Abstract

Since 7th October 2023, forced displacement in Gaza has surged, adding to the longstanding history of the forced migration of Palestinians since the 1948 Nakba. Currently, Israel is using methods of organized forced migration such as military pressure in ‘safe zones’ and humanitarian aid blockades as a geopolitical tool to control population movement, make territorial claims on Palestinian land, and render Palestinians stateless. These strategies align with various typologies of forced organized migration, including ‘exodus’ and ‘expulsion.’ The current surge of forced migration of Palestinians is situated in a broader historical context of Israeli state-building outside the bounds of international law. 

Since 7th October 2023, almost two million people have been forcibly displaced in Gaza (Adamson & Greenhill, n.d.). Forced migration is not new to Palestinians; the Gaza Strip itself was formed through various waves of forced displacement, most notably the Nakba (catastrophe) during the Arab-Israeli war in 1948, wherein approximately 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes and land (Rempel, n.d.). During the ongoing genocide, the Israeli government has repeatedly called for the mass transfer of Gazans out of the territory. This kind of deliberate displacement has been described by scholars as organized forced migration—the primary difference between organized forced migration and other kinds of conflict-driven migration is that organized forced migration is intentionally orchestrated by a state or other actors. 

Scholars have proposed five types of organized forced migration: transfers (state-driven movements of people from one region to another based on identifiers such as ethnicity or religion), exchanges (state-driven cross-border movements of two populations in opposite directions), repatriations (state-driven cross-border movements of people aiming to return them to their country of origin), expulsions (involuntary state-driven movements of people with no concern as to where migrants end up), and finally, exoduses (state-driven mass migration achieved through indirect means). In all of these cases, organized forced migration is a geopolitical tool leveraged by states in order to achieve aims of empire-building, foreign-policy bargaining, and, ultimately, what many view as forms of colonization (Adamson & Greenhill, n.d.).

The organized forced migration imposed upon Palestinians by the Israeli state reflects elements of all five types, particularly expulsion and exodus. 

The case of Palestine is also complicated by the unique status of Palestinian refugees within international law. First, the universally accepted definition of a ‘refugee’—Article 1A (2) of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees—does not apply to the majority of Palestinian refugees (Rempel, n.d.). Second, voluntary repatriation is widely seen as the primary solution for other refugees worldwide. However, despite UN Resolution 194, stating “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,” Palestinians have historically been unable to exercise their right to return due to key member states such as the US and the UK pushing host country integration as the primary solution for Palestinian refugees due to their political and military alliances with Israel (Rempel, n.d.). This, paired with the reluctance of Arab host states to resettle the refugees who cannot exercise their right of return, has rendered millions of Palestinians stateless. 

Since 7th October 2023, the two countries bordering Gaza and the occupied West Bank, Egypt and Jordan, have responded with a staunch refusal to take in Palestinian refugees. The Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sissi even remarked that Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza was not only in response to Hamas but also to push Palestinians to migrate to Egypt. Their refusal is rooted in the fear that Israel wants to force a permanent exodus of Palestinians into neighboring countries and wholly reject Palestinian demands for statehood. It is imperative to keep in mind the extensive historical precedent of displaced Palestinians unable to return to Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, and that other Arab states do not want to be complicit in ethnic cleansing in Gaza—political allegiances that Israel is well aware of (Jeffery & Magdy, 2023). 

The organized forced migration of Palestinians is occurring in Gaza both through explicit and indirect means. The former is in line with both the ‘expulsion’ and ‘exodus’ types of displacement, wherein the intensification of ground and air operations in Rafah, originally demarcated a safe zone, have blocked off crucial humanitarian aid access and put thousands of lives at risk. Through indirect means such as the deliberate blocking of the delivery of food, water, and medical aid, all against international humanitarian law as stated in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Israel has forced Palestinians to flee time and time again through highly dangerous areas of severe bombardment and warfare (Zayadin, 2023). This is not a byproduct of war but a deliberate state policy. High-ranking Israeli officials such as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Energy Minister Israel Katz have made public statements explicitly expressing their aim to deprive civilians in Gaza of food, water, and fuel (Zayadin, 2023). 

As such, it is clear to see that the use of organized forced migration in the Israel-Gaza conflict is occurring in the context of a broader historical pattern of Israeli state-building wherein violent and organized strategies of population transfer, expulsion, exchange, and exodus, without the critical right to return, are used as a geopolitical tool to expel Palestinians and create an ethnonationalist state. As Ilan Pappe wrote, whether a master plan to expel Palestinians exists or not, the only way to fulfill the Israeli aim of achieving such a state is to “empty the land of its indigenous population” (Pappe, 2006). Since 7th October and even earlier, Israel has employed methods of migration to this end.