“What US President Donald Trump proposed during a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on February 4 is illegal, immoral and irresponsible,” Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, said at a press conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, on February 5. “This is worse than ethnic cleansing. It is forced displacement… and it is an international crime.”

Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention classifies unlawful deportation or transfer as a serious violation of human rights, which is considered a war crime under the US War Crimes Act. Article 49 of the Geneva Convention states that individual or mass forcible transfers or deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of any other state, whether occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive. The International Court of Justice ruled on July 19, 2024 that Gaza is occupied territory and that the occupation violates international law.

Furthermore, intentional forcible transfer or deportation “as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack” is a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute. Israel, in collusion with the United States, has been committing a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian people in Gaza since October 7, 2023. “Forcible transfer or deportation of population” is defined as the displacement of persons by expulsion or other coercive acts from the area in which they are lawfully present.

It is noteworthy that on January 26, 2024, the International Court of Justice found that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza on a reasonable basis and ordered the prevention of genocidal acts. Albanese noted that “forced displacement and dispossession in the context of genocide would reinforce complicity in the crimes committed by Israel over the past fifteen months and before.”

According to Albanese, the Trump plan will raise the level of American aiding and abetting in Israel's genocide to a new level.

“The United States will take over Gaza, and we will do our job, too,” Trump declared at the press conference with Netanyahu. “We will own it… We will get rid of the destroyed buildings, we will level them, and we will create economic development that will provide unlimited jobs and housing for the people of the area… Do something different, you just can’t go back. If you go back, it will end up the same way it has for 100 years.”

Albanese responded to Trump's suggestion that "no one has the right to determine how to rebuild Gaza, except the Palestinians."

Legal Right of Return for Palestinians

“I don’t think people should go back to Gaza,” Trump said. “Why would they want to go back? It was a hell of a place,” neglecting to mention that it was Israel’s genocidal campaign that made Gaza “hell.” Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed nearly 62,000 Palestinians and displaced 85 percent of the population, using American bombs. Yet when the ceasefire began, Palestinians began to return, because it is their homeland. Palestinian refugees have a legal right to return to their lands.

“Anyone who has watched the videos on social media showing the joy of Palestinians returning to their homes in northern Gaza despite the total destruction there—and setting up tents on top of the rubble of their destroyed homes—will understand the Palestinian attachment to their homeland,” wrote Palestinian-American Michelle Mashbak on Truthout. “It would be naive for anyone, including President Trump, to think that Palestinians would voluntarily leave their homeland and settle elsewhere.”

In 1947 and 1948, Israel carried out the Nakba (or “catastrophe”), a violent campaign of ethnic cleansing that forced 750,000 Palestinians from their land in order to create Israel. Mass atrocities and dozens of massacres committed by Zionist terrorist movements such as the Haganah, Irgun and others killed approximately 15,000 Palestinians. The Nakba resulted in the forced displacement of 85 percent of the Palestinian population. “We should not call them Palestinian refugees,” Albanese said at this point. “We should call them Nakba survivors, homeless.”

The United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 194 in 1948, which recognized the right of return for Palestinian refugees. The resolution states that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible under principles of international law or equity.”

About two-thirds of Palestinians in Gaza are refugees whose families were forced to leave their homes or fled in fear during and after the creation of Israel in 1948. But for 76 years, Israel has categorically denied them their right to return, despite Resolution 194.

Albanese said that Israel "will not kill the right of return because the right of return exists under international law that predates the establishment of the State of Israel."

Israel is deliberately repeating the Nakba of 76 years ago. “We are now continuing the Nakba of Gaza,” declared Israeli Security Cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter on November 12, 2023. “The Nakba of Gaza 2023. This is how it will end.”

Palestinians' right to self-determination

The Palestinian people have a legitimate right to self-determination. The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza violates international law, which prohibits the acquisition of territory by the threat or use of force and enshrines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. The court wrote: “The continued abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying power, through annexation and the assertion of permanent control over the occupied Palestinian territories and the continued thwarting of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates the fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories illegal.”

On February 4, Trump issued an executive order permanently cutting funding to UNRWA, the agency that has provided food, education and health care to Palestinian refugees since 1949. UNRWA is the only organization in Gaza capable of meeting the urgent needs of Palestinians who have suffered under Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war. Cutting funding to UNRWA would certainly exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Albanese noted that only the General Assembly can decide on UNRWA’s future.

Netanyahu has long been attacking UNRWA. In 2018, he said that “UNRWA is an organization that perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem and the narrative of the right of return, as it were, in order to destroy the State of Israel” and that it should “pass out of the world.” The process of defunding UNRWA by the United States and other countries began during the Biden administration.

Ahead of Netanyahu’s visit, Trump announced his intention to send an additional $1 billion in weapons to Israel, including $700 million for 1,000-pound bombs and $300 million for armored bulldozers. Trump also lifted the Biden administration’s hold on the delivery of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel.

Palestinians appeal to the international community

A number of countries oppose the Trump plan, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, France, Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Russia, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Brazil and Turkey.

Instead of welcoming Netanyahu to the White House, Trump should have sent him to The Hague to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court. Yet Trump, who has faced a Palestinian complaint at the ICC, has a history of trying to undermine the ICC. During his first term, Trump imposed sanctions on the ICC prosecutor and another senior ICC official investigating alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by U.S. military forces, the CIA, and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

On February 6, Trump signed an executive order imposing economic and travel sanctions on ICC employees who participate in investigations of U.S. citizens and allies, including Israel.

In its decision finding Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory illegal, the ICJ ordered states to "refrain from diplomatic relations with Israel, and from economic or commercial transactions or investments that might entrench Israel's illegal presence in the occupied Palestinian territories or help maintain the illegal situation created by Israel there."

Albanese said she was “shocked by the defiance of international law, not just by Israel, but by most of the international community,” including Denmark, a country known for its generous provision of public goods to its citizens as a social democracy. At her press conference, she urged the Danish government to disclose all its ties with Israel, including diplomatic, political, military and strategic research. She said it should “suspend anything that the International Court of Justice has found to be detrimental to Palestinian rights.”