“We are therefore facing a danger: pure and simple liquidation of the Palestinian cause by denying the right of return and by the mass expulsion of those still living on their land”

By Naji El Khatib, Palestinian activist and leader of the One Democratic State Initiative

The Palestinian people’s struggle for their legitimate rights is going through extremely difficult times. Trump’s victory and his slogan “Make America Great Again” sound like an echo of “Israel is for ever” by the Israeli Finance Minister, fascist Bezalel Smotrich.

The latter has declared that 2025 will be the year when the West Bank and part of the Gaza Strip are to be ultimately incorporated into the state of Israel. This means the determination to empty these territories of their inhabitants, the beginning of a transfer movement: a project of ethnic cleansing similar to the one undergone by our people with the 1948 Naqba.

The difference with 1948 (when half the population of Palestine was expelled – editor’s note) is that today, the aim is to empty Palestine of Palestinians once and for all.

As for those who might remain, they will become a sort of minority of foreigners, stripped of any citizenship and political rights. What we are likely to witness is the creation of a single state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, a state reserved exclusively for Jews, with even higher emphasis on its apartheid features. The difference with South Africa is that the oppressed black populations were not expelled. What is happening in Palestine is more akin to the fate reserved for the indigenous populations of America during the conquest of the West.

Such a programme is already supported by the future Trump administration, a number of whose nominees for key posts are known for their ultra-Zionist stance, including Elise Stefanik, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth. And we should not leave out the evangelical churches, those “Zionist Christians” whose support for Israel is rooted in an apocalyptic biblical vision. Nor have the Palestinians forgotten that during his first term in office, Trump suspended all American funding for UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.

We are therefore facing a danger: pure and simple liquidation of the Palestinian cause by denying the right of return and by the mass expulsion of those still living on their land.

While genocide continues in Gaza, expulsions have begun in the West Bank: since October 2003, 783 Palestinians have been killed and 6,000 wounded by bullets, and 11,700 have been detained by the Israeli army. Israel has also expelled hundreds of European and American volunteers who, as every year, had come to help Palestinian farmers with the olive harvest and who, by their presence, were providing a measure of protection. For the villagers of the West Bank, the olive oil harvest is an essential part of the family economy. Preventing the harvest and destroying the olive grove, means making any life impossible. And this is what armed settler militias are trying to do, with hundreds of attacks on villagers, when it is not the Israeli army directly preventing farmers from going to their fields.

This is the danger that is threatening the Palestinian people and against which we appeal to international democratic and labour public opinion.