The Palestinians are refusing to leave Gaza despite President Donald Trump’s grandiose plans for a “Riviera on the Mediterranean” there. “Even after everything I’ve been through, I refuse to leave,” Aya Hassuna, 30, told Middle East Eye. Hassuna, along with her family, was forced to evacuate her home in Gaza City’s eastern Shejaiya neighborhood in November 2023. She subsequently lost her husband and two young children to Israeli bombing in Khan Younis. “We’ve just been through a war. The occupation tried to displace the people of Gaza to the Sinai Peninsula. But despite the siege, despite the genocide, despite the destruction, and despite the hunger, they couldn’t drive us out.” MEE quotes other Gazans returning to their homes in northern Gaza to similar effect.
Israel’s war in Gaza, its brutal treatment of Palestinian prisoners, the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, and its ongoing assault on Jenin refugee camp were all acts of force intended to break Palestinian resolve, Hana Amoury, a political activist based in Jaffa, told MEE. But she warned that grand plans promising economic development, prosperity, and “normalization”—such as those articulated by Trump—also posed a threat to Palestinian identity. Amoury said: “It is as if Israel is telling Palestinians: ‘Come, prosper as individuals, live your own life, but forget about collective demands, national identity, and self-determination.’”
