Amjad Shawa had just returned to northern Gaza on Wednesday, February 5, when he learned of US President Donald Trump's new plan to ethnically cleanse the enclave of some two million Palestinians, to take control and transform Gaza from a "symbol of death and destruction" into the "Riviera of the Middle East."

The 53-year-old director of the Palestinian NGO network in Gaza was outraged: "Donald Trump wants to kick people out and make this place his property. Palestinians don't belong to anyone. This is our land, our property! We are not an economic project. There is no respect for the people of Gaza, for their suffering, for the suffocation they suffer because of their territory occupied by Israel since 1967. No consideration for this terrible assault that we've been enduring for over 15 months."

Shawa is a descendant of a native Gazan family. He is part of the roughly quarter of the enclave's population originally from Gaza – the rest are refugees and descendants of refugees from the Nakba, the forced exodus of 1947-1948, when the State of Israel was created. He has Gaza in his flesh. He is a member of the great Shawa family, which gave the municipality its first mayor, Sidon Shawa, a landowner, in 1907.

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