New Threats to Palestinian Rights Emerge, Despite Ceasefire

By Josh Leach on February 10, 2025

The recent pause in the fighting between Israel and Hamas has brought a long-overdue reprieve for civilians on both sides of the conflict. Since the ceasefire went into effect, Israeli hostages have been released after more than a year of captivity. Palestinian prisoners in Israel—many of whom have been kept in arbitrary and degrading administrative confinement without legal process—were set free in exchange. And some Palestinian civilians have begun returning to their homes in northern Gaza—despite the staggering devastation that has been unleashed on the enclave. 

These developments are all more than welcome, after months of appalling bloodshed across the region. But already, cracks are beginning to emerge in the ceasefire. In particular: irresponsible comments from politicians—including now-president Donald Trump—threaten to upend the fragile peace before it has even really begun. 

Violence in the Occupied Territories

While formal fighting has paused for now in the war in Gaza, this has not prevented flare-ups of deadly violence from returning to the embattled enclave. Israeli troops reportedly opened fire on a group of Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza last Sunday, killing three people and injuring several others. Observers believe that the recent return of some Palestinians to their homes could also be entirely reversed if the ceasefire breaks down. And many Gazan civilians scarcely have a home to return to: more than half the structures in Gaza were reduced to rubble over more than a year of fighting.

Even as the Israeli Defense Forces have begun withdrawing troops from Gaza, meanwhile, they are escalating violence in the West Bank—another Palestinian territory that has lived under Israeli military occupation for more than fifty years. Many fear the Israeli military is increasingly resorting to the same unlawful tactics in the West Bank that it used in Gaza—including the wholesale demolition of civilian neighborhoods: a trend some have described as the “Gaza-ification of the West Bank.”

Will the U.S. “Take Over” Gaza? 

Into the tentative pause in hostilities achieved by the ceasefire talks last month, U.S. President Donald Trump lobbed a metaphorical grenade in recent days. At a meeting with right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump publicly announced that the U.S. would seize control of the Gaza Strip and remove the 2 million Palestinian people living there to an unspecified location elsewhere. Later on, members of Trump’s administration appeared to walk back the bizarre proposal—but Trump returned to it this weekend, saying—on audio recorded on Air Force One—“Think of it as a big real estate site, and the United States is going to own it.”

If the United States actually did proceed with trying to invade and depopulate Gaza, in order to redevelop it as the “Riviera of the Middle East”—as Trump proposed—such an action would be grossly illegal (to say the least). The forced deportation of 2 million Gazan civilians would amount to an ethnic cleansing—a crime against humanity. Any deliberate removal of Gazan people from their homes would also echo the worst chapters of Palestinian history—most notably the forced removal from their land that many Palestinians suffered during the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. 

Due to the sheer impracticality and expense of Trump’s proposal, however, even his own officials do not appear serious about committing to it. The odds that the U.S. actually proceeds with an invasion and occupation of Gaza in the coming months therefore seem slight. (Though Trump has also recently proposed invading or annexing parts of Canada, Greenland, and Panama, and many observers are struggling to know how seriously to take his various proposals of unprovoked territorial aggression against other nations.)

A Green Light to Extremism

Even if the U.S. does not end up occupying Gaza, though: Trump’s mere willingness to suggest an ethnic cleansing of the territory sends a dangerous signal to extremists in Israel who have long desired to do exactly that. Members of Netanyahu’s right-wing government have salivated for months over proposals to bring Israeli settlers into Gaza and forcibly displace the Palestinians living there. While Netanyahu has publicly disavowed these ideas—Trump’s apparent endorsement of the forced removal of Palestinians risks giving a green light to especially bad actors in his coalition. 

Israel is also home to a movement of extremist settlers who have been building infrastructure on Palestinian land in the West Bank for decades, in violation of international law. These illegal settlements—which many observers say eat away at the territorial integrity of any future Palestinian state—have been imposed in many cases through unlawful violence. Extremist settler groups have increased their attacks on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank over the past year. And, in one of his first acts in office, Donald Trump lifted sanctions against these same groups (which the Biden administration had earlier imposed). 

Trump’s actions, coupled with his incendiary talk of depopulating Gaza and his recent approval of massive arms transfers to Israel, send a dangerous signal to Israeli extremists that they can attack Palestinian civilians with impunity. 

The evidence so far is clear: the temporary ceasefire that went into effect in Gaza has not eliminated threats to civilians in the region. However much we welcome the current reprieve in fighting, then, we must be vigilant that extremist politicians do not manage to jeopardize the fragile peace. 

UUSC has been working with partners and allies around the world to end Israel’s human rights violations in the Occupied Territories. We have joined a coalition with other advocates calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and a ban on arms transfers to Israel. While UUSC does not have partners on the ground in the Palestinian territories, we have provided a $25,000 grant to Grassroots International’s emergency fund for Palestine, in order to resource efforts to respond to the humanitarian crisis.  

As events shift on the ground, we will continue to be vigilant for any further threats that emerge to Palestinian rights. If and when they do, we will respond in a spirit of solidarity and grassroots partnership with the people most affected. 

Image credit: Shutterstock (Stephanie Kenner)