The following is a Catholic Action League of Massachusetts news analysis…
Lamentably, President Donald J. Trump, who has enjoyed two weeks of unparalleled success at the beginning of his second term, has now been inveigled into embracing a criminal proposal contrived by the far right wing of Israeli politics.
Today, at a White House press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the President actually stated that the United States would assume ownership and administration of the Gaza Strip, and would relocate, permanently and involuntarily, all 2.1 million Gaza Palestinians into other Arab states.
“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Trump said.
“We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings — level it out and create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.”
‘The people of the area,’ apparently, do not include native Palestinians. According to Trump, the Palestinians “Just can’t go back. If you go back, it’s going to end up the same way it has for 100 years,” adding “I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza. I heard that Gaza has been very unlucky for them.”
The President also said he would deploy US troops to the territory “if it’s necessary.”
Incredibly, President Trump said “I do see a long-term ownership position,” referring to the U.S. occupation of Gaza.
The forced displacement of a native civilian population is a grave violation of human rights and a crime against international humanitarian law.
It violates Article VI of the International Military Tribunal Charter of 1945—the authorization for the Nuremberg trials—where it was defined as both a war crime and a crime against humanity.
It is also a breach of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which stated “Individual or mass forcible transfers…from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”
Article 17 of the 1977 Additional Protocols II to the Geneva Convention provides: “Civilians shall not be compelled to leave their own territory for reasons connected with the conflict.”
Article 8 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court, adopted by the United Nations in the Rome Conference of 1998, states: “The deportation or transfer [by the Occupying Power] of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside [the territory it occupies], constitutes a war crime in international armed conflicts.”
Forced displacement is also a violation of U.S. military regulations. Article 23 of the Lieber Code states: “Private citizens are no longer murdered, enslaved, or carried off to distant parts.”
The Leiber Code comprised the Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field, prepared by Francis Lieber, and promulgated as General Order No. 100, by President Abraham Lincoln, on 24 April, 1863.
Article II of the 1945 Allied Control Council Law Number 10, of which the United States was a signatory, defined a crime against humanity as “deportation … or other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population…”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment:
“Unlike France, Italy and the United Kingdom, the United States has never been a colonial power in the Middle East.
If this lunatic proposal is ever implemented, which seems unlikely, America, as an occupying power, would now become a direct military participant in the Arab/Israeli conflict, and would be forced to prosecute a counter insurgency war against Palestinian resisters.
This would represent a stunning repudiation of Donald Trump’s longstanding opposition to so-called ‘forever wars’ in the Middle East, which Trump rightly condemned as a waste of American blood and treasure.
In a June, 2020 address to the graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point, President Trump said ‘We are ending the era of endless wars,’ adding that it is not the job of American forces ‘to solve ancient conflicts in faraway lands that many people have not even heard of.’
Moreover, the good name of the United States of America is in peril. If the U.S. government became a party to the forced displacement of Palestinians, we would join the ranks of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and Ottoman Turkey as practitioners of ethnic cleansing.
That must never be allowed to happen.
The Israeli campaign of strategic and tactical bombing in Gaza, along with ground operations, killed 46,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and wounded or injured another 109,000. The destruction of housing and infrastructure in the Strip displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, and left 1.8 million facing hunger or starvation.
It is now evident, after today’s press conference, that the Israeli Defense Forces campaign in Gaza was never simply about defeating Hamas, but was intended to reduce Gaza to rubble and ruin, making it unlivable, providing the pretext and the circumstance for the removal of the Palestinian population.
Donald Trump, being a patriot, admires great American Presidents, like General Andrew Jackson. He should remember another general—a Supreme Commander—who was President.
After the Suez Crisis of 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower defended the people of Gaza, and forced the Israelis to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. Having liberated Europe, Ike understood what a war crime was.
