SUMUD: REMEMBER THIS WORD

Better to live in tents on the ruins of your home than to suffer another nakba

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(Photograph: Palestinians make their way back to their homes in northern Gaza [Ramadan Abed/Reuters])

Disintegration of public order is exploding all around the world. In January 2025, UK retailers made it known that crime in their stores is "spiralling out of control," with 55,000 thefts a day and violent and abusive incidents rising by 50% last year[1][3].

However, what should worry us even more is that state apparatuses participate in this disintegration instead of trying to prevent it. Just recall the obscenity that exploded when Trump said he would continue funding Ukraine's war effort — but he wants something rare in return: U.S. special access to Ukraine's glut of natural resources that will be worth tens of billions of U.S. dollars. Freedom has a price... in rare minerals.

Such obscenity reached its peak with what goes on in Gaza and the West Bank. True, we should not be in awe of Trump's growing obscene violence in how he treats Palestinians in Gaza, caught in an immobilizing fascination, but we should nonetheless not treat it as an objective fact observed from a safe distance – we should retain the shock engendered by its direct obscenity. If we leave behind this shock, there is nothing to prevent us from engaging in cynical-realist support of ethnic cleansing: it works, and it is the only chance to achieve peace since the past decades clearly show that Palestinians and Jews cannot live together... To this, one should add the following: why should Palestinians not pursue their dream (or, rather, the dream of some of them) to drive out the Jews – this would also bring peace? In other words, if Palestinians are treated like this, do they not also have the right to strike back in any form, including terror?

Trump said he would like Jordan and Egypt to take in Gazans internally displaced by Israel's devastating war in the enclave: "You're talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing." If adopted, the proposal would mark a sharp break from the Biden administration's stance that Gaza should not be depopulated and could signal a shift from a longstanding U.S. position that Gaza should be part of a future Palestinian state. It would also align the Trump administration with Israel's most radical far-right politicians, who advocate transferring Palestinians out of the territory to make way for Jewish settlement. Trump's proposal has been embraced by extremist Israeli politicians, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – who has sparked controversy by claiming there is "no such thing as a Palestinian people" – and former Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir, who was once convicted of supporting terrorism and inciting anti-Arab racism by an Israeli court itself.

Perspicacious observers quickly noted that Trump's proposal, if it were to materialize, would be self-defeating: destabilized Egypt and Jordan would strengthen Islamist political forces like the Muslim Brotherhood, which are far less friendly to the U.S. and more sympathetic to Hamas. One cannot but suspect that the pressure on Palestinians in Gaza was part of a secret deal with Israel to accept a ceasefire: the promise of the U.S. was that Israel could achieve what it wants (a "clean" empty Gaza) with peaceful means instead of brutal war.

As usual, the reasoning behind this brutal proposal is humanitarian – Trump said: "Almost everything is demolished and people are dying there. So I'd rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where maybe they can live in peace for a change." He, of course, ignores the obvious question: but WHO demolished it? None other than those who now enthusiastically support a "humanitarian" ethnic cleansing.

The Gaza Palestinians reacted appropriately to this proposal before it was even made with what they call "sumud": a Palestinian cultural value, ideological theme, and political strategy that emerged in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War among the Palestinian people as a consequence of their oppression and the resistance it inspired. In the late 1970s, sumud called for "a collective third way between submission and exile, between passivity and... violence to end the occupation." After the Gaza ceasefire, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flooded back into northern Gaza after Israel opened military checkpoints that had divided the strip for more than a year. In the dawn light, crowds that had waited by the road overnight began the long walk back to their homes and businesses – or what remained of them – as soon as the crossing opened.