Mr. Trump: It’s Time to Listen to What Palestinians Want

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February 28, 2025

The president continues to float his colonial acquisition plan. But the people of Gaza just want to go home. How do you know? Because we asked them.

Palestinian children will attend lessons in classrooms at a damaged school in Gaza city on February 26, 2025.

(Majdi Fathi/Nurphoto via AP)

President Donald Trump caused a firestorm with his proposal to turn the post-war Gaza Strip into American Control The “Riviera” exempts the Palestinian population. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the plan was “Think outside the box. ”

In fact, it’s nothing.

Trump’s ideas are reminiscent of the colonial views of the century shared by the British and political Zionist movements. Both groups saw Palestine Through the lens of their ambition And the indigenous Arabs of Palestinian people were seen as pawns who were merely moving around without taking into consideration their needs or aspirations.

Political Zionism supporters have spoken daily about Palestine’s desire to wipe out Arab residents to give way to the Zionist project. They are I saw their company “European walls against Asia… as a post-post of civilization against the wild bar.” The UK agreedseeks to divide the eastern Arab world and maintain Palestinian rule through the establishment of Jewish homelands that will help ensure scaffolding in the Eastern Mediterranean.

In support of the belief that people should have the right to self-determination, the United States sent out a committee of prominent Americans to investigate Arab public opinion and discover what they had done and didn’t want a future. The committee concluded The overwhelming majority of Arabs rejected: the division or division of their regions, the European orders against them, the establishment of a Zionist state in Palestine. What they wanted was an independent, unified Arab state.

The US Commission’s report also warned of disputes if planned partitions move forward. Lord Balfour of England rejected the very idea of the investigation; I’m saying,

In Palestine, we do not even propose to consult with the wishes of current residents. …Zionism…[is] Imports far deeper than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now live in that ancient land.

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Ultimately, Lord Balfour went his way, and the US Commission’s disastrous predictions were burled. The eastern Arabs were divided, and the British were imposed on Palestine, where the British were raising Jewish immigrants, leading to the establishment of Israel. Since then, Palestinians have been confiscated, displaced and subjected to constant violence. Because they resisted, Last century It was one of the continuing conflicts that culminated in Gaza’s genocide and destroyed oppression in the West Bank.

When the United Nations divided Palestine in 1948, the population of the region that was to form a Jewish state was divided roughly equally between Arabs and Jews. In the subsequent war, Jewish forces seized more land, expelled over 700,000 Palestinians from it, and demolished more than 400 villages to prevent them from returning. Israel’s new leader, David Ben Gurion, celebrated it as “double miracle… more land and fewer Arabs.”

The conflict, born of the failure to recognize Palestinian rights and attachment to their homes and Palestinian land, has been sacrificed to Israelis and Palestinians alike.

In this context, it is important to understand that 80% of Gaza residents are descendants of refugees from the 1948 war. For them, Trump’s proposal is not “out of the box.” It is the same old rudeness to their rights, planting new seeds that will bear bitter fruit in the coming years.

Palestinians want something important, especially after nightmares, after they endured, and later last year, my voting company, Zogby Research Services, Two separate polls of Palestinian opinion have been conducted On the west bank of the Jordan River and beyond Gaza. Our findings were very clear.

The scale of the devastation has been made very clear, with 54% of Gaza people reporting their family members murdered or missing, and 55% have reported that since the start of the war they have been forced to move at least five times more in search of their families’ safety.

Our polls have little doubt about the short-term desires of Palestinians in Gaza. After more than a year of crushing wars, they simply want to breathe out, return home and begin the long and rigorous process of reconstruction. On a basic humanitarian and moral level, it should be counted for something.

When they look to the future, what they want more than anything is that they can lift the knees of Israeli occupation from their backs and ultimately have freedom and independence on their own lands. When presented with many possibilities that Gaza should be governed at the end of the war, the most preferred option is the international or Arab-Islamic coalition. Despite losing faith, both Hamas and Palestinian authority, to varying degrees (PAs are seen more aggressively than Hamas among the Palestinians in Gaza, Hamas outweighs the West Bank PA) held a general referendum to select a new generation of leadership that could advance the new vision of Palestinians. And instead of violence, their preferred option for resistance is non-violent behavior, such as taking Israeli liability for crimes in international organizations.

But most importantly, 92% of Gaza Palestinians want to stay in Gaza and return to where they were homes. They are Palestinians and want to stay on Palestinian lands. The last thing they want is avoided, after 18 months of constant displacement and uncertainty, perhaps by force, to escape into exile, and abandoned by the dark fate of a little-known country.

This is a stark contrast to the views advanced by the Americans and Israelis. Of course, these Palestinian views must be developed further, but to be aware of them is a better path to taking precisely, as they recognize that instead of continuing to impose “solutions” on the Palestinians, they ask what they want, listen to what they say, and make their desires real with them.

Palestinians should be allowed to determine their future. Part of the reason we arrived at such a bloody intersection is because great powers have been disposing of Palestinians for decades.

The message to President Trump should be clear. The Palestinians will not accept being forced to leave the Palestinian land, and attempts to make a massive displacement will descend into yet another horrifying spiral of violence and death. If President Trump really wants to be remembered with the idea of ”out of the box,” he should listen to those who bring his decision to life: the two million Palestinian Gaza people covered in war.

James Zobby

James Zoabie was founder and chairman of the Arab American Institute and was a member of the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee from 2001 to 2017.