian rights speech’
The swift blowback against pro-Palestinian voices builds on decades of organized efforts to “tar Palestinian rights speech as pro-terrorist or antisemitic”, says Justin Sadowsky, an attorney at Cair. The late civil rights attorney Michael Ratner called this the “Palestine exception to free speech”.
In 2015, CCR and Palestine Legal published a report on the tactics used by pro-Israel lobbying groups, school administrators and public officials to shut down Palestinian rights activists. They included false accusations of antisemitism or support for terrorism, legal threats and criminal investigations, and they often succeeded in “intimidating or deterring Palestinian solidarity activists from speaking out”, the report found.
UMass Amherst students stage a sit-in calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Photograph: Boston Globe/Getty Images
The Jewish National Fund’s 2019 lawsuit against the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, which accused the human rights group of supporting terrorism and acting as a front for Hamas, was a recent example, the CCR’s Shamas says. While an appeals court tossed the suit in May, Shamas, who defended against the lawsuit, called cases like these “a form of silencing”. (The Jewish National Fund did not respond to a request for comment.)
Hina Shamsi, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), says: “The McCarthyite atmosphere against supporters of Palestinian rights had been getting worse,” and the current conflict is only escalating these concerns.
Last week, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, ordered public universities to disband campus groups associated with the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) organization, accusing it of violating a law against providing “material support” to terrorism. Sadowsky says Florida’s allegations are spurious – “They just claimed sophomorically that because some people at SJP have said some things that they construe as supportive of Hamas, that they support terrorism” – and almost certainly violate the first amendment. (SJP did not respond to a request for comment.)
In parallel with Islamophobic attacks and suppression of Palestinian rights activities in recent weeks, chilling reports of antisemitic incidents have also increased.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an anti-hate organization dedicated to fighting antisemitism and extremism, recorded 312 antisemitic incidents in the US in the two weeks following 7 October, a nearly fourfold increase compared with the same period last year. Over the weekend, the FBI was notified of antisemitic threats made against Jewish students at Cornell University, prompting the Biden administration to step in and condemn antisemitism on campuses. In New York, attendees at pro-Palestinian rally reportedly stomped an Israeli flag and flashed an image of a swastika, and a woman told police she was punched in the face by a man who said it was because she was Jewish.
“At this moment when antisemitism is surging around the world, ADL has an obligation to speak out strongly when pro-Palestinian organizations, leaders and student groups defend or celebrate the bloodthirsty actions of a known terrorist group,” said an ADL spokesperson in a statement.
While Sadowsky, who is Jewish, characterizes some of ADL’s actions as part of a pattern of deliberate intimidation to make it “very difficult for Palestinians to talk in a forthright way about what’s going on”, many Jewish people feel protected by them. An expression like “from the river to the sea”, chanted at some pro-Palestinian demonstrations, is a microcosm of these high sensitivities. For some, it’s seen as a demand for the eradication of Israel altogether and the displacement of millions of Jews. The British home secretary has suggested police should clamp down it, calling the chant an “expression of a violent desire”, and the ADL spokesperson described it as “a call to destroy Israel”. However, Sadowsky says the ADL is “dangerously misleading people into believing that peaceful protests are something nefarious”, since many demonstrators see the chant as a non-violent, democratic call for human rights.
‘Constricting the space for debate’
Today, there are more Americans willing to openly challenge US foreign policy – and that includes speaking up for Palestine. A March 2023 Gallup poll found that the number of Americans who said they were more sympathetic toward Palestinians than Israelis roughly doubled over the last decade, to 31% of respondents.
The historian Rashid Khalidi. Photograph: Laurent Gilliéron/AP
The prominent Palestinian American scholar Rashid Khalidi recalls feeling overwhelmingly outnumbered at Columbia University in 2003 when pro-Israel advocates protested against him and other faculty and students who spoke out against Israel amid intense fighting in Gaza and the West Bank. News crews hounded him on campus, and pro-Israel students made a documentary about the controversy. “I think the narrative was pretty firmly in the hands of people who supported Israel,” he says. But, he continues, “there’s a generational change taking place, with young people having an entirely different set of views. They consume different media. I think they’re more educated, more worldly, and better informed than their elders.”
The old guard is pushing back. In addition to the firings and calls for investigations into SJP, two law firms rescinded job offers to students for statements blaming Israel alone for the 7 October attacks. One of the firms, Davis Polk, is reconsidering its decision for two of three students, who said they hadn’t approved the letters. Billionaire donors have threatened to pull donations to top universities if the institutions don’t condemn Hamas and crack down on criticism of Israel on campus. Meanwhile, circling “doxxing trucks” sponsored by rightwing activists display the faces and personal details of pro-Palestine students at Harvard and Columbia, calling them “antisemites”.
Incidents like these create a “culture of suspicion and guilt by association”, says Brian Hauss, senior staff attorney with the ACLU. “I think that’s going to dramatically constrict the space available for political debate.”
Beyond campuses, pro-Israel lawyers are gearing up for battle. Last week, Shurat HaDin – a pro-Israel legal organization which describes itself as “bankrupting terrorism one lawsuit at a time” – announced it was launching a “legal war room” and put out a call for hundreds of attorneys across the world to join in support of Israel’s war efforts. CCR’s Shamas says that is likely to lead to redoubled efforts to pass anti-boycott legislation, redefine the international working definition of antisemitism to include opposition to Zionism, and expand the definition of “material support of terrorism” to target more Palestinian human rights speech.
Generally, lawsuits against pro-Palestine activists are a way to “distract and deviate our resources” from efforts to “draw attention to genocide that’s happening in Gaza”, Shamas says. Hauss says laws against the boycotting of Israel in particular, which 36 states have enacted, “directly stifle political advocacy, by making people choose between their livelihoods and their first amendment rights”. On Monday, the Jewish American scholar Nathan Thrall announced that he had been disinvited from speaking at the University of Arkansas for refusing to sign an anti-boycott pledge required of public contractors by state law.
For now, pro-Palestinian lawyers say they’re standing by, ready to defend pro-Palestinian speech, and that people should understand their basic protections.
The constitution’s first amendment means the government can’t punish someone for speech it doesn’t like. Public sector employees usually can’t be fired, or public school students punished, for speaking out or holding protests. California extends these free speech protections to private universities.
Though there are fewer protections in the private sector, federal law protects all employees and job applicants from being discriminated against based on their race, color, religion, sex or national origin. That means it’s possible that a person from the Middle East or a Muslim person who lost a job for speaking about Palestine could claim discrimination, Sadowksy says, though employers could also challenge the claims. Certain states, like New York and California, also offer some protections for employees’ political activity.
“If someone is harassing you, or if someone’s trying to discipline you, contact us,” says Sadowksy.
‘Go hunt Palestinians’
The campaign to suppress pro-Palestinian speech is likely to worsen, and in some cases has already taken on a frightening new tenor.
On 14 October, a six-year-old Palestinian American boy was killed when he and his mother were allegedly stabbed by their landlord, who was angry about the conflict in the Middle East, prosecutors say. Within that same week, a Palestinian American family in Colorado says their home was shot at, an Illinois man was charged after threatening to shoot two Muslim men in a parking lot, and a Michigan man was arrested after putting out a call on Facebook to “go and hunt Palestinians”, according to police. Last week, someone reportedly drove through a pro-Palestinian protest in Minneapolis, and in Eugene, Oregon, a man was arrested after firing a splatter ball gun at pro-Palestine protesters.
There’s also uncertainty over what role US authorities will play. Civil rights groups say they have responded to recent incidents in which pro-Palestine activists and mosques received visits from FBI agents, bringing to mind the surveillance of Muslims in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. While there are “palpable fears of a repeat of post-9/11 level abuses in the United States, we haven’t seen those kinds of systemic rights violations at this point”, says Shamsi. “I think that’s largely due to years of pushback, advocacy, and litigation by impacted communities themselves, along with allies.”
Those civil rights groups now worry about their own safety. Cair canceled its annual fundraiser at a Virginia Marriott after callers “threatened to plant bombs in the hotel’s parking garage, kill specific hotel staff in their homes, and storm the hotel in a repeat of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol if the events moved forward”, per a statement. Two days earlier, a Houston Hilton canceled a scheduled conference for the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, the group sued by the Jewish National Fund, citing “escalating security concerns”.
“It’s unclear whether people who support Palestinians’ right to exist will be able to congregate on someone else’s property in the foreseeable future without a torrential wave of death threats,” Sadowsky says.
The campaign to suppress pro-Palestinian speech is likely to worsen, and in some cases has already taken on a frightening new tenor.
