Palestine from Balfour to Trump

This article aims to make a historical comparison between the two Nakba, the first Nakba was founded by the Balfour Declaration announced on November 2, 1917, which worked to displace Jews to Palestine, creating the Nakba in 1948 that led to the establishment of the occupying state, and the displacement of the Palestinian people, followed by the Naksa in 1967, which led to the occupation of all of historical Palestine. In contrast, we discuss the second Nakba, which is headed this time by US President Donald Trump, represented by the Deal of the Century in his first term and the plan to displace part of the Palestinian people at the beginning of his second term. What is important for us in this article is to shed light on the fact that the first Nakba displaced Jews from all over the world to Palestine, while the second Nakba aims to displace the Palestinian people from their land to some Arab countries, and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

This leads us to the fact that the West's ambitions in Palestine are old; because of its geographical location's strategic economic, military and religious importance. Britain was at the forefront of the colonial countries that coveted control over the region in the past, and today America aims to achieve the same British policy and goals, and the promise crystallized as a result of the interests of the Western countries that wanted to get rid of the Jews in Europe. The Balfour Declaration is not only the major turning point in the Zionist project, but it also changed the future of the Arab homeland, by planting the State of Israel instead of the State of Palestine. The idea and project of establishing the Zionist entity in Palestine is a Western colonial idea that Britain implemented from A to Z. More than a century after the Balfour Declaration by Britain, a new promise was announced that can be called the second promise, but this time the promise came from America - Trump's promise - which grants Jerusalem to Israel by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of the occupying state - Israel - and transferring the American embassy to Jerusalem. The scene of Balfour "who gave from those who do not own to those who do not deserve" has been repeated.

108 years after the Balfour Declaration, Trump is preparing a new promise: the promise to displace the Palestinian people. On August 16, 2024, Israel's Channel 12 reported that Trump said that "Israel looks small on the map and I have always thought about how it can be expanded." This statement came shortly before his election as president. After his election, he proposed a plan to displace the residents of Gaza to Egypt and Jordan. On January 26, 2025, Trump stated that he had discussed the plan with the Jordanian monarch and the Egyptian president, indicating that the transfer of the population could be temporary or long-term. Trump proposed a plan to "cleanse" Gaza, saying that he wanted Egypt and Jordan to receive Palestinians from the Strip in order to bring peace to the Middle East.

Before and during the 1948 war, about a million Palestinians were displaced and expelled from their homes, known as the Nakba. In the 1967 war, when Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip, another half a million Palestinians were displaced and expelled to Arab countries. Many Palestinians see the recent war in Gaza, which destroyed entire neighborhoods and forced 90 percent of the Strip’s 2.3 million people from their homes, as a new Nakba. They fear that if so many Palestinians leave Gaza, they will never return.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has warned of the security implications of moving large numbers of Palestinians into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, which borders the Gaza Strip. That could complicate efforts to broker a historic deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel to normalize relations, something Trump tried to do during his previous term and is expected to complete in his current term.

Trump's call to "cleanse" Gaza and deport its residents to Jordan and Egypt was met with Israeli praise and welcome, and Palestinian and Arab rejection. For his part, the far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich considered US President Trump's proposal to transfer the residents of the Gaza Strip to Jordan and Egypt a "wonderful idea," and Smotrich told Netanyahu: We must strengthen our grip and sovereignty over the West Bank. The outgoing Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, praised Trump's initiative, and wrote on the "X" platform: "I congratulate President Trump on his initiative to transfer the residents of Gaza to Jordan and Egypt. One of our demands from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Jordan and Egypt."

It is worth noting that most of the residents of Gaza are Palestinian refugees or descendants of refugees, and for the Palestinians, any attempt to transfer them from Gaza would be similar to the Palestinian Nakba that they were subjected to in 1948. In Jordan, there are 2.3 million registered Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations.

The response to President Trump's plan came from the Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance in Gaza in the scenes of return from the south to the north, which express the extent of the Palestinian's adherence to their land despite their return to their destroyed homes that were wiped out by the occupation's bombing with huge American missiles and bombs. The war of extermination, starvation and millions of tons of bombs did not push the people to emigrate from their land.

The Arab Quintet meeting, held in Cairo on February 1, 2025, stressed the categorical rejection of any attempts to displace Palestinians or strip them of their rights, whether through settlement activities, home demolitions or land annexation, considering that these measures threaten stability and undermine the chances of peace in the region. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also responded to Trump’s repeated calls to transfer Gazans to Egypt and Jordan by sending Israelis to Greenland instead.

Despite all this, the disastrous results and effects of the Balfour Declaration are still ongoing and escalating. The occupying state was established on the majority of historical Palestine, in addition to the occupation continuing with settlement expansion, Judaization of Jerusalem, demolition, killing, arrest, and displacement of millions of Palestinians to the diaspora. It did not stop at displacing them, but rather pursued them in the diaspora camps, targeting them and displacing them to Western countries, relying on the ISIS contractor, and before that on the South Lebanon Army - agents of Israel - who carried out the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Today, history is repeating itself against the camps in terms of the targeting that the camps in the northern West Bank are exposed to through systematic destruction after the destruction of the Gaza camps in order to obliterate the right of return and settle the refugees in the countries in which they are located.

We conclude with a basic rule that governed the situation during the issuance of the Balfour Declaration and the Trump Declaration, that the Palestinian people in the first declaration were unable to defend the Palestinian cause and there was no Palestinian resistance to stand in the face of the malicious plans, while the Palestinian people responded to it when the Trump plan was announced by returning from the south to the north in the Gaza Strip, and the people today are relying on a resistance that forces the occupation to withdraw and allow the return and release of hundreds of prisoners serving life sentences, which can be described as a historical miracle.

Accordingly, Egypt and Jordan are required to open a wide space for popular movement rejecting the plan to target and strike the national security of their countries through the Trump plan that aims to displace the Palestinian people. They must move at the regional and international levels to defend their sovereignty and reject these projects that conflict with international laws, the sovereignty of states, and the rights of occupied peoples to get rid of the occupation. Jordan and Egypt have a strong pressure card as they have peace relations with Israel by initiating escalatory steps to the point of severing relations and canceling peace agreements with Israel and also with America if Trump and Netanyahu implement their malicious plan to displace the Palestinian people. These are the practical steps that the Palestinian Authority must also take by withdrawing recognition of the State of Israel, stopping security coordination, and holding the occupation responsible for its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip by freezing the work of the Palestinian Authority, holding the occupation responsible at all levels, and working to unify the Palestinian arena and include the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements in the PLO, completing Palestinian reconciliation, developing plans and programs that support the steadfastness of the Palestinian people, returning the Palestinian issue to the international table again, and going to all international and legal organizations to hold Israel and President Trump accountable and punish Israel.

In the end, the Palestinian is the one who fought, endured and was patient for about a year and a half, and with the agreement, the scenes of the return of the residents of the Gaza Strip to the north astonished the world, as the scenes of the return confirmed that this is a mighty people who have not and will not give up their land and will not accept displacement and deportation despite their return to destroyed areas with no life. In contrast, the settlers in the Gaza Strip and the north refuse to return to the settlements despite the ceasefire agreements and the temptations offered to them by the Israeli government. This comparison sends a message to Trump about who are the owners of the right and the land, who clings to their land and who has no affiliation to this land. If Trump wants a solution to the Jewish problem, he must carry them on ships and return them to where Britain brought them, or he can establish a new state for them in America by increasing the number of states to 51 states.