{"id":21347,"date":"2025-02-10T22:56:59","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T22:56:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/?p=21347"},"modified":"2025-02-10T22:56:59","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T22:56:59","slug":"more-than-100-groups-slam-trump-over-plan-to-ethnically-cleanse-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/?p=21347","title":{"rendered":"More Than 100 Groups Slam Trump Over Plan To Ethnically Cleanse Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"
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More than 100 organizations in the U.S. have condemned President Donald Trump over his plan to take control of war-torn Gaza and\u00a0permanently expel Palestinians<\/a>\u00a0who have called the territory home for generations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The diverse array of organizations\u00a0signed on to a letter<\/a>\u00a0released Monday by A New Policy and the Friends Committee on National Legislation, accusing the Trump administration of promoting what the international community qualifies as ethnic cleansing. The signatories range from faith-based groups, to foreign policy and national security organizations, and political advocacy groups.<\/p>\n

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\u201cForcible displacement, when carried out with an intent to permanently remove a people from a land on the basis of their identity is ethnic cleansing,\u201d the letter stated,\u00a0citing Article 49(1) of the Fourth Geneva Convention<\/a>, which the U.S. and Israel are both parties to.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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U.S. President Donald Trump (right) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold a joint press conference at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 4.<\/figcaption>
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Kyle Mazza\/Anadolu via Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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Since taking office last month, Trump has regularly commented on\u00a0what Gaza\u2019s future should look like<\/a>\u00a0now that Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire \u2015\u00a0a fragile deal<\/a>\u00a0that comes after the Israeli military spent 15 months destroying Gaza and its people, in what human rights groups,\u00a0United Nations experts<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0even a U.S. federal judge<\/a>\u00a0have found to have met the qualifications of genocide.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cPalestine is not just an idea \u2013 it is a place. It is a homeland to the Palestinian people,\u201d the letter read, including concern over\u00a0Israel\u2019s ongoing attacks in the occupied West Bank<\/a>. \u201cTo participate in, facilitate, or endorse their removal from it would violate every precept of international law, devastate the rules-based international order that protects us all, do irreversible harm to America\u2019s global influence, and be an act of unconscionable immorality.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ahead of the letter\u2019s release, HuffPost spoke exclusively with leaders of the two groups that authored it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The president has repeatedly said that Palestinians should be removed from Gaza because the territory\u00a0is currently uninhabitable<\/a>, declining to acknowledge that the reason for its current state is because the U.S. supported Israel financially and diplomatically in its military campaign.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe have to recognize, first of all, the massive hypocrisy in saying that Gaza is unlivable, and therefore the Palestinians cannot live there, when it is U.S. weapons and Israel\u2019s actions that made it unlivable in the first place \u2015 in the case of Israel\u2019s actions, at least,\u00a0with an intent of doing so<\/a>,\u201d said Josh Paul, co-founder of A New Policy who\u00a0resigned from the Biden administration over its Gaza policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Palestinian youths sit on the rubble of a building in al-Mughraqa in the central Gaza Strip on Feb. 10, as displaced people return home amid the current ceasefire deal in the war between Israel and Hamas.<\/figcaption>
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Eyad Baba\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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Last week, Trump said that the U.S. should take\u00a0ownership of Gaza and turn it into \u201cthe Riviera of the Middle East.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0In a startling interview to air Monday with Fox News host Bret Baier, the president admitted that Palestinians would not have a right to return to their homeland under his plan.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe right to return is a fundamental human right enshrined in international law. No president, no foreign leader, no occupying force has the legal authority to strip Palestinians from their right to exist in their own land. We all have to reject this vision and demand justice for the Palestinian people,\u201d said Tariq Habash, A New Policy\u2019s co-founder who was the first Palestinian American to resign from the Biden administration over its Gaza policy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Despite Trump having the support of his far-right allies,\u00a0including in Israel<\/a>, the letter\u2019s authors are holding on to hope that he may listen to those within his circle and among his voters\u00a0who oppose his plan<\/a>\u00a0to permanently remove Palestinians from Gaza.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIf he decides to move forward on this path, notwithstanding those voices, I think that there will certainly be opportunities for litigation and for public protests and for congressional action and all these sort of things,\u201d Paul said.<\/p>\n

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A protester holds a banner during the demonstration against U.S. President Donald Trump, in Rotterdam, Netherlands, on Feb. 8. Palestinians and their supporters protested Trump’s remarks about taking control over Gaza.<\/figcaption>
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Charles M. Vella\/SOPA Images\/LightRocket via Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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The letter also expressed support with several Arab countries that\u00a0released their own joint statement<\/a>\u00a0opposing Trump\u2019s proposed plan, which included making countries\u00a0like Jordan and Egypt take in the Palestinians<\/a>\u00a0he\u2019s forcibly exiled. The president\u2019s comments on the right to return came one day before the White House hosts Jordan\u2019s King Abdullah II.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe suffering of millions of Palestinians in Gaza and the U.S.\u2019s unconditional support for Israel throughout is harmful \u2015 not only to millions of Palestinians, but also to Americans, to Israelis, to Arabs throughout the region, to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike,\u201d said FCNL\u2019s Odeliya Matter.<\/p>\n

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The several signatories representing different faiths point \u201ctoward this kind of unity as those who sanctify human life, that this proposal made by Trump is absolutely unacceptable and in defiance of our faiths as American citizens,\u201d she continued. \u201cAnd I think we\u2019ve all agreed that the notion of a holy land cannot be abused on the backs of millions of innocent people.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n

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    More than 100 organizations in the U.S. have condemned President Donald Trump over his plan to take control of war-torn Gaza and\u00a0permanently expel Palestinians\u00a0who have called the territory … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21349,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21347\/revisions\/21349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}