On 14 October, a six-year-old Palestinian American boy was killed when he and his mother were allegedly stabbed by their landlord, who was angry about the conflict in the Middle East, prosecutors say. Within that same week, a Palestinian American family in Colorado says their home was shot at, an Illinois man was charged after threatening to shoot two Muslim men in a parking lot, and a Michigan man was arrested after putting out a call on Facebook to “go and hunt Palestinians”, according to police. Last week, someone reportedly drove through a pro-Palestinian protest in Minneapolis, and in Eugene, Oregon, a man was arrested after firing a splatter ball gun at pro-Palestine protesters.
There’s also uncertainty over what role US authorities will play. Civil rights groups say they have responded to recent incidents in which pro-Palestine activists and mosques received visits from FBI agents, bringing to mind the surveillance of Muslims in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. While there are “palpable fears of a repeat of post-9/11 level abuses in the United States, we haven’t seen those kinds of systemic rights violations at this point”, says Shamsi. “I think that’s largely due to years of pushback, advocacy, and litigation by impacted communities themselves, along with allies.”
Those civil rights groups now worry about their own safety. Cair canceled its annual fundraiser at a Virginia Marriott after callers “threatened to plant bombs in the hotel’s parking garage, kill specific hotel staff in their homes, and storm the hotel in a repeat of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol if the events moved forward”, per a statement. Two days earlier, a Houston Hilton canceled a scheduled conference for the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, the group sued by the Jewish National Fund, citing “escalating security concerns”.
“It’s unclear whether people who support Palestinians’ right to exist will be able to congregate on someone else’s property in the foreseeable future without a torrential wave of death threats,” Sadowsky says.
Why Palestinians Fear Permanent Displacement From Gaza
Yasmeen Serhan
‘Egypt is not unreasonable’
Egypt has every reason to be skeptical. It only needs to look at the experience of nearby Jordan and Lebanon, both of which were forced to absorb hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees amid past wars (none of whom have been permitted to return), to know that any solutions billed as a temporary humanitarian measure may turn out otherwise. The expulsionary rhetoric of the Israeli government, both before and since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, hasn’t placated those concerns. Indeed, a recently leaked document from Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence, dated Oct. 13, outlines a proposal to forcibly and permanently transfer Gaza’s Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. “The messages should revolve around the loss of land, making it clear that there is no hope of returning to the territories Israel will soon occupy, whether or not that is true,” reads the document, which was first reported on by +972 Magazine and its sister Hebrew-language site Local Call. “The image needs to be, ‘Allah made sure you lose this land because of Hamas’ leadership — there is no choice but to move to another place with the assistance of your Muslim brothers.’”
Read More: For Gazans, There Are No Safe Havens
While there is no evidence that this plan has been taken up as policy, its very existence indicates that “at the highest levels of the Israeli government, this has been discussed as an option,” says H.A. Hellyer, a London-based Middle East scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “So [Egypt] is not unreasonable in thinking that this might be the case.”
Such an outcome would have disastrous implications for Egypt, not least because the country can scarcely afford to. Egypt has been reeling from an economic crisis in which its debt has ballooned, its credit rating tanked, and its currency has plummeted to the extent that it is now considered among the worst in the world. The International Monetary Fund, which attributed the economic stagnation in part to “the military’s pervasive control over the economy,” has called on Cairo to enact reforms in return for loans.
Even if Egypt’s debts were to be forgiven—as has been reported in Israeli and international media as a rumored incentive for Cairo to take in refugees—there are security concerns that must also be taken into account. The Sinai Peninsula has long been a hotbed of violent insurgency by Islamist militants, including those associated with the Islamic State. (Indeed, the U.S. State Department maintains a travel warning against Americans going to Sinai, citing frequent attacks on security forces and civilians.) “The Egyptians have, for the last decade and a half, struggled to maintain security control within the Sinai Peninsula,” says Yousef Munayyer, a nonresident fellow at the Arab Center in Washington, D.C. and an expert on Israeli and Palestinian affairs. While the Egyptian government has made progress in that regard, Munayyer says transferring Gaza’s population there would almost certainly risk reversing that progress, especially if it invites Israel-Hamas tensions onto Egyptian territory. “From Egypt’s perspective, those grievances are not going to go away if the population comes onto its land,” he says. “And so it’s inviting direct conflict with Israel into the Sinai.”
Such an outcome risks endangering Egypt’s 40-year peace deal with Israel, which was and continues to be controversial among the Egyptian populace. Part of the way Egyptian leaders were able to sell the deal to the public was by emphasizing its role in helping Egypt to regain sovereignty over Sinai, which Israel seized during the Six Day War in 1967 until its peace deal with Egypt in 1979. The irony, Munayyer says, is that “for Egypt to be forced into a position where it has to accept millions of Palestinians it does not want to accept into its territory is a negation of the idea that Egypt has national sovereignty over the Sinai.”
But perhaps the biggest reason Egypt has rebuffed pressure to take in Palestinian refugees is because of the outrage that being seen to collaborate with their displacement would cause—not only among its own populace, but across the region. “There is no situation where Palestinians who were forced to leave their homes were allowed to return by the Israeli authorities,” Hellyer says, noting that despite Israel’s 2005 withdrawal of troops and settlements from the territory, it continues to enjoy “effective control of Gaza,” including its land, air, and sea borders. Israel’s suffocating 16-year blockade of Gaza, which is also enforced by Egypt, tightly restricts the movement of goods and people in and out of the Strip.
As Egypt sees it, a ceasefire is the only tenable solution to this humanitarian crisis—one that, fundamentally, is not of its own making. Indeed, Egyptian officials were quick to note in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre that it had warned Israel about a possible attack three days prior. Their argument is, essentially, “‘Why should we get stuck holding the bag?’” Munayyer says. “That, I think, is creating a lot of resentment.”
Read More: ‘Our Death Is Pending.’ Stories of Loss and Grief From Gaza
‘It’s more than just rhetoric; it’s actual history repeating itself’
The recent spate of normalization deals between Israel and largely Gulf Arab countries notwithstanding, the Palestinian issue remains a potent one on the Arab street, as recently evidenced by demonstrations in Amman, Beirut, and Cairo. “One of the longest open wounds in the Arab world is the issue of Palestine and the failure to resolve it,” Munayyer says. “For Arab governments to be seen again as complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is touching on the rawest nerve across the entire Arab world.”
These concerns haven’t escaped the notice of U.S. President Joe Biden, who this week announced that he had discussed with Egypt’s Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II the importance of “ensuring that Palestinians in Gaza are not displaced to Egypt or any other nation.” But fears remain that Israel could still seek to depopulate Gaza with U.S. backing. Observers have seized on the language around the White House’s request for supplemental funding for Israel, which says that “these resources would … address potential needs of Gazans fleeing to neighboring countries.” (The White House has since told reporters that the language was included in order to prepare “for all possible contingencies.”)
But as Munayyer sees it, “You don’t budget for these things unless you think there’s a real likelihood that it’s going to happen.”
How Israel, Egypt, and the U.S. choose to act in this moment will not only have a profound effect on the war, but on the future of Palestinian self-determination at large. Both Munayyer and Hellyer warn that the forced transfer of Palestinians in Gaza could be regarded as a trial run for a similar displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank, many of whom have already faced a surge in violence and intimidation by Israeli settlers. Indeed, Palestinians in the West Bank have reported receiving leaflets telling them to flee to Jordan or face another Nakba.
“We have seen this history of war being used as a cover for ethnic cleansing time and again,” Munayyer says. “It’s more than just rhetoric; it’s actual history repeating itself.”
Write to Yasmeen Serhan at yasmeen.serhan@time.com.
Gaza bombing adds to the generations of Palestinians displaced from their homes
Michael Vicente Perez, University of Memphis
Wed, November 1, 2023
Children sitting near their home at al-Shati camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip on June 20, 2020. Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images
An estimated 1.4 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes since the Israeli military began bombing the Gaza Strip on Oct. 8, 2023, in retaliation for a surprise attack by Hamas militants. Many of these Palestinians have sought refuge in United Nations emergency shelters in a situation the World Health Organization has described as “catastrophic.”
With shelters running out of adequate access to water, food, electricity and other critical supplies, humanitarian agencies are deeply concerned and fear a total breakdown in order.
While the current refugee crisis in Gaza has raised global concern over Palestinian displacement, this is not the first time Palestinians have endured the hardships of forced migration. Long before the latest upheaval, Palestinians who today live in Gaza and throughout the Middle East were forced from or fled their homes in what became the state of Israel. Today, they number about 5.9 million refugees, almost half of the entire global Palestinian population.
