The Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip has led to a displacement crisis of historic magnitude. According to international assessments, about 1.9 million Palestinians are displaced in Gaza—85 percent of the population. More than a million of them have fled from the northern part of Gaza following Israel’s instructions. The pictures, stories, and videos appearing on social media since the beginning of the war, with Palestinian families fleeing with light luggage, feel to many like a national flashback to the Nakba, an Arabic word that means “catastrophe.”. It is the name given to the national trauma of the displacement of about 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The tragedy of this displacement runs deep in Palestinian history.
And statements made by top Israeli officials aggravate the fear that the current crisis will end up replicating the trauma of the Nakba. Avi Dichter, Israel’s minister of agriculture and rural development, said that the displacement in Gaza will go down as the “Gaza Nakba of 2023.”
This was not the first time that Dichter referred to the Nakba in such a way. In 2007, commenting on the choice by some Palestinians not to observe the celebrations for Israel’s 60th anniversary, he said, “Whoever sits year after year and cries over the Nakba should not be surprised that in the end, he will actually receive a Nakba.”
In recent years, right-wing politicians such as Dichter have started referring to the Nakba as a positive precedent that could be useful as the basis for a future policy. Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli finance minister from the far-right Religious Zionist Party, published his agenda on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, called the Decisive Plan, in 2017. There, he proposed that after the annexation of the West Bank, the Palestinians in the territory would have to choose whether to be loyal to the state of Israel without full citizenship (Smotrich suggested that they would receive permanent residency—without the right to vote in national elections—as granted to Palestinians in East Jerusalem) or immigrate elsewhere.
But one also can now find other “moderate” figures from the Likud party, such as Tzachi Hanegbi, the current head of the National Security Council of Israel, who wrote on Facebook in 2017 after the killings of three Israeli civilians in the West Bank, that Palestinians should “remember” the wars of 1948 and 1967, because “when you want to stop it, it will already be too late. It will be after the Third Nakba.”
Some commentators have argued that another Nakba is already taking place in Gaza. However, while the magnitude of the current displacement of Palestinians surpasses the combined scope of the Nakba in 1948 and the mass displacement during the so-called Naksa in 1967, it is important to stress that the international community can still prevent it from being permanent.
In other words, another Nakba is avoidable. Top U.S. officials have stressed that they will not allow Israel to occupy any parts of Gaza and that Gazans should be able to return to their land. Vice President Kamala Harris stated in early December that “[u]nder no circumstances will the United States permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, the besiegement of Gaza, or the redrawing of the borders of Gaza.” If the Biden administration is serious about these goals, however, it will have to confront the Israeli government now.
As is, the ongoing war in Gaza has a dangerous potential to evolve with similar dynamics to the 1948 and 1967 wars. In both earlier conflicts, Israel took advantage of the situation to reshape the Palestinian territories and contain more Palestinians in less territory. The current Israeli offensive is more aggressive than any previous wars against Hamas over the past two decades, with an estimated more than 23,000 Palestinian fatalities, the majority of whom are suspected to have been women and minors.
In the first few weeks of the war, as part of Israel’s preparation for the ground invasion, the Israeli military urged Palestinians in northern Gaza to flee southward to designated so-called safe zones. And the increasing Israeli offensive in the south has now forced Palestinians to flee farther to the city of Rafah, which is located on the southern end of the Gaza Strip by the border with Egypt. More than a million Palestinians have relocated there, quadrupling the city’s population. The dire living conditions that have result from such mass overcrowding, in addition to Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment, have increased the pressure on the border between Gaza and Egypt.
So far, Egypt has kept the Rafah crossing mostly shut. But the deteriorating humanitarian conditions and the number of displaced Palestinians might compel Egypt to enable them to flee to the Sinai Peninsula, although it would be highly unpopular in Egypt. Several Israeli officials have also circulated proposals to transfer Palestinians to Sinai. However, it is yet to be an official governmental policy because it would risk the stability of the peace agreement with Egypt.
But the idea of Palestinians entering Egypt in large numbers will remain a possibility so long as the mass displacement that has already taken place within Gaza is not squarely addressed. An international intervention, led by the United States, to stop the starvation and the humanitarian crisis in southern Gaza is critical not only to save lives, but also to prevent the massive displacement from becoming permanent.
Right now, the humanitarian crisis is only deepening. The lack of reasonable sanitary conditions and water supply in southern Gaza has increased the risk of the rapid spread of disease. Moreover, Human Rights Watch claims that Israel is committing intentional starvation of the Palestinian population in violation of international law.
The United States should also seek assurances from the Israeli government that Palestinians will be able to return to all parts of the Gaza Strip. That must include the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza, much of which has turned into a battle zone controlled by the Israeli military.
Another issue that needs to be addressed will be the implementation of Israel’s plans to establish a buffer zone within the Gaza Strip to increase its ability to maintain security control over the area regardless of who might govern it. Such a buffer zone would undermine the objective presented by the Biden administration regarding Palestinians’ right to return to their homes and properties.
Preventing the displacement from becoming permanent will also require closely monitoring Israel’s legal system. The Nakba did not entail solely the displacement of Palestinians during the war, but also a series of legal measures aimed at blocking the return of Palestinians to their land.
After the 1948 war ended, Israel established a military regime over members of the Palestinian population who remained within the borders of the state of Israel and received citizenship. The military regime restricted Palestinians from returning to their land. Two years afterward, Israel passed the Absentee Property Law, which regulated the treatment of the property belonging to Palestinians who fled or were forcefully transferred during the war. This law enabled the Israeli government to legally take control of the land and property of Palestinians.
Although the government officially acted as a property trustee, it used this land to settle new Jewish immigrants in the so-called abandoned property over the following decades. The government also used this law as a primary tool in taking control over Palestinian property in East Jerusalem, which Israel has occupied since the 1967 war. Most recently, this law has been a central component in the legal justification for evicting Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah.
Even if Israel allows Palestinians to return to their land in Gaza, the territory would still require immense reconstruction. Israeli attacks have damaged 70 percent of the houses in the Gaza Strip, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, and more than 10 percent of homes—mainly in the northern part—were utterly demolished. Several reports indicate that much of the farmland in eastern Gaza was also severely damaged.
Therefore, there would need to be great investments to allow people to reestablish their lives. According to the rules of Israel’s blockade over Gaza over the past 16 years, such construction materials, in the quantity needed, would be severely restricted. The international community must receive guarantees from the Israeli government that Palestinian and international bodies would have the leeway necessary to facilitate such restoration.
The United States and the international community have already failed to prevent the displacement of 1.9 million Palestinians and the ensuing humanitarian crisis. However, there is still time to mitigate some of the long-term implications. An international intervention can stop another Nakba from taking place in Gaza, ensure that Israel does not create another legal framework to stop Palestinians from returning to their land, and allow communities to rehabilitate their ruined cities and villages.