#palestinian-displacement

#palestinian-displacement

On February 8, 1977, Indianapolis businessman Tony Kiritzis (Bill Skarsgard) kidnapped Richard Hall, a mortgage company president (Stranger Things' Dacre Montgomery), claiming that Hall's company had sabotaged his real estate investment. Kiritzis rigged a 12-gauge shotgun with a hair-trigger "dead man's wire" around Hall's neck, ensuring that Hall would die if police sharpshooters tried to kill him. He held Hall for three days as police, family members, a charismatic local radio DJ (Colman Domingo) and TV reporters were drawn into the standoff.

While I was there, I was "picked up" on the street by an ultra-orthodox woman who offered me free lodging in a hostel exclusively for Jewish travelers in the Old City of Jerusalem. I was a broke teenager at the time, so I said yes. It was Hanukkah, and all across the Jewish Quarter, picturesque oil menorahs twinkled in the windows and doorways of ancient-looking buildings built from a pearly-pink marble called "Jerusalem stone."

The museum's preliminary webpage for the exhibition, titled Palestine Uprooted: Nakba, Past and Present and scheduled to open in June 2026, includes an image from 1948 of Palestinians fleeing their homes and a more recent one of the displaced in Gaza during the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. It states that the show will include the personal stories of Palestinian Canadians told through video testimonials and objects.

But it is a sign of the collective nature of the effort of the past few months that so many can credibly claim a role, including the US president, who after many false starts was finally persuaded to focus, end the fantasy of driving tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland and instead spell out to Benjamin Netanyahu the versions of victory the Israeli prime minister could and could not have.

The plan itself was first outlined to an incredulous world by Trump in February. The details have now emerged. It involves the expulsion the de facto imprisonment of 2 million Palestinians, while the US administers the exclave for 10 years. Each Palestinian would be paid $5,000 each plus four years' rent somewhere else and one year's supply of food. Gaza is then rebuilt as a skyscraper wonderland of artificial intelligence investment and tourism. It would be a second Dubai yielding up to $400bn for developers.

"My family and I were forced out under gun threats, along with all the families of the village. We cried over our beautiful days there, and we are still crying. We are in shock because we never deserved this. We are peaceful people who love life, simple and educated people, and we never imagined leaving our home this way."

As soon as he came to power, United States President Donald Trump echoed calls for the Palestinians' massive displacement outside their homeland. This alarming strategy hints at a larger, more sinister aspiration for the region, raising concerns over the long-term impacts on Palestinian identity and rights.