Over the past 20 years, my research as an anthropologist has focused on the situation of Palestinian displacement in the Middle East. Having studied some of the daunting challenges millions of Palestinians face as stateless refugees denied the ability to return to their homeland or the right of compensation, I believe it is critical to understand their history and what is at stake for those trapped in indefinite exile.
Fear, violence and exodus: the Nakba of 1948
The majority of Palestinian refugees today receive aid from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA. Dispersed throughout the region, including in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territories, about one-third of all Palestinian refugees live in UNRWA refugee camps, while the remainder live in surrounding cities and towns.
The origins of Palestinian displacement are ongoing and cannot be reduced to a single cause. Most Palestinian refugees, however, can trace their roots to two significant events in Palestinian history: The “Nakba” and the “Naksa.”
The 1948 Palestinian exodus, known in Arabic as Al Nakba, or the ‘catastrophe.’ History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The principal event in modern Palestinian history and memory is the Nakba, or what is roughly translated into the “catastrophe.” The term refers to the mass displacement of approximately 700,000 Palestinians during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 and the creation of the state of Israel.
The majority of Palestine’s Arab population fled their homes during the war, seeking temporary refuge across the Middle East but hoping to return after hostilities ceased.
The mass exodus of Palestinians in 1948 resulted in two realities that have marked the region since. The first involved about 25,000 Palestinians displaced within the boundaries of what became Israel. Known as internally displaced Palestinians, this community did not cross any official border and thus never received refugee status under international law. Instead, they became Israeli citizens, distinguished by their legal designation in Israel as “present absentees.”
Through the Absentee Property Law the Israeli state proceeded to confiscate displaced Palestinians’ properties and deny their right to return to the homes and villages of their birth.
The second event involved over 700,000 Palestinians who fled beyond what became the de facto borders of Israel and acquired formal refugee status under the United Nations. This group of refugees sought shelter in areas of Palestine unconquered by Jewish forces, like Nablus and Jenin, and in neighboring states, including Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.
Immediately following their displacement, these Palestinians were subject to ad hoc support from various international organizations until the 1949 creation of the UNRWA, which assumed official responsibility for the management of direct relief operations and refugee camp infrastructure throughout the Middle East.
In addition to providing education, health care and other services, including microfinancing and jobs training, the UNRWA has been supporting refugee camp improvement projects through road construction and home rehabilitation in the camps.
Refugees in Jordan, Egypt and Syria: the Naksa of 1967
The second-largest displacement of Palestinians occurred in 1967 during the Israel-Arab war known to Palestinians as Al Naksa or the “setback.”
A local barbershop inside Al-Wehdat Palestinian refugee camp in Amman.
Beyond Al-Nakba and Al-Naksa
Although the tragedies of the Nakba and the Naksa turned the vast majority of Palestinians into refugees, numerous events since then have increased their number. One of the most significant causes of Palestinian displacement today is the Israeli practice of home demolitions.
Whether as a punitive measure or the result of a permit system that rights groups say systematically discriminates against Palestinians, between 2009 and 2023 the practice destroyed over 9,000 homes and left approximately 14,000 Palestinians homeless.
The further displacement of Palestinians has also resulted from regional wars involving neither Palestinians nor Israelis. Following the end of Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait in 1990, over 300,000 Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait in retaliation for support offered by the leading Palestinian national organization, the Palestine Liberation Organization, to Saddam Hussein.
Since the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, over 120,000 Palestinian refugees have fled the country, primarily to Turkey and Jordan, while another 200,000 have been internally displaced. More recently, the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip has already internally displaced over 1.4 million Palestinians.
Many refugees, many exiles
Because Palestinians live under various governments in diverse circumstances, no single experience can account for their experience of exile. In Jordan, for example, where I have conducted research, Palestinian refugees can be divided into numerous groups, each with its own set of opportunities and challenges.
There are Palestinians displaced in 1948 who became citizens of Jordan but depend on UNRWA for basic services like education and health care. There are also refugees displaced from the Gaza Strip in 1967 who lack citizenship and are thus deprived of certain civil and political rights. More recently, there are Palestinians displaced from Syria for whom movement and work opportunities have been severely restricted in Jordan.
Palestinians living beyond Jordan also face distinct circumstances. In the West Bank, approximately 900,000 Palestinian refugees live under Israeli occupation, subject to a discriminatory system that human rights organizations have called “apartheid.”
Palestinian refugees in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, who today number around one-and-a-half million, are currently living under a 16-year blockade established by Israel but supported by the Egyptian government. Since the closure began in 2007, restrictions on the import of goods, the movement of people and access to basic resources like electricity have produced dire conditions for Palestinians, including over 45% unemployment and food insecurity among 70% of households.
Since 1948, Palestinians in Lebanon have faced severe restrictions in work, education and health. Treated as an unwanted population in the country, their presence has been a source of significant divisions in Lebanon and a factor in numerous conflicts, including the Lebanese Civil War and the War of Camps between Syrian-backed militias and factions within the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
Permanent exile or return?
Palestinian families leave areas in Gaza on Oct. 24, 2023.
Aurora Almendral and Yasmine Salam
Thu, November 2, 2023
What will happen to the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip? That question, fraught with historical trauma and fears of the future, has hung in the suffocating air of the besieged enclave as Israel intensifies its aerial bombardment and ground assault.
Now, a paper by an Israeli government ministry proposing that Palestinians in Gaza be transferred to Egypt’s Sinai Desert has raised the specter of a long-standing but highly contentious idea of forced displacement.
The proposal has drawn widespread outrage in the Arab world and has been denounced by Palestinian leaders. President Joe Biden said Sunday that he had spoken to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and that they had discussed “ensuring that Palestinians in Gaza are not displaced to Egypt or any other nation.”
Israel has downplayed the seriousness of the paper, but with Gazans’ fragile future the subject of its advancing military and furious global diplomacy, the idea does at least appear to be the subject of ongoing discussion.
A 'complicated' plan
The plan in this “thinking document” has been circulating for weeks but was confirmed by Israel on Monday as one of many ideas put forward by the country’s Intelligence Ministry, which conducts research but does not set policy.
It laid out a vision for mass displacement at the end of its war with Hamas: establishing tent cities in Egypt, creating a humanitarian corridor, then building cities in the northern Sinai to house the refugees for the long term, with a security zone to prevent Palestinians from returning to Gaza.
Sinai is a sparsely populated peninsula, its interior a largely inhospitable desert that has been the subject of past conflicts and negotiations between Israel and Egypt.
The document deemed the plan to be the best option for Israel’s security in the wake of Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 terrorist attack, while acknowledging that the proposal “is liable to be complicated in terms of international legitimacy.”
Israel Hamas War Gaza (Mohammed Abed / AFP - Getty Images)
Capturing Israeli fury in the wake of the attack, a lawmaker and former minister on Wednesday called for the erasure of Gaza so that its residents “will fly to the southern fence and try to enter Egyptian territory. Or they will die.”
“A vengeful and cruel IDF is needed here,” said Galit Distel Atbaryan, a member of the ruling right-wing Likud Party, said in a post on X. Other prominent Israeli figures have also publicly suggested that Palestinians should flee south into Egypt, at least temporarily.
Forced displacement as described in the document is a war crime in violation of international humanitarian law.
It is also an especially emotive issue for Palestinians. Even as they attempt to escape Israel’s bombardment, many fear that their attempts to seek safety will be parlayed into another traumatic mass displacement.
In 1948, 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their land in what would become Israel. It was a foundational event for Palestinians, who refer to their displacement as the “Nakba,” Arabic for catastrophe. Many of the current residents of Gaza are descendants of Palestinian refugees displaced during the Nakba.
“The biggest trauma in the Arab world that continues to this day is around the failure of Arab states in 1948 to do more to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Palestine,” said Yousef Munayyer, a senior fellow and head of the Palestine/Israel Program at the Arab Center in Washington, D.C.
“No Arab leader wants to be seen as complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” he told NBC News in a phone interview.
Thousands of civilians, both Palestinians and Israelis, have died since October 7, 2023, after Palestinian Hamas militants based in the Gaza Strip entered southern Israel in an unprecedented attack triggering a war declared by Israel on Hamas with retaliatory bombings on Gaza. (Mahmud Hams / AFP via Getty Images)
In a statement to The Associated Press in response to the Israeli report, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said, “We are against transfer to any place, in any form, and we consider it a red line that we will not allow to be crossed.”
“What happened in 1948 will not be allowed to happen again,” Abu Rudeineh said, adding that a mass displacement would be “tantamount to declaring a new war.”
While el-Sissi has not commented directly on the leaked document, he has repeatedly and staunchly opposed becoming a party to efforts by Israel to displace Palestinians.
