In the Media

The Algemeiner – 18 February 2025

US President Donald Trump’s February 6 comments on Gaza shook the world, causing an earthquake to erupt across the international community. Aftershocks continue to be felt.

Whether his proposals for relocating Palestinians and turning Gaza into a “Riviera” of the Middle East are realistic is almost beside the point. His statements have once again highlighted the hypocrisy and triple standards applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Many voices insist that Palestinians must not be displaced or offered voluntary and even temporary departure invoking terms like “forced displacement” and “ethnic cleansing.” Yet, this faux concern for the plight of Palestinians has very little to do with Palestinians, and everything to do with Israel.

During the Syrian civil war from 2011, about 6.5 million refugees were forced to flee Syria. About 5.5 million of those went to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt while another 850,000 went to Germany. These refugees were managed by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). This is the United Nations agency responsible for all the world’s refugees – except for Palestinians, who fall under the separate UNRWA agency, the only “refugee” group to receive that distinction.

These refugees fled Syria in the midst of a brutal civil war and there were certainly no widespread accusations that this exodus must be prevented to stop “ethnic cleansing”. Rather, the exodus was understood as a natural human response, and a humanitarian result compared to what happened to the 500,000 or so Syrians who ended up dead inside Syria over more than a decade.

Similarly, in February 2022, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, around 6.8 million Ukrainians were also forced to flee their country. European countries predominantly gave them safe refuge with Germany and Poland being the main providers of asylum, along with the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom and Spain.  Once again, this was understood as necessary from a humanitarian viewpoint, and once again, the organization that looked after them was the UNHCR.

In those two recent wars, tens of millions of people were forced to leave their homes, yet there was no outcry opposing their displacement, only international efforts to ensure their safety and welfare.

However, when it comes to Palestinians, such humanitarian instincts concerning their plight vanish. Any suggestion that they should be allowed to leave Gaza – a conflict zone that has been absolutely devasted by 16 months of war – is met with outrage and accusations of ethnic cleansing.

Jordan, where the population is predominantly Palestinian, says it will not budge in its opposition to US President Donald Trump’s proposal of relocating Palestinians in Gaza to other countries, including Jordan and Egypt. Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told Al Jazeera the Palestinians cannot be transferred to Egypt, Jordan, or any Arab state. He laughably talks about the Palestinian “right for freedom” – just not the kind of freedom that allows them to actually leave an active war zone.

Egypt has also refused to allow the Palestinians to leave, despite having an actual border with Gaza, and ample space where it could easily accommodate them.

Europe has also rejected the idea of relocating the Palestinians, even temporarily, during the conflict. The contrast appears staggering: Syrians and Ukrainians are embraced, while Palestinians are denied the same considerations.

What is the difference? Israel is involved, and when it comes to Israel, the rules change. Triple standards come into force – one rule for dictatorial states, one rule for democracies and an entirely separate category for Israel.

Arab states frequently talk about the rights and freedoms of Palestinians, but their actions promote the complete opposite. They have the means to help needy Palestinians, but they simply refuse to. Instead since 1948 and before, they have preferred to continually use the Palestinians as a political pawn to attack Israel’s legitimacy, keeping them in often squalid conditions in refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria, with few rights.

It is simply mind-boggling – the 22 Arab states with vast resources, encompassing nearly 10% of the world’s total land area, cannot offer refugee status to their fellow Arab Palestinians. Yet the one and only tiny Jewish state is prepared to absorb all Jews worldwide.

This blatant hypocrisy and crocodile tears for their fellow Arabs should be rejected and condemned by all fair-minded countries. This condemnation should also apply to the majority of European countries, who have been very quick to condemn Israel and make moral pronouncements yet fail to demonstrate basic moral reasoning themselves.

President Trump offered something different. It’s not fully fleshed out and elements of it will have to change – his suggestion that Palestinians might be moved involuntarily must be a non-starter. However, perhaps it offers a way out of this never-ending conflict. Perhaps even hope for a population indoctrinated and historically used as political tool by their fellow Arabs and the international community.

But true to form, the international community seems to be demonstrating that it cares more about vilifying Israel than actually helping Palestinians.