President Donald Trump has doubled down on his plan to transfer Gaza’s population to other countries. Initially, he spoke about Jordan and Egypt. Middle East Forum founder Daniel Pipes is right to question whether this would really bring peace or rather light the region aflame by exacerbating both Jordan and Egypt’s existing problem with Islamists. If a Hamas-controlled Gaza threatened Israel, imagine what a Hamas-controlled Jordan or Muslim Brotherhood-run Egypt might do.
The Gaza Transfer Plan by Donald Trump: What To Make Of It?
Transferring Palestinians to Morocco, Somaliland, or Puntland is as problematic. Moroccans speak a radically different Arabic from that spoken in the Levant. Somaliland is stable and democratic; an influx of unhappy Palestinians prone to militancy could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Puntland, meanwhile, already has an ongoing problem with the Islamic State; throwing Hamas into the mix is akin to pouring gasoline into a fire.
That said, while population transfers are not politically correct, at least in the 21st century, recent history is full of transfers, many of which brought quiet if not peace.
If a Hamas-controlled Gaza threatened Israel, imagine what a Hamas-controlled Jordan or Muslim Brotherhood-run Egypt might do.
The Spanish and Portuguese expelled their Jews en masse in 1492.
In the early 16th Ismail I, the same Persian Shah who converted Iran to Shi’ism, deported Kurds to Khorasan, near what today is the Afghanistan and Turkmenistan borders to block the influx of Turkish nomads from Central Asia into Persia’s lightly populated northeastern frontier. Later that century, Shah Abbas I resumed the transfer of Kurds to punish a rebellion in the mountain regions where many Kurds remained. More than 500 years later, pockets of Kurdish villages and towns remain in eastern Iran separated by hundreds of miles from the Kurdish homeland.
Shah Abbas I later moved thousands of Armenians 600 miles south from the Caucasus to the Isfahan, then Persia’s capital. His goal was to use the mercantile and skilled Armenians to jumpstart the economy and various trades in central Iran. Today, Isfahan remains home to a vibrant Armenian quarter.
It was the forcible transfer of British convicts and other undesirables to Australia in the late 18th century that permanently changed that continent’s demography. Beginning in 1830, President Andrew Jackson created the “Trail of Tears,” the forcible displacement of tens of thousands Native Americans from the southeastern United States to the Oklahoma territory. It was not the first time American Indians suffered such displacement: For all the mythology of “the noble savage,” Native American tribes ethnically cleansed each other and forcibly displaced rivals for centuries before white men ever stepped foot in North America.
Forcible transfers accelerated in the 20th century. As the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne drew the borders between Greece and Turkey, 1.2 million Greek Orthodox fled Turkey for Greece, while 350,000 Turkish Muslims left Greece for Turkey. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, himself was born in Thessaloniki [Salonika], Greece.
As the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne drew the borders between Greece and Turkey, 1.2 million Greek Orthodox fled Turkey for Greece, while 350,000 Turkish Muslims left Greece for Turkey.
In 1926, the Soviet census counted nearly 40,000 Kurds in Azerbaijan. Joseph Stalin, then the People’s Commissar of Nationalities, toyed with the idea of creating “Red Kurdistan” between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He subsequently changed his mind and sent the Kurds packing to what’s now Kazakhstan. By 1939, only 6,000 Kurds remained in Azerbaijan. Many of the Kurds simply assimilated away as they married Central Asian Turks.
The aftermath of World War II saw another round of transfers. My American Enterprise Institute colleague Sadanand Dhume pointed to several examples: The transfer of Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia into Germany. The Soviets deported 100,000 Germans from Königsberg as they transformed it from a historic Prussian and German city into a Russian enclave.
Forced displacement accompanied the 1947 partition of India: More than 14 million people fled from India into Pakistan or vice versa. Hindu Sindhis and Punjabis fled Pakistan for India as did Bengali Hindus from what is today Bangladesh. Punjabi Muslims from India moved to Pakistan. Prior to partition, Sikhs formed perhaps ten percent of what is now Pakistani Punjab; today, only 5,000 remain, about 0.004 percent of the population. Over the same period, the proportion of Sikhs in Indian Punjab doubled from around 30 to 60 percent as religious minorities fled Pakistan. As the late historian Bernard Lewis noted, if the United Nations applied the same definition of refugee to the 1947 partition of India that it utilizes with Palestinians today, then the 1947 partition resulted in a quarter billion refugees today.
The Palestinians embrace their perpetual refugee claims, but they ignore the flip side of the Arab-Israeli conflict: The flight of 850,000 Jews from Arab countries into Israel to escape pogroms and persecution from Morocco to Iraq.
Less than 18 months ago, Azerbaijan expelled 120,000 Armenian residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, snuffing out in one day the 1,700-year-old Christian presence in that territory.
The following year, ethnic Chinese from the Republic of China migrated en masse to Taiwan, as Mao Zedong and his communist forces established the People’s Republic of China. Despite Beijing’s insistence today, Taiwan was always a distinct country, a fact even Mao acknowledged.
The Cold War brought population transfer to the South Pacific. In 1946, the United States forcibly removed the population of the Bikini Atoll so that the United States could use the island for nuclear testing. The U.S. Navy transported them 125 miles to the uninhabited Rongerik Atoll.
Less than 18 months ago, Azerbaijan expelled 120,000 Armenian residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, snuffing out in one day the 1,700-year-old Christian presence in that territory.
History Can Give Us Clues on Gaza Plan
Trump may believe transferring Palestinians from Gaza will bring peace, but the history of population transfer suggests such expectations are unrealistic. Certainly, Shahs Ismail and Abbas got away with moving large populations, but what was normal in the 16th century would be an atrocity today.
The wounds caused by population transfer between Greece and Turkey, India and Pakistan, and Israel and the Arab countries remain raw. In India and Pakistan, they could go nuclear, and Turkey’s irredentism coupled with the U.S. transfer of modern jet fighters to Turkey could spark intra-NATO war. Central Europe may appear quieter, but that ignores the displacement of World War II-era displacement of 40 million people that immediately preceded the movement.
Other transfers—the Red Kurds or the expulsion of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminoles to Oklahoma—decimated the tribes and their culture.
Trump may double-down on expelling Gazans and he may succeed, but the notion that such a move will end conflict is very foolish.