“We are not going to permit that to happen,” he said last week, adding that the prospect of displacement endangered the “Palestinian cause.”
Middle Eastern experts are not surprised by the document but they are concerned.
Gamal Abdel Gawad, a political analyst and professor at the American University of Cairo, said the Israeli intelligence proposal is “completely reckless” and deflects from the crux of the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which he believes would only be resolved if Palestinians gain their own state.
The plan is also seen by many observers as an attempt by Israel to push off its responsibility under international law for the protection of Palestinians onto Egypt, a country in the midst of an economic crisis and ill-equipped to absorb 2.3 million refugees. Israel, with the support of its allies, may hope to leverage Egypt’s near-insurmountable debt as a way to convince it of such a plan, analysts have said.
El-Sissi’s public rejection of such a policy is bolstered by massive public support, including pro-Palestinian protests in Cairo last week. A strongman seeking a third term amid dwindling popularity, he has seen his approval ratings rise on the back of his vocal support for Palestinians.
His government has played an outsize role already in deals involving hostages, humanitarian aid and civilian evacuations.
Egypt’s position is not only motivated by a belief in the Palestinians’ right to self-determination or by self-interest, but the country also has a complex history with Israel, including past wars over Sinai, a 1978 peace treaty it seeks to preserve and delicate political cooperation.
National security concerns may also play into the administration’s tough stance. In the past, Egypt has struggled with extremist groups’ presence in the Sinai and lacked control over terrorist activity there, experts said.
“The idea of destabilizing Sinai, once again, through this mass depopulation is not just an economic or moral burden for Egypt, but also a major security issue,” Munayyer, of the Arab Center, said.
The plan to resettle Palestinians in Gaza to Sinai has surfaced regularly for decades, often meeting with outrage among Palestinians and Arab governments, but it is “not uncommon” in Israeli political discourse as an option during wartime, Munayyer said.
The United Nations estimates that 1.4 million Palestinians are currently displaced within the Gaza Strip in increasingly desperate conditions, as food, water, fuel and medicines run down under the total siege imposed by Israel and the destruction and death toll climb. It also remains unclear who might govern the coastal enclave after the war, if Israel is successful in eliminating Hamas.
Israel has repeatedly issued evacuation orders forcing people to southern Gaza, against the Egyptian border, while it appears to have focused its ground incursion on isolating the north of the enclave.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has attempted to downplay the document. In a statement to the AP, his office called it a “concept paper, the likes of which are prepared at all levels of the government and its security agencies.”
Munayyer said it would be tantamount to “complete political suicide” for the Egyptian government to accept such a “horrific possibility.” But while Israel has downplayed the document and the U.S., Egypt and others have dismissed the idea, he said he had no doubt that the Israeli government will likely push “very hard” to make it a reality with its actions in Gaza.
“Israel might make the Palestinians Egypt’s problem, whether Egypt likes it or not.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
'A curse to be a parent in Gaza': More than 3,600 Palestinian children killed in just 3 weeks of war
Isabel Debre and Wafaa Shurafa
Wed, November 1, 2023
Israel Palestinians Gaza Children (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
More than 3,600 Palestinian children were killed in the first 25 days of the war between Israel and Hamas, according to Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry. They were hit by airstrikes, smashed by misfired rockets, burned by blasts and crushed by buildings, and among them were newborns and toddlers, avid readers, aspiring journalists and boys who thought they'd be safe in a church.
Nearly half of the crowded strip's 2.3 million inhabitants are under 18, and children account for 40% of those killed so far in the war. An Associated Press analysis of Gaza Health Ministry data released last week showed that as of Oct. 26, 2,001 children ages 12 and under had been killed, including 615 who were 3 or younger.
“When houses are destroyed, they collapse on the heads of children,” writer Adam al-Madhoun said Wednesday as he comforted his 4-year-old daughter Kenzi at the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah. She survived an airstrike that ripped off her right arm, crushed her left leg and fractured her skull.
Israel says its airstrikes target Hamas militant sites and infrastructure, and it accuses the group of using civilians as human shields. It also says more than 500 militant rockets have misfired and landed in Gaza, killing an unknown number of Palestinians.
More children have been killed in just over three weeks in Gaza than in all of the world's conflicts combined in each of the past three years, according to the global charity Save the Children. For example, it said, 2,985 children were killed across two dozen war zones throughout all of last year.
“Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children,” said James Elder, a spokesperson for UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency.
Images and footage of shell-shocked children being pulled from rubble in Gaza or writhing on dirty hospital gurneys have become commonplace and have fueled protests around the world. Scenes from recent airstrikes included a rescuer cradling a limp toddler in a bloodied white tutu, a bespectacled father shrieking as he clutched his dead child tight to his chest, and a dazed young boy covered in blood and dust staggering alone through the ruins.
“It's a curse to be a parent in Gaza,” said Ahmed Modawikh, a 40-year-old carpenter from Gaza City whose life was shattered by the death of his 8-year-old daughter during five days of fighting in May.
Israeli children have also been killed. During Hamas' brutal Oct. 7 rampage across southern Israel that sparked the war, its gunmen killed more than 1,400 people. Among them were babies and other small children, Israeli officials have said, though they haven't provided exact figures. About 30 children were also among the roughly 240 hostages Hamas took.
As Israeli warplanes pound Gaza, Palestinian children huddle with large families in apartments or U.N.-run shelters. Although Israel has urged Palestinians to leave northern Gaza for the strip's south, nowhere in the territory has proven safe from its airstrikes.
“People are running from death only to find death,” said Yasmine Jouda, who lost 68 family members in Oct. 22 airstrikes that razed two four-story buildings in Deir al-Balah, where they had sought refuge from northern Gaza.
The strike's only survivor was Jouda's year-old niece Milissa, whose mother had gone into labor during the attack and was found dead beneath the rubble, the heads of her lifeless twin newborns emerging from her birth canal.
“What did this tiny baby do to deserve a life without any family?” Jouda said.
Israel blames Hamas for Gaza's death toll — now more than 8,800, according to Gaza's Health Ministry — because the militant group operates from jam-packed residential neighborhoods. Palestinians point to the soaring casualty count as proof that Israeli strikes are indiscriminate and disproportionate.
The war has injured more than 7,000 Palestinian children and left many with lifechanging problems, doctors say.
Just before the war, Jouda's niece Milissa walked a few paces for the first time. She will never walk again. Doctors say the airstrike that killed the girl's family fractured her spine and paralyzed her from the chest down. Just down the hall from her in the teeming central Gaza hospital, 4-year-old Kenzi woke up screaming, asking what had happened to her missing right arm.
“It will take so much care and work just to get her to the point of having half a normal life,” her father said.
Even those physically unscathed may be scarred by war's ravages.
For 15-year-olds in Gaza, it’s their fifth Israel-Hamas war since the Islamist militant group seized control of the enclave in 2007. All they’ve known is life under a punishing Israeli-Egyptian blockade that prevents them from traveling abroad and crushes their hopes for the future. The strip has a 70% youth unemployment rate, according to the World Bank.
“There is no hope for these children to develop careers, improve their standard of living, access better healthcare and education,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director for Defense for Children International in the Palestinian territories.
But in this war, he added, "it's about life and death.”
And in Gaza, death is everywhere.
Here are just a few of the 3,648 Palestinian children and minors who have been killed in the war.
ASEEL HASSAN, 13
Aseel Hassan was an excellent student, said her father, Hazem Bin Saeed. She devoured classical Arabic poetry, memorizing its rigid metric and rhyme scheme, and reveling in its mystical images and florid metaphors. During the war, when Israeli bombardments came so close that their walls shook, she would regale her relatives by reciting famous verses from Abu Al Tayyib al-Mutanabbi, a 10th-century Iraqi poet, her father said.
“When I asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up, she would say, read,” said 42-year-old Bin Saeed. “Poems were Aseel’s escape."
An airstrike on Oct. 19 leveled his three-story home in Deir al-Balah, killing Aseel and her 14-year-old brother, Anas.
MAJD SOURI, 7
The explosions terrified Majd, said his father, 45-year-old Ramez Souri.
He missed playing soccer with his school friends. He was devastated that the war had canceled his Christian family's much-anticipated trip to Nazareth, the town in Israel where tradition says Jesus grew up.
“Baba, where can we go?” Majd asked again and again when airstrikes roared. The family, devout members of Gaza's tiny Christian community, finally had an answer — St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City.
Souri said Majd calmed down when they arrived at the church, where dozens of Christian families had taken shelter. Together, they prayed and sang.
