Palestinian families seek refuge in the city of Rafah in light of the continued brutal Israeli aggression against civilians in Gaza (Anatolia)
The war has not yet been resolved, and no party has been able to determine its final directions despite all this time.
The only trend that can be detected by looking at the statistics and scenes that fill the screens is the massive destruction of infrastructure, and the transformation of Gaza into an unlivable place in the near, and perhaps medium, horizon.
The issue of eliminating Hamas and its military wing has not been resolved, the fate of the prisoners on both sides has not been decided, the fate of Netanyahu has not been decided, who still finds sufficient time and consensus for himself to continue the genocide, and the American position that is pressuring Netanyahu by supporting him with a fourth veto in the Security Council has not been decided.
The fate of Gaza was not decided the next day, nor the previous.
The failure of the displacement project, which emerged as the first war project and may remain the last, has also not been resolved.
Firm doctrine
It cannot be said;
The displacement project has failed or failed.
The regional political wills are still not final in their consensus on rejecting the project. What is more dangerous is that they are wills that may be unable to confront the project if it takes a different direction than the one presented by the Western leadership to Egypt at the beginning of the war.
We must remember displacement as a political doctrine and a strategic goal sought by most Israeli governments, and that it is an idea firmly established in the thought of the Zionist right.
It is an evocation that recalls the historical context of the idea of “voluntary displacement” that Netanyahu spoke about last December, according to the Israel Today newspaper.
First, it must be made clear that there is no voluntary displacement.
The expression itself contradicts itself rhetorically, as the act of “displacement” involves coercion that contradicts the idea of freedom and choice, in addition to the fact that Zionist settler colonialism is the actor here.
The idea of "voluntary displacement" is Likud's redemption of the post-war landscape and not of the war itself.
Four months after the brutal destruction of Lebanon in the 1982 invasion, and a siege of the city of Beirut in which the occupation killed approximately 1% of the city’s population, which numbered about 620 thousand at the time, the occupation left Lebanon and its refugee camps miserable places.
The tribulations of the camps increased in the context of the civil war that followed, and the reconstruction of Lebanon was not achieved until after the 1989 Taif Agreement.
During this period, tens of thousands of Palestinian families left Lebanon towards Europe in particular.
By the mid-1990s, the numbers of Palestinians in Lebanon had declined by nearly half.
Voluntary displacement
In 2017, the Lebanese government conducted the first official census of the Palestinians, and announced a shocking number of only 174,000 Lebanese Palestinians out of more than half a million registered in UNRWA records.
Many parties questioned the accuracy of the census, but the ultimate controversy was that the numbers were close to levels less than 50% of Lebanon's registered Palestinian population.
The Palestinians were forced to search for ways to survive on their own, without any state (other than Israel) bearing the burden and responsibility of involvement in displacement and resettlement.
This type of forced displacement is called by Likud - which led the two wars (the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the 23rd Gaza war) - “voluntary displacement”, and these are labels that can be understood in the context of the colonial arrogance of the settlers.
Netanyahu said at the time:
The problem does not lie in the idea, but rather “our problem is in the countries that are prepared to absorb refugees.”
Here it seems as if the project has two parts: the first is to transform the idea of displacement into a reality, through the systematic destruction of all aspects of human society in Gaza, and the second, slightly postponed part relates to the destination of these displaced people, that is, leaving the afflicted to determine their destination.
The results are not settled
Netanyahu has accomplished the first part of destroying the Gaza Strip and turning it into an uninhabitable area.
Preventing all sources of life, including electricity and water, making it impossible to live, and all that remains for a person is to think about moving and looking for another place.
Here, Netanyahu compares this war to the Begin-Sharon war in 1982 in order to reproduce the same post-war scene.
This does not mean that the results are settled, and that history casts its experiences as a final measure. The drivers of the migration of the people of the country differ from those that move population groups with a temporary connection to the place, such as Palestinian refugees in Lebanon’s camps.
However, displacement is the project that is closest to being resolved in this war, if we assume that the first part related to destruction has been completed.
This assumption becomes even more dangerous if post-war Gaza does not see urgent reconstruction.
We realize that wars like this will link reconstruction to regional and international wills, which are shaped by the completion of comprehensive answers, which do not appear to be completed the next day.
Thinking about rebuilding Gaza after the war is an issue that may be equally important as the demand to stop the war now.
Otherwise, the end of the war may mean the start of the second part of the “voluntary displacement” project, which will not entail negligible costs for the occupation as it is during the war.
The idea of displacement has been present in the tactics of the blockade of Gaza for the past 17 years.
The sector witnessed the highest migration in its history during those years.
A number of reports and research mentioned that the percentage of those leaving the sector throughout that period was greater than the percentage of those arriving.
Until the moment, the displacement project seems to be a matter of high probability, and stopping it is directly related to the possibility and speed of reconstruction in the Gaza Strip.
On the other hand, it is linked to the isolation of Gaza from the West Bank, and the inability of the West Bank to present itself within the framework of temporary alternatives for many reasons, including what is related to the occupation, and including what is related to the continuation of the conditions of political division, despite all the shadows that the war casts on everyone.
Recruitment programs
During this war, both Canada and Australia moved to establish humanitarian recruitment programs on a family basis or temporary visas, and a number estimated at hundreds have arrived so far.
These countries, which are considered large in area relative to their population, were nominated by Israeli officials to be partners in the displacement project proposed in its first form at the beginning of the war.
However, the reference to these countries may be in the context of reducing the fears of the European Union, which is the largest candidate to face an upcoming wave of migration, which may resemble that which the continent witnessed in the middle of the last decade.
Because of the war and humanitarian violations in Syria.
Stopping the war, which is required at every moment and second to shed the blood of innocent people first, will not stop the terrible repercussions of the atrocities that were brutally committed, which history today records and documents as one of the most horrific humanitarian stations, in which international justice has suffered a deliberate failure.
This is a war committed with exceptional military levels, with exceptional international cover, and with exceptional Arab and regional inability.
Thus, it will require a difficult next stage, the price for which everyone may pay, after the people of Gaza alone paid the bill for their steadfastness on their land for all this period.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.