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Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition (Al-Awda PRRC), vehemently condemns President Donald Trump’s abhorrent threats against the Palestinian people, including the forced displacement and deportation of over 2 million indigenous Palestinians from their homes in the Gaza Strip and a US military, settler-colonial occupation of Gaza. Such threats are blatant incitement of genocide and ethnic cleansing, an act of premeditated genocide, and a direct violation of international law as well as the Genocide Convention.  Al-Awda calls for the return of Palestinians to their original homes, lands and homeland in all of the land of Palestine occupied between 1947-1949. This individual, collective and non-negotiable right is further enshrined in international law and UN Resolutions, including UN Resolution 194. We reject any dispossession of the Palestinian people and affirm that the only place Palestinians are going is back to their homes and to the entire land of Palestine, from the river to the sea.

Trump’s threats, made alongside indicted war criminal, Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, involves demolishing Gaza and transforming it into the so-called “Riviera of the Middle East” as a playground for wealthy settlers,  while permanently and forcibly displacing  its Palestinian residents to neighboring countries such as Egypt and Jordan. All Palestinian parties, as well as Egypt and Jordan,  have already rejected this outrageous series of threats, aimed at the liquidation of the Palestinian people and their cause.

The return to the North of Gaza of over 500,000 Palestinians has made clear the attachment of the Palestinian people to their land that cannot be broken, inspiring the region and the world. Neither 77 years of Nakba, 16 months of intensified genocide, nor the belligerent threats of Trump and Netanyahu, will ever break that heroic determination to live, to survive and to reclaim their land from slaughter and colonialism.

This scheme is not only a gross violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention but also constitutes a crime against humanity. The forced removal of an entire population from their homeland under the guise of “economic development” – more accurately, the colonial theft of land and resources – is a thinly veiled attempt to erase indigenous Palestinian existence on their land, heritage and identity.  This is a clear and deliberate attempt to interfere with and undermine the second and third phases of the ceasefire in Gaza, which include the full reconstruction of Gaza under full Palestinian sovereignty. The reconstruction of Gaza should rightly be funded through reparations owed to the Palestinian people by the occupying forces and those states, including, first and foremost, the US, responsible for arming, funding and supporting the genocide. 

The Palestinian people, including our Palestinian people in the United States, will not allow the US nor its partner in crime, the Zionist entity, to obtain through threats, coercion and new military assaults what it was unable to obtain through 16 months of genocide, due to the heroic efforts of the Palestinian resistance, the undefeatable Palestinian people, and all of the forces of resistance in the region confronting imperialism, Zionism and reactionary collaborationism, from Lebanon to Yemen, to Iraq, Iran and beyond.

Al-Awda PRRC stands firm in its commitment to the inalienable right of all Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands. We reject any attempt to further dispossess and disenfranchise the Palestinian people. The resilience and steadfastness of Palestinians in Gaza, who have endured decades of occupation, blockade, and aggression, will not be undermined by such nefarious plans.

We call upon all governments in the world, human rights organizations, and people of conscience to:

•  Unequivocally denounce and materially act to confront this proposal and any similar initiatives that aim to forcibly displace Palestinians by imposing, at the bare minimum, an arms embargo on the Zionist regime
• Take meaningful action to pressure the United States government to adhere to international law and abandon any plans that support ethnic cleansing.
• Enforce the arrest warrants issued by the ICC for the Israeli leadership for committing acts of genocide.
• Take to the streets immediately and protest this proposal until it is withdrawn.
• Impose a complete boycott on the Zionist regime, including economic, academic, and cultural boycott, as well as expulsion from the United Nations,to hold the Zionist entity  accountable for its ongoing violations of Palestinian rights.
• Amplify Palestinian voices and share the realities of life under occupation to counteract misleading narratives.

Our Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, wrote:

 “On this land there is that which deserves life…

The mother of beginnings, the mother of endings.

It used to be called Palestine; it will always be called Palestine.”

Gaza has fought off invaders and colonizers for centuries and will continue to do so, even in the face of the bloodiest empire in the history of the planet.  The Palestinians have shown repeatedly that they will not abandon their land and will continue to fight until liberation, return, and dignity are achieved.  The Palestinian people do not hesitate to sacrifice themselves for their land and no real-estate prospector, whether he owns Mar-A-Lago, or whether his son in-law seeks to build resorts on top of the lives of our indigenous people or steal their natural gas and resources in the Mediterranean..

Trump’s proposal is a reprehensible affront to human dignity and justice. We demand an immediate cessation of any actions that threaten the rights and existence of the Palestinian people. History will remember those who stood on the side of oppression, and those who fought for liberation.

Return for all Palestinians now.  No to ethnic cleansing. No to occupation. Free Palestine.