On Oct. 20, shrapnel crashed into the monastery, killing 18 people. Among the dead were Majd and his siblings, 9-year-old Julie and 15-year-old Soheil. Israel says it had been targeting a nearby Hamas command center.
Majd was found beneath the rubble with his hands around his mother's neck. His face was completely burned.
“My children just wanted peace and stability,” said Souri, his voice cracking. “All I cared about was that they were happy.”
KENAN AND NEMAN AL-SHARIF, 18 months
Karam al-Sharif, an employee with the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency, could barely speak Wednesday as he knelt over his children's small shrouded bodies at the hospital. Gone were his daughters, 5-year-old Joud and 10-year-old Tasnim.
Also gone were his twin 18-month-old sons, Kenan and Neman. Al-Sharif sobbed as he hugged Kenan and said goodbye. Neman's body was still lost beneath the rubble of the six-story tower where the family had sought refuge in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in central Gaza.
“They had no time here,” Sami Abu Sultan, al-Sharif's brother, said of the baby boys, a day after the building was destroyed. “It was God's will.”
MAHMOUD DAHDOUH, 16
On Oct. 25, Al Jazeera's livestream caught the chilling moment when its Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, discovered that an Israeli airstrike had killed his wife, 6-year-old daughter, infant grandson and 16-year-old son, Mahmoud.
Swarmed by TV cameras at the hospital, Dahdouh wept over his teenage son, murmuring, “You wanted to be a journalist.”
Mahmoud was a senior at the secular American International High School in Gaza City. Set on becoming an English-language reporter, he spent his time honing camera skills and posting amateur reporting clips on YouTube, Dahdouh said.
A video that Mahmoud filmed days before he died showed charred cars, dark smoke and flattened homes. He and his sister, Kholoud, took turns delivering a monologue, straining to be heard over the wind.
“This is the fiercest and most violent war we have lived in Gaza,” Mahmoud said, chopping the air with his hands.
At the end of the clip, the siblings stared straight into the camera.
“Help us to stay alive,” they said in unison.
Yasmeen Serhan
TIME
Thu, November 2, 2023
A Palestinian man waits to cross into Egypt at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the southern Gaza Strip on June 17, 2014.
Thu, November 2, 2023
A Palestinian man waits to cross into Egypt at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the southern Gaza Strip on June 17, 2014.
Credit - Abed Rahim Khatib—NurPhoto/Corbis/Getty Images
For Palestinians, permanent displacement from their homeland is a perennial fear. It is one that has followed them from the war that led to Israel’s creation to 1948, in which some 700,000 Palestinians were violently expelled or forced to flee their homes and native villages in what they dub as the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” to the systemic evictions and home demolitions of the present. Now, the specter of forced mass expulsion looms over the enclave’s more than 2 million inhabitants, as Israel’s bombardment of the Strip, which has killed at least 9,000 Palestinians, forces them to flee south. The scale of the death and destruction, coupled with the dire humanitarian crisis, has increased international pressure on Arab countries—in particular Egypt—to open its border with Gaza to Palestinian refugees.
Egypt has so far refused to do so, save for the hundreds of select foreign nationals and dozens of wounded Palestinians who were permitted to exit Gaza via the Egyptian-controlled Rafah crossing this week. Its reasons are multifold, involving not just its own economic and security considerations, but also history and concerns over the precedent such a move would set—particularly if those refugees are never permitted to return home, in contravention of international law. “Egypt has reaffirmed, and is reiterating, its vehement rejection of the forced displacement of the Palestinians and their transfer to Egyptian lands in Sinai,” Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi told attendees of the Cairo peace summit on Oct. 21, noting that such an outcome “will mark the last gasp in the liquidation of the Palestinian cause.”
For Palestinians, permanent displacement from their homeland is a perennial fear. It is one that has followed them from the war that led to Israel’s creation to 1948, in which some 700,000 Palestinians were violently expelled or forced to flee their homes and native villages in what they dub as the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” to the systemic evictions and home demolitions of the present. Now, the specter of forced mass expulsion looms over the enclave’s more than 2 million inhabitants, as Israel’s bombardment of the Strip, which has killed at least 9,000 Palestinians, forces them to flee south. The scale of the death and destruction, coupled with the dire humanitarian crisis, has increased international pressure on Arab countries—in particular Egypt—to open its border with Gaza to Palestinian refugees.
Egypt has so far refused to do so, save for the hundreds of select foreign nationals and dozens of wounded Palestinians who were permitted to exit Gaza via the Egyptian-controlled Rafah crossing this week. Its reasons are multifold, involving not just its own economic and security considerations, but also history and concerns over the precedent such a move would set—particularly if those refugees are never permitted to return home, in contravention of international law. “Egypt has reaffirmed, and is reiterating, its vehement rejection of the forced displacement of the Palestinians and their transfer to Egyptian lands in Sinai,” Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi told attendees of the Cairo peace summit on Oct. 21, noting that such an outcome “will mark the last gasp in the liquidation of the Palestinian cause.”
‘Egypt is not unreasonable’
Egypt has every reason to be skeptical. It only needs to look at the experience of nearby Jordan and Lebanon, both of which were forced to absorb hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees amid past wars (none of whom have been permitted to return), to know that any solutions billed as a temporary humanitarian measure may turn out otherwise. The expulsionary rhetoric of the Israeli government, both before and since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, hasn’t placated those concerns. Indeed, a recently leaked document from Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence, dated Oct. 13, outlines a proposal to forcibly and permanently transfer Gaza’s Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. “The messages should revolve around the loss of land, making it clear that there is no hope of returning to the territories Israel will soon occupy, whether or not that is true,” reads the document, which was first reported on by +972 Magazine and its sister Hebrew-language site Local Call. “The image needs to be, ‘Allah made sure you lose this land because of Hamas’ leadership — there is no choice but to move to another place with the assistance of your Muslim brothers.’”
Read More: For Gazans, There Are No Safe Havens
While there is no evidence that this plan has been taken up as policy, its very existence indicates that “at the highest levels of the Israeli government, this has been discussed as an option,” says H.A. Hellyer, a London-based Middle East scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “So [Egypt] is not unreasonable in thinking that this might be the case.”
Such an outcome would have disastrous implications for Egypt, not least because the country can scarcely afford to. Egypt has been reeling from an economic crisis in which its debt has ballooned, its credit rating tanked, and its currency has plummeted to the extent that it is now considered among the worst in the world. The International Monetary Fund, which attributed the economic stagnation in part to “the military’s pervasive control over the economy,” has called on Cairo to enact reforms in return for loans.
Even if Egypt’s debts were to be forgiven—as has been reported in Israeli and international media as a rumored incentive for Cairo to take in refugees—there are security concerns that must also be taken into account. The Sinai Peninsula has long been a hotbed of violent insurgency by Islamist militants, including those associated with the Islamic State. (Indeed, the U.S. State Department maintains a travel warning against Americans going to Sinai, citing frequent attacks on security forces and civilians.) “The Egyptians have, for the last decade and a half, struggled to maintain security control within the Sinai Peninsula,” says Yousef Munayyer, a nonresident fellow at the Arab Center in Washington, D.C. and an expert on Israeli and Palestinian affairs. While the Egyptian government has made progress in that regard, Munayyer says transferring Gaza’s population there would almost certainly risk reversing that progress, especially if it invites Israel-Hamas tensions onto Egyptian territory. “From Egypt’s perspective, those grievances are not going to go away if the population comes onto its land,” he says. “And so it’s inviting direct conflict with Israel into the Sinai.”
Such an outcome risks endangering Egypt’s 40-year peace deal with Israel, which was and continues to be controversial among the Egyptian populace. Part of the way Egyptian leaders were able to sell the deal to the public was by emphasizing its role in helping Egypt to regain sovereignty over Sinai, which Israel seized during the Six Day War in 1967 until its peace deal with Egypt in 1979. The irony, Munayyer says, is that “for Egypt to be forced into a position where it has to accept millions of Palestinians it does not want to accept into its territory is a negation of the idea that Egypt has national sovereignty over the Sinai.”
But perhaps the biggest reason Egypt has rebuffed pressure to take in Palestinian refugees is because of the outrage that being seen to collaborate with their displacement would cause—not only among its own populace, but across the region. “There is no situation where Palestinians who were forced to leave their homes were allowed to return by the Israeli authorities,” Hellyer says, noting that despite Israel’s 2005 withdrawal of troops and settlements from the territory, it continues to enjoy “effective control of Gaza,” including its land, air, and sea borders. Israel’s suffocating 16-year blockade of Gaza, which is also enforced by Egypt, tightly restricts the movement of goods and people in and out of the Strip.
