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forced displacement
Supporters of Peace in Gaza Must Work to Ensure That No One Will Be Forced to Leave
Israeli and US leaders must commit to the Trump peace plan’s promise that no one will be expelled from Gaza.
Oct 26, 2025
Amid some extremely cautious optimism for peace following a tenuous and incomplete ceasefire in Gaza, any hope for Gaza’s future depends significantly on a little-noticed point in President Donald Trump’s original 20-point peace plan.
The plan’s 12th point says, “No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return.” The plan goes even further, saying, “We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.”
Although there are reasons to doubt many elements of the Trump “peace plan”—which neither side has agreed to in full—the assertion that no one will be forced to leave Gaza represents a major reversal: Prior Israeli and US government policy clearly aimed to force some or all Palestinians from the Strip.
Indeed, Trump’s previous plan to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” involved displacing Palestinians outside the Strip. Last March, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated his support for the “realization of the Trump plan” and what some Israeli and US leaders euphemistically called “voluntary migration.”
Ending the displacement of Palestinians as well as the mass killing and destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure are clear requirements for anything approaching peace.
“This is the plan. We are not hiding it,” Netanyahu said. That same month, the Israeli cabinet approved the creation of a so-called Voluntary Emigration Bureau charged with moving Palestinians out of Gaza and to other countries such as Libya, Indonesia, and the Republic of the Congo.
The mass expulsion of Palestinians by the Israeli government has been a major feature of the last two years of violence following the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas and allied forces, which resulted in the deaths of around 1,200 Israelis and foreigners. In a new report published by Brown University’s Costs of War Project, I compiled the best available international data to document how the Israeli military has displaced almost everyone in Gaza over the past two years: 2,026,636 people or around 92% of the strip’s pre-war population. Many have been displaced multiple times: on average, three to four times for every displaced person. Around 45% of the displaced have been kids.
The displacement has extended to the West Bank, where some Israeli leaders have also supported ethnic cleansing. In the last two years, 43,624 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have been displaced from their homes by the Israeli military and police forces, government-backed Israeli settlers, Israeli government demolition orders, and other violent causes. Broader Israeli and US wars in the region have displaced an additional 3.2 million people in Iran, Lebanon, and Israel itself, as well as what are likely thousands more in Yemen and Syria.
According to numerous experts, the mass displacement of Palestinians—nearly 12,000 per day on average in Gaza alone—constitutes the war crime of “forcible transfer,” which is a crime against humanity under international law. Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore) concluded in a September 2025 report that “the facts demonstrated overwhelmingly” that Israel was “implementing a plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians and dealing a death blow to the vision of a future Palestinian state that would include Gaza and the West Bank.” Any implementation of the original Trump plan to displace Palestinians to other countries would constitute further war crimes and ethnic cleansing. It would also continue a pattern of ethnic cleansing dating to the founding of the Israeli state in 1948 and Israeli military forces’ expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians in what Palestinians call the Nakba—the catastrophe.
The lives of millions of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and ultimately the lives of millions of Israelis, hang in the balance as the world waits to see if Netanyahu’s government abides by the current ceasefire and commits to a full end to its war or if it re-commences its assault and genocide as it has in prior ceasefires.
Since the announcement of a deal this month, thousands of displaced Palestinians have filled roads walking in search of their homes in a vast landscape of grey rubble. The sight of people trying to return home amid such destruction offers a glimmer of hope while reflecting the immensity of the challenges ahead.
“I’m going to Gaza City even though there are no conditions for life there—no infrastructure, no fresh water,” one of the displaced, Naim Irheem, insisted to one of the few news outlets reporting from Gaza. “Everything is extremely difficult, truly difficult, but we must go back. My son was killed, all my daughters were wounded. Still, I want to return. We’ll pitch a tent and live in it, however it can be done.”
Ending the displacement of Palestinians as well as the mass killing and destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure are clear requirements for anything approaching peace. Israeli and US leaders must commit to the Trump peace plan’s promise that no one will be expelled from Gaza.
This promise—and the entire peace process—may prove to be yet another cynical ruse, much like the Israeli government calling past expulsion “voluntary migration.” For now, supporters of peace must work to ensure that no one will be forced to leave Gaza, that the displaced can return home as international law requires, and that they receive aid and reparations for their displacement.
These must be among the first steps toward real peace and justice that will require holding perpetrators accountable for their crimes and addressing Palestinians’ rightful demands to return to homes from which they were displaced beginning in 1948.
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The Peace Deal That Wasn’t
Trump’s Congo-Rwanda Peace Accord is an affront to Congolese human rights and sovereignty.
Aug 03, 2025
After the signing of the so-called peace agreement between Rwanda and Congo on June 27, U.S. President Donald Trump took a victory lap. “This is a Great Day for Africa and, quite frankly, a Great Day for the World! I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for this... but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me!” he posted. The agreement, heralded as a breakthrough ending more than three decades of violence in Congo, was quickly praised by powerful institutions in the West, including the United Nations and the European Union.
