US President Donald Trump has proclaimed [1] that the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza should be permanently removed to Jordan and Egypt, and the US should take over the strip and build a series of “beautiful” resorts and housing. “I do see a long-term ownership position for the US,” Trump said. He added that “everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the US owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent.”
Trump added: “People shouldn’t be going back to Gaza. Gaza has been very unlucky for them. They’ve lived like hell, like you’re living in hell. Gaza isn’t a place for people to be living. The only reason they want to go back is because they don’t have an alternative.” [2]
Although presented as a humanitarian gesture, many commentators have rightly pointed out that permanently forcing Palestinians to leave Gaza would constitute ethnic cleansing [3], and the acquisition of Gaza by the US or Israel would amount to annexation. Both actions are profoundly illegal under international law.
Forced transfer of populations
Following World War II, the international community adopted the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which form the cornerstone of international humanitarian law, regulating the laws of war and occupation. One of the main purposes of the conventions is to alleviate human suffering by protecting the rights of civilians in conflict zones. Today, 196 states – including the US and Israel – have ratified the Geneva Conventions.
Article 49 [4] of the Fourth Geneva Convention expressly forbids the “individual or mass forced transfers” of populations from occupied territory “to that of any other country.” Forced displacement is recognized as an unacceptable consequence of wars, and its prohibition is meant to remove any political incentives for an acquisitive power to cleanse part or all of an indigenous population from its homeland.
Customary international humanitarian law – the binding rules of war and occupation established through widespread international practice – now accepts that forced displacement violates international law. The International Committee of the Red Cross – the guardian of the Geneva Conventions – has stated that: “Parties to an international armed conflict may not deport or forcibly transfer the civilian population of an occupied territory, in whole or in part, unless the security of the civilians involved or imperative military reasons so demand.” [5]
The prohibition against forced transfer also became a centerpiece of the 1998 Rome Statute [6], which created the International Criminal Court. The statute expressly provides that the “deportation or forced transfer of a population” is a crime against humanity, and the “deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory” is also a war crime. Crimes against humanity and war crimes rank among the gravest violations of modern international law.
In June 2024, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2735, which called for an “immediate, full and complete” ceasefire in Gaza. Paragraph 5 of the resolution expressly stated that the Security Council “rejects any attempt at demographic or territorial change in the Gaza Strip…” Resolutions of the Security Council which amount to decisions or pronounce on international law are binding on all UN member states.
Annexation
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – the highest judicial body in the UN system – issued an advisory opinion [7] on the legal consequences of Israeli policies and practices in the occupied Palestinian territory. In its seminal opinion, the ICJ found that the prolonged Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory was unlawful because it violated a number of cornerstone principles of modern international law, including Israel’s denial of Palestinian self-determination.
Among the conclusions reached by the court was that: “The annexation of occupied territory by an occupying Power is unlawful.” Turning to Israeli practices in the occupied Palestinian territories – including the creation and expansion of Israeli settlements and the widespread confiscation of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank – the ICJ held that “Israel’s policies and practices amount to annexation of large parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It is the view of the Court that to seek to acquire sovereignty over an occupied territory, as shown by the policies and practices adopted by Israel in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, is contrary to the prohibition of the use of force in international relations and its corollary principle of the non-acquisition of territory by force.”
The absolute prohibition against annexing occupied territory extends to any attempt by the US to seize control of Gaza or transfer it to Israel. Gaza has remained occupied territory even after the Israeli withdrawal of its settlers and armed forces in 2005, because Israel has maintained “effective control” over the strip through a comprehensive air, land and sea blockade since 2007.
Conclusion
The inability of the international community to halt the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the genocidal war in Gaza has posed one of the most critical challenges to the modern international legal order. Last September, the UN General Assembly recognized this challenge when it overwhelmingly adopted a resolution [8] welcoming the ICJ advisory opinion, and strongly deplored “the continued and total disregard and breaches by the Government of Israel of its obligations under the Charter of the United Nations, international law and the relevant United Nations resolutions.”
The gaping hole in the heart of international law is that it possesses neither a police force nor an army to enforce its obligations and prohibitions. As long as serial violators enjoy impunity—either because they are militarily powerful or because they have the backing of a superpower—international law can be violated without consequences.
International law was never meant to be an a la carte menu, with states having the right to pick and choose which laws to obey. Rather, our international legal system has been designed to be a sturdy guardrail against the abuses of power, not to be its enabler. ( Courtesy: Anadolu News )
(The author is a professor emeritus of law at Western University in London, Ontario and the former UN special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories (2016-2022).)