As Egypt sees it, a ceasefire is the only tenable solution to this humanitarian crisis—one that, fundamentally, is not of its own making. Indeed, Egyptian officials were quick to note in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre that it had warned Israel about a possible attack three days prior. Their argument is, essentially, “‘Why should we get stuck holding the bag?’” Munayyer says. “That, I think, is creating a lot of resentment.”
Read More: ‘Our Death Is Pending.’ Stories of Loss and Grief From Gaza
‘It’s more than just rhetoric; it’s actual history repeating itself’
The recent spate of normalization deals between Israel and largely Gulf Arab countries notwithstanding, the Palestinian issue remains a potent one on the Arab street, as recently evidenced by demonstrations in Amman, Beirut, and Cairo. “One of the longest open wounds in the Arab world is the issue of Palestine and the failure to resolve it,” Munayyer says. “For Arab governments to be seen again as complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is touching on the rawest nerve across the entire Arab world.”
These concerns haven’t escaped the notice of U.S. President Joe Biden, who this week announced that he had discussed with Egypt’s Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II the importance of “ensuring that Palestinians in Gaza are not displaced to Egypt or any other nation.” But fears remain that Israel could still seek to depopulate Gaza with U.S. backing. Observers have seized on the language around the White House’s request for supplemental funding for Israel, which says that “these resources would … address potential needs of Gazans fleeing to neighboring countries.” (The White House has since told reporters that the language was included in order to prepare “for all possible contingencies.”)
But as Munayyer sees it, “You don’t budget for these things unless you think there’s a real likelihood that it’s going to happen.”
How Israel, Egypt, and the U.S. choose to act in this moment will not only have a profound effect on the war, but on the future of Palestinian self-determination at large. Both Munayyer and Hellyer warn that the forced transfer of Palestinians in Gaza could be regarded as a trial run for a similar displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank, many of whom have already faced a surge in violence and intimidation by Israeli settlers. Indeed, Palestinians in the West Bank have reported receiving leaflets telling them to flee to Jordan or face another Nakba.
“We have seen this history of war being used as a cover for ethnic cleansing time and again,” Munayyer says. “It’s more than just rhetoric; it’s actual history repeating itself.”
Write to Yasmeen Serhan at yasmeen.serhan@time.com.
Gaza bombing adds to the generations of Palestinians displaced from their homes
Michael Vicente Perez, University of Memphis
Wed, November 1, 2023
Children sitting near their home at al-Shati camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip on June 20, 2020. Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images
An estimated 1.4 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes since the Israeli military began bombing the Gaza Strip on Oct. 8, 2023, in retaliation for a surprise attack by Hamas militants. Many of these Palestinians have sought refuge in United Nations emergency shelters in a situation the World Health Organization has described as “catastrophic.”
With shelters running out of adequate access to water, food, electricity and other critical supplies, humanitarian agencies are deeply concerned and fear a total breakdown in order.
While the current refugee crisis in Gaza has raised global concern over Palestinian displacement, this is not the first time Palestinians have endured the hardships of forced migration. Long before the latest upheaval, Palestinians who today live in Gaza and throughout the Middle East were forced from or fled their homes in what became the state of Israel. Today, they number about 5.9 million refugees, almost half of the entire global Palestinian population.
Over the past 20 years, my research as an anthropologist has focused on the situation of Palestinian displacement in the Middle East. Having studied some of the daunting challenges millions of Palestinians face as stateless refugees denied the ability to return to their homeland or the right of compensation, I believe it is critical to understand their history and what is at stake for those trapped in indefinite exile.
Fear, violence and exodus: the Nakba of 1948
The majority of Palestinian refugees today receive aid from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA. Dispersed throughout the region, including in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territories, about one-third of all Palestinian refugees live in UNRWA refugee camps, while the remainder live in surrounding cities and towns.
The origins of Palestinian displacement are ongoing and cannot be reduced to a single cause. Most Palestinian refugees, however, can trace their roots to two significant events in Palestinian history: The “Nakba” and the “Naksa.”
The 1948 Palestinian exodus, known in Arabic as Al Nakba, or the ‘catastrophe.’ History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The principal event in modern Palestinian history and memory is the Nakba, or what is roughly translated into the “catastrophe.” The term refers to the mass displacement of approximately 700,000 Palestinians during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 and the creation of the state of Israel.
The majority of Palestine’s Arab population fled their homes during the war, seeking temporary refuge across the Middle East but hoping to return after hostilities ceased.
The mass exodus of Palestinians in 1948 resulted in two realities that have marked the region since. The first involved about 25,000 Palestinians displaced within the boundaries of what became Israel. Known as internally displaced Palestinians, this community did not cross any official border and thus never received refugee status under international law. Instead, they became Israeli citizens, distinguished by their legal designation in Israel as “present absentees.”
Through the Absentee Property Law the Israeli state proceeded to confiscate displaced Palestinians’ properties and deny their right to return to the homes and villages of their birth.
The second event involved over 700,000 Palestinians who fled beyond what became the de facto borders of Israel and acquired formal refugee status under the United Nations. This group of refugees sought shelter in areas of Palestine unconquered by Jewish forces, like Nablus and Jenin, and in neighboring states, including Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.
Immediately following their displacement, these Palestinians were subject to ad hoc support from various international organizations until the 1949 creation of the UNRWA, which assumed official responsibility for the management of direct relief operations and refugee camp infrastructure throughout the Middle East.
In addition to providing education, health care and other services, including microfinancing and jobs training, the UNRWA has been supporting refugee camp improvement projects through road construction and home rehabilitation in the camps.
Refugees in Jordan, Egypt and Syria: the Naksa of 1967
The second-largest displacement of Palestinians occurred in 1967 during the Israel-Arab war known to Palestinians as Al Naksa or the “setback.”
A local barbershop inside Al-Wehdat Palestinian refugee camp in Amman.
Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Fought between Israel on one side and Syria, Egypt and Jordan on the other, the war ended with Israel occupying territory in all three countries, including the remaining areas of Palestine: the West Bank and Gaza Strip. During the war, approximately 400,000 Palestinians were displaced from the West Bank and Gaza primarily to Jordan and housed in one of six new UNRWA refugee camps.
Others found refuge in Egypt and Syria. More than a third of those Palestinians displaced in 1967 were already refugees from 1948 and thus suffered a second forced migration. Just as in 1948, when the 1967 war ended, the Israeli government blocked the return of any refugees and proceeded to destroy several Palestinian villages in the occupied territory, including Emmaus, Yula and Beit Yuba. After their destruction, these areas were leased to Jewish Israelis.
Fought between Israel on one side and Syria, Egypt and Jordan on the other, the war ended with Israel occupying territory in all three countries, including the remaining areas of Palestine: the West Bank and Gaza Strip. During the war, approximately 400,000 Palestinians were displaced from the West Bank and Gaza primarily to Jordan and housed in one of six new UNRWA refugee camps.
Others found refuge in Egypt and Syria. More than a third of those Palestinians displaced in 1967 were already refugees from 1948 and thus suffered a second forced migration. Just as in 1948, when the 1967 war ended, the Israeli government blocked the return of any refugees and proceeded to destroy several Palestinian villages in the occupied territory, including Emmaus, Yula and Beit Yuba. After their destruction, these areas were leased to Jewish Israelis.
Beyond Al-Nakba and Al-Naksa
Although the tragedies of the Nakba and the Naksa turned the vast majority of Palestinians into refugees, numerous events since then have increased their number. One of the most significant causes of Palestinian displacement today is the Israeli practice of home demolitions.
Whether as a punitive measure or the result of a permit system that rights groups say systematically discriminates against Palestinians, between 2009 and 2023 the practice destroyed over 9,000 homes and left approximately 14,000 Palestinians homeless.
The further displacement of Palestinians has also resulted from regional wars involving neither Palestinians nor Israelis. Following the end of Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait in 1990, over 300,000 Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait in retaliation for support offered by the leading Palestinian national organization, the Palestine Liberation Organization, to Saddam Hussein.
Since the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, over 120,000 Palestinian refugees have fled the country, primarily to Turkey and Jordan, while another 200,000 have been internally displaced. More recently, the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip has already internally displaced over 1.4 million Palestinians.
Many refugees, many exiles
Because Palestinians live under various governments in diverse circumstances, no single experience can account for their experience of exile. In Jordan, for example, where I have conducted research, Palestinian refugees can be divided into numerous groups, each with its own set of opportunities and challenges.
There are Palestinians displaced in 1948 who became citizens of Jordan but depend on UNRWA for basic services like education and health care. There are also refugees displaced from the Gaza Strip in 1967 who lack citizenship and are thus deprived of certain civil and political rights. More recently, there are Palestinians displaced from Syria for whom movement and work opportunities have been severely restricted in Jordan.
