US President Donald Trump’s plan to allow Gazans to emigrate from the war-torn enclave has provoked fierce rejection from the Palestinians and the Arab countries.
Egypt recently proposed its postwar plan, according to which Hamas would cede power to an interim body until a reconstituted Palestinian Authority can take control of Gaza.
Despite Arab and international opposition, the United States has reiterated its commitment to President Trump’s emigration plan. The Palestinians and Arab states reject the plan because they understand it means a resounding defeat for the Palestinian national movement. Ironically, only such a defeat can pave the way to peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is driven by Palestinian irredentism – the belief in reclaiming lost land at any cost. The Palestinian national movement is not merely about statehood but the total reversal of 1948, as reflected in Hamas’s rhetoric and actions.
The popular chant calls for the liberation of Palestine “from the river to the sea.” There is a universal consensus among Palestinian groups, ranging from secular to Islamist, that Jewish sovereignty is inherently illegitimate and will ultimately end in “Palestine’s liberation.”
This mythology of “return” and “liberation” serves as the ideological fuel for the century-long Palestinian war against Zionism and the State of Israel. During the October 7 attacks, Hamas terrorists referred to Israeli border towns as “settlements” and their residents as “settlers,” framing their actions as a step toward reversing the Nakba.
It is no surprise that most of the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre were graduates of UNRWA’s education system, which emphasizes the ultimate “right of return” to the villages from which Gazans’ grandparents and great-grandparents left during the 1948 war.
The sumud (steadfastness) ideology plays a key role in this struggle. Hamas’s 1988 Charter declared, “The land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day,” prohibiting any territorial compromise. The 2017 revision maintained that “Palestine is a land seized by a racist, colonial Zionist project.”
Mahmoud Darwish, the revered Palestinian poet, captured this sentiment in “Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words,” a poem calling for Jews to “leave our country” – a vision of total Palestinian sovereignty from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
In the Palestinian imagination, Jews are settlers who merely “pass” through occupied Palestine, as opposed to the indigenous Palestinians who are deeply rooted in the land. As Darwish so vividly wrote:
“O those who pass between fleeting words Carry your names, and be gone […] So leave our country Our land, our sea Our wheat, our salt, our wounds Everything, and leave The memories of memory O those who pass between fleeting words!”
Mahmoud Darwish
Even amid Gaza’s destruction, Hamas celebrated displaced civilians’ “return” to northern Gaza as a nationalist victory. One Gazan stated, “It’s the joy of return… We had thought we wouldn’t return, like our ancestors.” Hamas sustains these myths to keep Palestinians committed to an endless war against Israel.
Despite sumud’s propagation by Palestinian nationalists, the facts show that Gazans overwhelmingly yearn to escape Hamas’ failed and repressive rule. According to a survey carried out before the outbreak of the war by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 44% of Gazan youth between 18-29 were considering emigrating from the Strip. Nearly a third (31%) of the total population considered emigration.
While there is no official data, it is estimated that 250,000 people have left Gaza since Hamas took control in 2007. By allowing those who reject Hamas’s rule to go, Israel and the international community can expose sumud as an artificial construct that only serves Palestinian revanchism.
Recently revealed documents captured from Hamas’s Khan Yunis Brigade show that Hamas considers emigration a serious threat to its rule. The terror group has carried out an ideological campaign warning young people against emigrating, claiming that this would be a betrayal of Islamic values and the Palestinian cause.
In his widely acclaimed book Embracing Defeat, historian John W. Dower demonstrates how Japan’s utter defeat in World War II wholly discredited Japanese militarism and fascism. Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allies in 1945 shattered the myth of military invincibility and undermined the legitimacy of Japanese expansionism.
The destructiveness of the Allied response, culminating in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, left Japanese society devastated. The repudiation of Japanese militarism was key to rebuilding Japan and embracing pacifist and democratic values.
Currently, the international community colludes with Hamas to keep Palestinians trapped in Gaza. However, the fact of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians choosing to abandon Gaza would fatally undermine sumud and Palestinian nationalism. Hamas launched the current war to advance its vision of a Palestine liberated from the Jewish presence – Trump’s plan would force the Palestinians to pay a steep price for their military adventure.
The loss of land and resources that it would entail might free Palestinian society from its deadly fantasy of Israel’s destruction. By embracing defeat, Palestinian society might rebuild itself along peaceful lines and accommodate itself to Israel’s existence. For the sake of peace, Israel and the international community must embrace Trump’s plan for Gaza.
The writer, an advocate, is an international law researcher at Kohelet Policy Forum.