There’s no question that peace in Congo is a desperately needed goal. Since 1996, war in the country has killed nearly 6 million people and displaced over 7 million. More than 21 million require humanitarian assistance, and in 2023 alone, the U.N. recorded over 133,000 cases of sexual violence, almost certainly a significant undercount.
However, while world leaders and celebratory headlines applaud the deal, violence continues to rage in the eastern Congo. The deal will not end this suffering; instead, it prioritizes Western private interests over peace, justice, and dignity for the Congolese people, serving as a blueprint for resource extraction and continued violence in the country rather than a true diplomatic success.
The deal, while ostensibly aimed at ending hostilities, places a heavy emphasis on mineral exploitation, leading Congolese civil society to question its true purpose. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Denis Mukwege has denounced it for “legitimizing the plundering of Congolese natural resources,” a concern supported by the agreement’s inclusion of a clause committing signatories to “launch and/or expand cooperation on… formalized end-to-end mineral value chains… with the U.S. government and U.S. investors.” Upon the release of the Declaration of Principles that laid the deal’s foundations, the International Crisis Group noted that the deal reads “partly like a framework for ending a conflict and partly like a commercial memorandum.”
The False Promise of Peace
It is highly unlikely that the deal will bring a just and lasting peace to Congo. Though a potential cease-fire was announced between the Congo government and M23, the conflict’s largest rebel group, experts say that M23 has already broken the agreement while serious implementation challenges remain. M23 has left withdrawal—and, thus, a true and lasting end to the conflict—out of the question, telling reporters they “will not retreat, not even by one meter.” Meanwhile, over 100 other armed groups continue to fight in the east. On July 23, the U.N. condemned three recent deadly attacks by groups not party to the agreement.
More troublingly, the deal grants Rwanda a green light to continue looting Congolese resources, furthering a central driver of the conflict. By backing M23, Rwanda has taken control of Congolese mines, and committed widespread human rights abuses. Up to 90% of its coltan exports are believed to be illicitly smuggled from eastern Congo, funding armed groups. The accord, which invites Rwanda into a “regional economic integration framework,” legitimizes this theft and proxy warfare.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame doesn’t seem ready to scale back this influence. Just days after the agreement was signed, he cast doubt on the peace process, telling reporters, “If the side that we are working with plays tricks... then we deal with the problem like we have been dealing with it.”
Who Does the Deal Really Benefit?
Today, the Congolese people endure violence not only from armed conflict but also from systemic exploitation, through forced labor, environmental destruction, and land seizures. The scramble for Congo’s mineral wealth has forced tens of thousands of children into dangerous mines, polluted and devastated ecosystems, and displaced entire communities from their homes.
A recent policy brief by the Oakland Institute lays bare how, through handing over Congolese mineral wealth to a web of U.S.-aligned corporate actors and billionaire investors, Trump’s peace deal will deepen the ravages of the country’s mining industry, leaving the Congolese people to pay the price.
The list of the deal’s likely beneficiaries is a veritable who’s-who of Trump-linked billionaires: Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, and Ben Horowitz, among others. Also on it are mining giants like Ivanhoe Mines, Rio Tinto, and Glencore.
The accord threatens to entrench this cyclical poverty and violence in service of enriching behemoth mining firms and Trump’s billionaire friends.
The track records of these companies undermine any claim that Trump’s deal is about peace for the Congolese people. Ivanhoe Mines’s cochair Robert Friedland once ran Galactic Resources, responsible for one of the worst mining-related environmental disasters in U.S. history. He has already been exposed for harmfully evicting Congolese families to expand his new operations in the Congo. Rio Tinto, notorious for sparking a civil war in Papua New Guinea and for destroying a 46,000-year-old sacred Aboriginal site in Australia, is now eyeing Congo’s Manono Lithium Deposit. Glencore has been fined over $1 billion for abuses in its African mines and maintains illicit financial ties to sanctioned Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler. Both Ivanhoe and Rio Tinto are reportedly set to join a forthcoming minerals agreement tied directly to the deal’s economy-driven clauses.
Lacking the infrastructure to process its own resources, Congo remains trapped in a cycle where foreign actors siphon off its $24 trillion in mineral wealth while its citizens remain among the poorest in the world. Compounding that systemic inequality, both corporate and artisanal mines enact severe human rights abuses and environmental devastation on the Congolese people, injustices that the agreement appears likely to bolster as it opens the door to firms perpetrating them against communities around the globe. In doing so, the accord threatens to entrench this cyclical poverty and violence in service of enriching behemoth mining firms and Trump’s billionaire friends.
Despite what he may think, or wish, Donald Trump deserves no applause for this “peace agreement” because the agreement itself is misnamed. Its focus has never been peace, but rather profit, and his attempt to launder it into something more benevolent is transparently disingenuous.
Without a radical shift, Trump’s deal will likely achieve exactly what it was intended for, funneling billions to already wealthy oligarchs and multinational corporations while sidelining the communities forced to live with its consequences.
