Population Transfers Sanctioned by America? It’s on the Table.

Opinion|Population Transfers Sanctioned by America? It’s on the Table.

President Trump has introduced a seemingly game-changing, if incendiary, proposal ahead of his meeting on Tuesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, the first foreign leader he will meet since his inauguration. Three times in less than two weeks, Mr. Trump has suggested that Palestinians could be relocated from Gaza to Egypt and Jordan.

It is hard to exaggerate the traumatic resonance of displacement and population transfer in collective Palestinian memory. This history helps explain the Palestinian determination to remain in the newly devastated territory and the widespread outcry to this relocation proposal and its long-term radicalizing potential.

If the two leaders take this idea seriously in their meeting, and, worse, if the idea comes to fruition, it will almost certainly boost hostility to Israel in the region and kick any prospects of U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Saudi normalization — a goal Mr. Trump enthusiastically seeks to pursue — deep into the long grass. The Saudi leadership recently joined many others in designating Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide and has become more forceful in conditioning normalizing ties on the creation of a Palestinian state. Aside from being morally reprehensible, a large-scale population transfer of Palestinians would very likely close the door on a three-way U.S.-Israel-Saudi deal for the foreseeable future.

Having put the idea out there, Mr. Trump may think the storm that followed gives him leverage. He may assume that Arab leaders — in classic transactional terms — could give him something in return if he drops it. The idea has a potentially beneficial domestic political angle for Mr. Netanyahu. It holds strong appeal to the right-wing allies that his coalition government depends on and for whom continuing the Nakba — the expulsion and flight of Palestinians around Israel’s creation in 1948 — seems to be an ideological goal. These potential benefits will neither last long nor get them very far.

Mr. Trump’s relocation idea joins a long list of Washington’s illusions about settling the conflict in the Middle East: that Israel is more likely to make peace if treated with indulgence in response to accusations of violations of international law; that resistance to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories has a military solution; and that normalizing Israel’s relations with Arab states, with which it is not in conflict, can work as an end run around dealing with Palestinian dispossession and denial of self-determination and rights.

In the current environment, suggestions of depopulation, whether intended as a practical proposition or not, cannot be taken lightly. This is not only because of the history of partition and displacement. It is also because of what is happening now. Shortly after the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, as Israel expanded its military operations in Gaza, reports surfaced that the government had floated plans — later downplayed by Mr. Netanyahu — to force Palestinians out of Gaza and into Egypt. Proposals of “voluntary” mass emigration of Palestinians have also been aired in Israeli political circles, including by senior officials.