Palestinians living beyond Jordan also face distinct circumstances. In the West Bank, approximately 900,000 Palestinian refugees live under Israeli occupation, subject to a discriminatory system that human rights organizations have called “apartheid.”
Palestinian refugees in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, who today number around one-and-a-half million, are currently living under a 16-year blockade established by Israel but supported by the Egyptian government. Since the closure began in 2007, restrictions on the import of goods, the movement of people and access to basic resources like electricity have produced dire conditions for Palestinians, including over 45% unemployment and food insecurity among 70% of households.
Since 1948, Palestinians in Lebanon have faced severe restrictions in work, education and health. Treated as an unwanted population in the country, their presence has been a source of significant divisions in Lebanon and a factor in numerous conflicts, including the Lebanese Civil War and the War of Camps between Syrian-backed militias and factions within the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
Permanent exile or return?
Palestinian families leave areas in Gaza on Oct. 24, 2023.
Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images
Palestinian refugees represent the longest protracted refugee situation in modern history. For 75 years now, they have been forced to live as a stateless population without the ability to return to their homeland.
The duration of their predicament is undoubtedly tied to the uniqueness of their displacement. Palestinians fled a homeland that became the state of another population, in this case Jewish, whose leaders treat the return of Palestinians as a demographic threat.
Any solution to Palestinian displacement that involves returning to territory in contemporary Israel thus faces the problem of overcoming the idea of Israel as an exclusively Jewish state. And yet that is the challenge. Whatever peace negotiations may bring, no permanent solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict can avoid answering the question of return.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.
It was written by: Michael Vicente Perez, University of Memphis.
Read more:
What the Israel Defence Forces can expect when they enter the ‘Gaza Metro’ tunnel system
Palestinian Christians and Muslims have lived together in the region for centuries − and several were killed recently while sheltering in the historic Church of Saint Porphyrius
A forced exodus from Gaza to Egypt? Israeli ‘concept paper’ fuels outrage
Palestinian refugees represent the longest protracted refugee situation in modern history. For 75 years now, they have been forced to live as a stateless population without the ability to return to their homeland.
The duration of their predicament is undoubtedly tied to the uniqueness of their displacement. Palestinians fled a homeland that became the state of another population, in this case Jewish, whose leaders treat the return of Palestinians as a demographic threat.
Any solution to Palestinian displacement that involves returning to territory in contemporary Israel thus faces the problem of overcoming the idea of Israel as an exclusively Jewish state. And yet that is the challenge. Whatever peace negotiations may bring, no permanent solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict can avoid answering the question of return.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.
It was written by: Michael Vicente Perez, University of Memphis.
Read more:
What the Israel Defence Forces can expect when they enter the ‘Gaza Metro’ tunnel system
Palestinian Christians and Muslims have lived together in the region for centuries − and several were killed recently while sheltering in the historic Church of Saint Porphyrius
A forced exodus from Gaza to Egypt? Israeli ‘concept paper’ fuels outrage
Aurora Almendral and Yasmine Salam
Thu, November 2, 2023
What will happen to the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip? That question, fraught with historical trauma and fears of the future, has hung in the suffocating air of the besieged enclave as Israel intensifies its aerial bombardment and ground assault.
Now, a paper by an Israeli government ministry proposing that Palestinians in Gaza be transferred to Egypt’s Sinai Desert has raised the specter of a long-standing but highly contentious idea of forced displacement.
The proposal has drawn widespread outrage in the Arab world and has been denounced by Palestinian leaders. President Joe Biden said Sunday that he had spoken to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and that they had discussed “ensuring that Palestinians in Gaza are not displaced to Egypt or any other nation.”
Israel has downplayed the seriousness of the paper, but with Gazans’ fragile future the subject of its advancing military and furious global diplomacy, the idea does at least appear to be the subject of ongoing discussion.
A 'complicated' plan
The plan in this “thinking document” has been circulating for weeks but was confirmed by Israel on Monday as one of many ideas put forward by the country’s Intelligence Ministry, which conducts research but does not set policy.
It laid out a vision for mass displacement at the end of its war with Hamas: establishing tent cities in Egypt, creating a humanitarian corridor, then building cities in the northern Sinai to house the refugees for the long term, with a security zone to prevent Palestinians from returning to Gaza.
Sinai is a sparsely populated peninsula, its interior a largely inhospitable desert that has been the subject of past conflicts and negotiations between Israel and Egypt.
The document deemed the plan to be the best option for Israel’s security in the wake of Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 terrorist attack, while acknowledging that the proposal “is liable to be complicated in terms of international legitimacy.”
Israel Hamas War Gaza (Mohammed Abed / AFP - Getty Images)
Capturing Israeli fury in the wake of the attack, a lawmaker and former minister on Wednesday called for the erasure of Gaza so that its residents “will fly to the southern fence and try to enter Egyptian territory. Or they will die.”
“A vengeful and cruel IDF is needed here,” said Galit Distel Atbaryan, a member of the ruling right-wing Likud Party, said in a post on X. Other prominent Israeli figures have also publicly suggested that Palestinians should flee south into Egypt, at least temporarily.
Forced displacement as described in the document is a war crime in violation of international humanitarian law.
It is also an especially emotive issue for Palestinians. Even as they attempt to escape Israel’s bombardment, many fear that their attempts to seek safety will be parlayed into another traumatic mass displacement.
In 1948, 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their land in what would become Israel. It was a foundational event for Palestinians, who refer to their displacement as the “Nakba,” Arabic for catastrophe. Many of the current residents of Gaza are descendants of Palestinian refugees displaced during the Nakba.
“The biggest trauma in the Arab world that continues to this day is around the failure of Arab states in 1948 to do more to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Palestine,” said Yousef Munayyer, a senior fellow and head of the Palestine/Israel Program at the Arab Center in Washington, D.C.
“No Arab leader wants to be seen as complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” he told NBC News in a phone interview.
Thousands of civilians, both Palestinians and Israelis, have died since October 7, 2023, after Palestinian Hamas militants based in the Gaza Strip entered southern Israel in an unprecedented attack triggering a war declared by Israel on Hamas with retaliatory bombings on Gaza. (Mahmud Hams / AFP via Getty Images)
In a statement to The Associated Press in response to the Israeli report, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said, “We are against transfer to any place, in any form, and we consider it a red line that we will not allow to be crossed.”
“What happened in 1948 will not be allowed to happen again,” Abu Rudeineh said, adding that a mass displacement would be “tantamount to declaring a new war.”
While el-Sissi has not commented directly on the leaked document, he has repeatedly and staunchly opposed becoming a party to efforts by Israel to displace Palestinians.
“We are not going to permit that to happen,” he said last week, adding that the prospect of displacement endangered the “Palestinian cause.”
Middle Eastern experts are not surprised by the document but they are concerned.
Gamal Abdel Gawad, a political analyst and professor at the American University of Cairo, said the Israeli intelligence proposal is “completely reckless” and deflects from the crux of the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which he believes would only be resolved if Palestinians gain their own state.
The plan is also seen by many observers as an attempt by Israel to push off its responsibility under international law for the protection of Palestinians onto Egypt, a country in the midst of an economic crisis and ill-equipped to absorb 2.3 million refugees. Israel, with the support of its allies, may hope to leverage Egypt’s near-insurmountable debt as a way to convince it of such a plan, analysts have said.
El-Sissi’s public rejection of such a policy is bolstered by massive public support, including pro-Palestinian protests in Cairo last week. A strongman seeking a third term amid dwindling popularity, he has seen his approval ratings rise on the back of his vocal support for Palestinians.
His government has played an outsize role already in deals involving hostages, humanitarian aid and civilian evacuations.
Egypt’s position is not only motivated by a belief in the Palestinians’ right to self-determination or by self-interest, but the country also has a complex history with Israel, including past wars over Sinai, a 1978 peace treaty it seeks to preserve and delicate political cooperation.
National security concerns may also play into the administration’s tough stance. In the past, Egypt has struggled with extremist groups’ presence in the Sinai and lacked control over terrorist activity there, experts said.
“The idea of destabilizing Sinai, once again, through this mass depopulation is not just an economic or moral burden for Egypt, but also a major security issue,” Munayyer, of the Arab Center, said.
The plan to resettle Palestinians in Gaza to Sinai has surfaced regularly for decades, often meeting with outrage among Palestinians and Arab governments, but it is “not uncommon” in Israeli political discourse as an option during wartime, Munayyer said.