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Stop Israel’s Dystopian ‘Humanitarian City’ Plan—Before It’s Too Late
There is no neutral ground. This is not a policy debate. This is genocide—on camera, with diplomatic cover, and with our tax dollars.
Jul 12, 2025
The Israeli government has just put forward one of the most brazenly genocidal schemes in modern memory—and unless we act immediately, the world will once again let it happen.
As reported in Haaretz, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz is proposing to force some 600,000 Palestinians—and eventually the entire population of Gaza—into a fenced-in “humanitarian city” to be built on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza. The plan is to “screen” the population, separate out alleged Hamas members, and then pressure the remaining civilians—men, women, and children—to “voluntarily” leave Gaza for another country. Which country? That hasn’t even been determined. The point isn’t relocation—it’s erasure. This reflects a long-standing goal among many Israelis, especially on the right, to take full control of Gaza and clear it of Palestinians.
The United Nations has warned that the deportation or forcible transfer of an occupied territory’s civilian population is strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law and “tantamount to ethnic cleansing.”
While all eyes are focused on a possible cease-fire, Katz is not interested in peace—he’s interested in a “final solution.” A speeding up of the second Nakba we have been witnessing for the past 20 months. In fact, he has stated that construction would begin during a 60-day cease-fire. So what’s the point of a cease-fire, if it’s used to build a concentration camp?
Don’t fool yourself into thinking this can’t happen. It is happening. The groundwork is being laid. The walls are going up. The deportation flights are being negotiated.
Once Palestinians are herded into this camp, they will not be allowed to leave for other parts of Gaza. They won’t be allowed to return to what’s left of their homes, their neighborhoods, their farms, their schools. They will be trapped inside this militarized zone, under constant surveillance, held at gunpoint until Israel can arrange their deportation.
Just think of the tragic, unbearable irony: the Israeli government—founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust—is now building a massive concentration camp for an entire population.
If that sounds unthinkable, look at what Israel has already gotten away with.
For the past 20 months, the world has watched—and largely enabled—a genocidal campaign in Gaza. Over 55,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered, the majority of them women and children. Israel has bombed hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and mosques. It has flattened entire neighborhoods with AI-generated kill lists. It has assassinated journalists, targeted ambulances, destroyed bakeries and water systems.
It has used hunger as a weapon of war, deliberately blocking aid trucks, attacking convoys, and starving the population into desperation. And in a cruel twist, it has created the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation—a scheme to funnel aid through Israeli-controlled routes and sideline the U.N. and experienced NGOs. Its so-called “distribution points” are really death traps, where desperate people have been shot day after day as they risk their lives to get a bit of food.
This engineered starvation is not an accident. It is a strategy—a form of collective punishment on a scale rarely seen in modern times.
We have already failed the people of Gaza—again and again. We failed when we looked the other way as children were buried in rubble. We failed when we allowed our tax dollars to fund the very bombs that wiped out refugee camps. We failed when we kept pretending there was still a line Israel wouldn’t cross.
Now Katz is telling us—explicitly—what comes next: mass internment and forced expulsion. And unless we rise up with every ounce of outrage we have, we will fail again.
Let’s be absolutely clear: The infrastructure for this plan is already being built. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump are lobbying corrupt governments in the Global South to accept the deported. This is not a negotiating tactic to strengthen Israel’s position in cease-fire talks—it is the next phase of a genocide we’ve been watching in real time for nearly two years.
And what is the U.S. government doing? Still issuing meaningless statements about “Israel’s right to defend itself.” Still shipping weapons. Still blocking accountability at the United Nations—and even sanctioning officials like U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for daring to speak out.
President Trump could stop this today—by cutting off military aid, backing the International Criminal Court’s investigations, and declaring that forced displacement of Palestinians will not be tolerated. But instead, he’s still dreaming of turning Gaza into a Middle Eastern resort for the ultra-rich.
Meanwhile, more Arab governments stand ready to normalize ties with Israel, making deals with war criminals while their fellow Arabs are starved, bombed, and now threatened with mass exile. Where is the outcry from Cairo, Riyadh, Amman? Is there absolutely no red line?
One bright spot on the international scene is the Hague Group, which will convene an emergency meeting in Colombia on July 15-16. This growing bloc of nations has joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. These countries are taking a courageous stand to uphold international law and defend Palestinian life. Every nation that claims to value justice must join them—immediately.
And here in the United States, every member of Congress must be pushed—loudly, relentlessly—to take a public stand. No more vague language. No more hiding behind mealymouthed scripts. We demand immediate, public opposition to this “humanitarian city” plan—and a full cutoff of military support to Israel. This is a moment of moral reckoning. Choose a side.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking this can’t happen. It is happening. The groundwork is being laid. The walls are going up. The deportation flights are being negotiated.
There is no neutral ground. This is not a policy debate. This is genocide—on camera, with diplomatic cover, and with our tax dollars.
The time to stop Israel’s dystopian plan is not tomorrow. It is now.
Rise up. Speak out. Flood the streets. Bombard Congress. Demand accountability.
Stop the plan. Save Gaza. Before it’s too late.
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