Next week, Palestinians will mark the 77th anniversary of the Nakba ("disaster") – the displacement of Palestinians from Tel Aviv, Herzliya and other parts of Israel, during Israel’s War of Independence.
The Nakba is the cornerstone of Palestinianism, and the governing ethos of the Palestinian national movement.Descendants of Palestinians displaced in 1948 are still refugees in 2025, many living in refugee camps in Gaza, Bethlehem, Jenin, and throughout the Middle East.
While about 100 million 1940s refugees in Europe, the Middle East, and India have been resettled within years and prospered, the 800,000 displaced Palestinian from those same years have been singled out by the West and proactively kept as refugees. [According to a report by the BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, in 2021 there were 9.17 million Palestinians considered "displaced" worldwide.]
A special UN agency, UNWRA, was even created to perpetuate this Palestinian plight – their misery a necessary condition for the cultivation of the Palestinian national movement.
Golden opportunity
The year 2025 presents a golden opportunity for 1948 Palestinian refugees to end their suffering. First, President Donald Trump is leading a shift from a focus on Palestinian national rights, to a focus on Palestinian human rights.
This is most visible in Gaza: For 18 months, the Biden administration and Europe dehumanized Palestinians in Gaza, denying them a safe passage out, using the childish excuse that Egypt does not allow them to pass through. This while in other war-zones, the same Western powers were instrumental in facilitating escape routes.
This underscored the obvious: Western pro-Palestinians are not pro-Palestinians (as people), but rather are pro-Palestinianism (as a nation). Palestinians in Gaza were evidently sacrificed and forced into a humanitarian crisis in order to promote the Western objective of the “two-state solution.” After all, how can there be a Palestinian state without Palestinians?
Indeed, for decades, Palestinianism was cultivated, funded, and nurtured by Europe and its proxies as a vehicle to oppose the Jewish state, and through it, the United States. This was welcomed by Palestinians as long as it was in line with promoting their human rights.
Yet, in recent years it became clear that Palestinian human rights and national rights are an either/or. For example, Europe aggressively sabotaging Palestinian employment and mentorship in Jewish-owned businesses exacerbates the suffering of Palestinians as individuals, but promotes the Palestinian national cause, as the 25% unemployment rate is duly leveraged by Western media as resulting from the horrors of the Israeli occupation.
Indeed, the patronizing message to Palestinians has been clear: “Ask not what the two-state solution can do for you, ask what you can do for the two-state solution.”
The Trump relocation plan gives Gaza refugees an opportunity to not only have a better and safer life elsewhere, but also to emancipate themselves from such oppressive Western dogmas.
At the same time, it is becoming evident that Arab countries have an interest in the relocation of Palestinians. For example, Palestinians can be instrumental in blooming the desert in Eastern Jordan – a new strategic interest of Jordan and neighboring Arab countries, as the threat shifted from the West (Israel), to the East (Iran and Sunni extremism).
Desert 'Riviera'
While it would take an estimated 15-20 years to build the “Gaza Riviera,” it might take just a few short years to build the “Desert Riviera.” The insurmountable hurdle of labor shortage can be addressed immediately once a critical mass of Palestinians is there.
Building up the desert, such as along the Baghdad Road, is not just an economic, geopolitical and security priority, but would also address the global ecological challenge of population density, and therefore should be supported by the UN and Europe. It would open up the eastern wilderness of the Middle East, in a similar way that the expansion to the West did in the early days of America.
And so, the Trump relocation plan addresses the needs of Arab regimes, Israel, the West, the UN, and mostly of Gazans: It gives those Palestinians who have been refugees for over a year now, since the beginning of the October 7 war, an option to build a better life elsewhere.
But what about Palestinians who have been refugees for 77 years? This question is becoming more pertinent in light of an inevitable shift of consciousness among Palestinians.
1948 refugees’ struggle revisited
For years, Palestinians refugees of 1948 championed the “armed struggle” as the way to go back home. October 7 ended the military option.
October 7 to Palestinians is perhaps akin to the 1973 war for Egypt: In-spite of astonishing initial success, it soon became clear to Egypt then, and to Palestinians now, that there is no military option to destroy Israel. Indeed, October 1973 led Egypt to the inevitable conclusion that their military will not bring back the Sinai. This led to a radical shift in strategy: Get Sinai through a peace agreement.
Similarly, October 2023 leads Palestinian 1948 refugees to the inevitable conclusion that the Palestinian national movement will not bring them back to Tel Aviv.
Not military, and certainly not diplomatically: After all, at the core of the “two-state solution” is the condition that 1948 Palestinian refugees sign away their right to go back home, after 77 years of promises that one day they will.The attempt to replace the deeply rooted “from the river to the sea” ethos with a Western-invented “from the river to the Green Line” one is absurd, especially after billions of Euros, hundreds of textbooks, and a dedicated UN agency indoctrinated 1948 refugees that sooner or later they will go back. Same goes for the idea that 1948 refugees should replace the promise to go back to Tel Aviv, with a new one to go “back” to Jenin.
Personal self-determination
On the other hand, the expansion of the Trump Gaza relocation plan to include 1948 refugees would allow Palestinians to have the best of all worlds. Not only would they have the option to build a better life elsewhere, but they will be able to do so, without waiving their right to go back to all of Palestine, “from the river to the sea.”
Moreover, post-October 7, Palestinians understand that if there is a military option to go back, it is not through Palestinian nationalism – a Western notion that served Western interests – but through rising forces in the middle East that are organic and have nothing to do with Palestinianism: Shiite Iran, the Muslim brotherhood, Sunni extremist groups such as ISIS, and the reemergence of Turkey as a regional powerhouse.
Indeed, those 1948 Palestinian refugees who wish “death to Israel” can wish it from Jordan, Indonesia, and Iraq, just as they can do so from Gaza and Jenin.
On the other hand, those 1948 Palestinian refugees who wish to benefit from the crisp light emanating from Zion and, like other Arabs in the Middle East, partner with the Jewish state, can do so much more easily in their new homes, without the paralyzing anti-Israel pressures imposed by European governments, European-sponsored NGOs, UN agencies and the Palestinian Authority.
Indeed, expanding the Trump relocation plan to include 1948 refugees would at last give Palestinians what was robbed from them by the West for decades: their personal self-determination – the right to make a choice.
The writer is author of a new book, The Assault on Judaism: The Existential Threat is Coming from the West. He is also the author of Judaism 3.0: Judaism’s Transformation to Zionism, and chairman of the Judaism 3.0 think tank (Judaism-Zionism.com). His geopolitical articles are featured on:EuropeAndJerusalem.com.