Date: March 25, 2025
The Refugee Affairs Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Condemns the Palestinian Authority's Announcement to Establish an Administration to Displace the Palestinian People from the Gaza Strip.
Dr. Abu Holi: Displacement Under Fire and Starvation is a War Crime under International Law and Could Destroy the Prospects for a Two-State Solution.
The Palestine Liberation Organization's Department of Refugee Affairs condemned the Israeli occupation authorities' announcement of the establishment of an administration to displace the Palestinian people from the Gaza Strip, which it claims aims to facilitate their voluntary migration. The department considers displacement under fire, bombing, starvation, and destruction not voluntary displacement, but forced displacement, which constitutes a war crime that violates international humanitarian law and international conventions and norms, requiring the prosecution and accountability of its perpetrators. Dr. Ahmad Abu Holi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee and head of the Department of Refugee Affairs, stated that Israel, the occupying state, has a plan it is working to implement to depopulate the Gaza Strip. He emphasized that the Israeli propaganda that the administration's goal is to facilitate voluntary migration is merely a smokescreen intended to deceive the international community and evade punishment and accountability. Dr. Abu Holi stated that the Israeli occupation state is taking steps on the ground, in the absence of international deterrence, to implement its colonial occupation and expel the Palestinian owners of the land, as part of an Israeli settlement plan to empty the Gaza Strip of its population and transform it into settlement outposts and security buffer zones. He emphasized that what the occupying state is doing constitutes a war crime under international law and could completely destroy the prospects for a two-state solution.
He pointed out that the Israeli occupation government approved a plan last February to displace the residents of the Gaza Strip, and that the establishment of a department within the Ministry of Defense to implement this plan is part of implementing the plan, transforming US President Donald Trump's plan for the "Gaza Riviera" from a theoretical perspective into practical implementation, as they claim.
He emphasized that the forced displacement plan is not limited to the Gaza Strip, but is taking place across all Palestinian territories through bombing, demolition, settlement, and annexation. He emphasized that the displacement plan will be doomed to failure due to the steadfastness and resilience of our people on their land and their rejection of displacement and an alternative homeland. He emphasized that forced displacement aims to liquidate the Palestinian cause and transform it from a matter related to the Palestinian people's right to return and self-determination by establishing their independent state on the June 4, 1967, borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital into a mere humanitarian issue, through the displacement of the Palestinian population from the Gaza Strip, under the pretext of providing them with housing and decent living conditions, after the occupation had destroyed the Gaza Strip and rendered it uninhabitable. Dr. Abu Holi called on the international community to urgently intervene and take serious steps to halt the crime of displacing the Palestinian people from the Gaza Strip and to hold the occupying state accountable for its efforts to carry out this crime, which amounts to ethnic cleansing in clear violation of international law, particularly Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. He also called on the Security Council, which unanimously rejected the displacement of Palestinians from their lands, to take deterrent steps to compel Israel to comply with its resolutions and those of the General Assembly in this regard.
