By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Hussam al-Masri
CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) – After Trump came the flood.
Heavy wind and rainfall howled across the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Thursday, a winter storm flooding tents housing displaced families and ripping off the plastic sheeting that sealed homes.
Yet residents said U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of plans to seize the enclave and expel them had only made them more determined to stay.
“Despite the tragedy we are living, despite the rain and the very bad weather, people are staying under no roof,” said Qassem Abu Hassoun, standing in the rain surrounded by wrecked homes and broken roads in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
His family had returned here to their destroyed home as soon as a ceasefire was declared on January 19 after having spent months sheltering further north. They have no plans to leave ever again.
“People are hanging on to their country, their land. People are hanging on to even one grain of sand of their country,” he told Reuters.
The night after most Gazans learned of Trump’s shock announcement, the storm whipped families out of their sleep and shredded makeshift tents made from plastic and cloth sheeting. Residents bailed water out in small plastic pots.
In the morning, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered the army to prepare a plan to allow the “voluntary departure” of residents from Gaza.
“It seems even the weather is against us, but neither the weather, nor Trump nor Israel will eject us from our land,” said Abdel Ghani, a father of four living with his family in the ruins of their Gaza City home destroyed by Israel.
The winds blew away the plastic sheets they had used to cover the shattered windows and holes in the walls. Rainwater had poured inside. Still, they were going nowhere, he told Reuters in a text message.
“Is he nuts?” he said of Trump. “We will not sell our land for you, real estate developer. We are hungry, homeless, and desperate but we are not collaborators. If he wants to help, let him come and rebuild for us here.”
In Israel, Channel 12 reported that Katz’s plan would include exit options via land crossings, as well as special arrangements for departure by sea and air.
Displacement of Palestinians is one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East. Forced or coerced displacement of a population under military occupation is a war crime, banned under the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
Hamas official Basem Naim told Reuters Katz’s statement was not surprising and meant to cover up for Israel’s failure to achieve any of its objectives in the war on Gaza.
Israel has said it aimed to eradicate Hamas, the militant group which triggered the war with a deadly attack on October 7, 2023. But since the ceasefire began three weeks ago, Hamas fighters have restored their control of the enclave.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced within Gaza have returned to homes, particularly in the northern part of the territory which lies in almost total ruins. Naim said this was evidence of Palestinians’ deep attachment to the land.
“If they are sincere in their claims, they should lift the suffocating blockade on Gaza, open the crossings, and they will be shocked to find that the number of those returning to Gaza will exceed the number of those leaving, despite the massive destruction,” Naim said.
The war in Gaza was triggered by the Hamas attack, when fighters killed 1,200 people and abducted more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Since then, Israel’s military assault on Gaza has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians in the last 16 months, according to the Gaza health ministry, and provoked accusations of genocide and war crimes that Israel denies.
An initial six-week ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, agreed with Egyptian and Qatari mediators and backed by the U.S., has so far largely held, but prospects for a durable settlement beyond that first phase are unclear.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo and Hussam al-Masri in Gaza; Writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Peter Graff)
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