The United Nations estimates that 1.4 million Palestinians are currently displaced within the Gaza Strip in increasingly desperate conditions, as food, water, fuel and medicines run down under the total siege imposed by Israel and the destruction and death toll climb. It also remains unclear who might govern the coastal enclave after the war, if Israel is successful in eliminating Hamas.
Israel has repeatedly issued evacuation orders forcing people to southern Gaza, against the Egyptian border, while it appears to have focused its ground incursion on isolating the north of the enclave.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has attempted to downplay the document. In a statement to the AP, his office called it a “concept paper, the likes of which are prepared at all levels of the government and its security agencies.”
Munayyer said it would be tantamount to “complete political suicide” for the Egyptian government to accept such a “horrific possibility.” But while Israel has downplayed the document and the U.S., Egypt and others have dismissed the idea, he said he had no doubt that the Israeli government will likely push “very hard” to make it a reality with its actions in Gaza.
“Israel might make the Palestinians Egypt’s problem, whether Egypt likes it or not.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
'A curse to be a parent in Gaza': More than 3,600 Palestinian children killed in just 3 weeks of war
Isabel Debre and Wafaa Shurafa
Wed, November 1, 2023
Israel Palestinians Gaza Children (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
More than 3,600 Palestinian children were killed in the first 25 days of the war between Israel and Hamas, according to Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry. They were hit by airstrikes, smashed by misfired rockets, burned by blasts and crushed by buildings, and among them were newborns and toddlers, avid readers, aspiring journalists and boys who thought they'd be safe in a church.
Nearly half of the crowded strip's 2.3 million inhabitants are under 18, and children account for 40% of those killed so far in the war. An Associated Press analysis of Gaza Health Ministry data released last week showed that as of Oct. 26, 2,001 children ages 12 and under had been killed, including 615 who were 3 or younger.
“When houses are destroyed, they collapse on the heads of children,” writer Adam al-Madhoun said Wednesday as he comforted his 4-year-old daughter Kenzi at the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah. She survived an airstrike that ripped off her right arm, crushed her left leg and fractured her skull.
Israel says its airstrikes target Hamas militant sites and infrastructure, and it accuses the group of using civilians as human shields. It also says more than 500 militant rockets have misfired and landed in Gaza, killing an unknown number of Palestinians.
More children have been killed in just over three weeks in Gaza than in all of the world's conflicts combined in each of the past three years, according to the global charity Save the Children. For example, it said, 2,985 children were killed across two dozen war zones throughout all of last year.
“Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children,” said James Elder, a spokesperson for UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency.
Images and footage of shell-shocked children being pulled from rubble in Gaza or writhing on dirty hospital gurneys have become commonplace and have fueled protests around the world. Scenes from recent airstrikes included a rescuer cradling a limp toddler in a bloodied white tutu, a bespectacled father shrieking as he clutched his dead child tight to his chest, and a dazed young boy covered in blood and dust staggering alone through the ruins.
“It's a curse to be a parent in Gaza,” said Ahmed Modawikh, a 40-year-old carpenter from Gaza City whose life was shattered by the death of his 8-year-old daughter during five days of fighting in May.
Israeli children have also been killed. During Hamas' brutal Oct. 7 rampage across southern Israel that sparked the war, its gunmen killed more than 1,400 people. Among them were babies and other small children, Israeli officials have said, though they haven't provided exact figures. About 30 children were also among the roughly 240 hostages Hamas took.
As Israeli warplanes pound Gaza, Palestinian children huddle with large families in apartments or U.N.-run shelters. Although Israel has urged Palestinians to leave northern Gaza for the strip's south, nowhere in the territory has proven safe from its airstrikes.
“People are running from death only to find death,” said Yasmine Jouda, who lost 68 family members in Oct. 22 airstrikes that razed two four-story buildings in Deir al-Balah, where they had sought refuge from northern Gaza.
The strike's only survivor was Jouda's year-old niece Milissa, whose mother had gone into labor during the attack and was found dead beneath the rubble, the heads of her lifeless twin newborns emerging from her birth canal.
“What did this tiny baby do to deserve a life without any family?” Jouda said.
Israel blames Hamas for Gaza's death toll — now more than 8,800, according to Gaza's Health Ministry — because the militant group operates from jam-packed residential neighborhoods. Palestinians point to the soaring casualty count as proof that Israeli strikes are indiscriminate and disproportionate.
The war has injured more than 7,000 Palestinian children and left many with lifechanging problems, doctors say.
Just before the war, Jouda's niece Milissa walked a few paces for the first time. She will never walk again. Doctors say the airstrike that killed the girl's family fractured her spine and paralyzed her from the chest down. Just down the hall from her in the teeming central Gaza hospital, 4-year-old Kenzi woke up screaming, asking what had happened to her missing right arm.
“It will take so much care and work just to get her to the point of having half a normal life,” her father said.
Even those physically unscathed may be scarred by war's ravages.
For 15-year-olds in Gaza, it’s their fifth Israel-Hamas war since the Islamist militant group seized control of the enclave in 2007. All they’ve known is life under a punishing Israeli-Egyptian blockade that prevents them from traveling abroad and crushes their hopes for the future. The strip has a 70% youth unemployment rate, according to the World Bank.
“There is no hope for these children to develop careers, improve their standard of living, access better healthcare and education,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director for Defense for Children International in the Palestinian territories.
But in this war, he added, "it's about life and death.”
And in Gaza, death is everywhere.
Here are just a few of the 3,648 Palestinian children and minors who have been killed in the war.
ASEEL HASSAN, 13
Aseel Hassan was an excellent student, said her father, Hazem Bin Saeed. She devoured classical Arabic poetry, memorizing its rigid metric and rhyme scheme, and reveling in its mystical images and florid metaphors. During the war, when Israeli bombardments came so close that their walls shook, she would regale her relatives by reciting famous verses from Abu Al Tayyib al-Mutanabbi, a 10th-century Iraqi poet, her father said.
“When I asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up, she would say, read,” said 42-year-old Bin Saeed. “Poems were Aseel’s escape."
An airstrike on Oct. 19 leveled his three-story home in Deir al-Balah, killing Aseel and her 14-year-old brother, Anas.
MAJD SOURI, 7
The explosions terrified Majd, said his father, 45-year-old Ramez Souri.
He missed playing soccer with his school friends. He was devastated that the war had canceled his Christian family's much-anticipated trip to Nazareth, the town in Israel where tradition says Jesus grew up.
“Baba, where can we go?” Majd asked again and again when airstrikes roared. The family, devout members of Gaza's tiny Christian community, finally had an answer — St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City.
Souri said Majd calmed down when they arrived at the church, where dozens of Christian families had taken shelter. Together, they prayed and sang.
On Oct. 20, shrapnel crashed into the monastery, killing 18 people. Among the dead were Majd and his siblings, 9-year-old Julie and 15-year-old Soheil. Israel says it had been targeting a nearby Hamas command center.
Majd was found beneath the rubble with his hands around his mother's neck. His face was completely burned.
“My children just wanted peace and stability,” said Souri, his voice cracking. “All I cared about was that they were happy.”
KENAN AND NEMAN AL-SHARIF, 18 months
Karam al-Sharif, an employee with the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency, could barely speak Wednesday as he knelt over his children's small shrouded bodies at the hospital. Gone were his daughters, 5-year-old Joud and 10-year-old Tasnim.
Also gone were his twin 18-month-old sons, Kenan and Neman. Al-Sharif sobbed as he hugged Kenan and said goodbye. Neman's body was still lost beneath the rubble of the six-story tower where the family had sought refuge in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in central Gaza.
“They had no time here,” Sami Abu Sultan, al-Sharif's brother, said of the baby boys, a day after the building was destroyed. “It was God's will.”
MAHMOUD DAHDOUH, 16
On Oct. 25, Al Jazeera's livestream caught the chilling moment when its Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, discovered that an Israeli airstrike had killed his wife, 6-year-old daughter, infant grandson and 16-year-old son, Mahmoud.
Swarmed by TV cameras at the hospital, Dahdouh wept over his teenage son, murmuring, “You wanted to be a journalist.”
Mahmoud was a senior at the secular American International High School in Gaza City. Set on becoming an English-language reporter, he spent his time honing camera skills and posting amateur reporting clips on YouTube, Dahdouh said.
A video that Mahmoud filmed days before he died showed charred cars, dark smoke and flattened homes. He and his sister, Kholoud, took turns delivering a monologue, straining to be heard over the wind.
“This is the fiercest and most violent war we have lived in Gaza,” Mahmoud said, chopping the air with his hands.
At the end of the clip, the siblings stared straight into the camera.
“Help us to stay alive,” they said in unison.
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