Al-Khalasa helps us understand the problem but also the solution: More than 2/3 of Gaza's 2.3 million residents are refugees & their descendants from what's now Israel. Trump & Netanyahu don't need to find 3rd countries to take them in. They need to respect their right to return.

Today, Israeli forces continue to destroy towns & displace residents in Gaza, openly endorsing Trump's call to transfer Palestinians out of Gaza. It's part of the same racial superiority logic behind the 1948 Naqba & it won't end when the fighting stops in Gaza- if it ever does.

77 years later, we know the displacement, destruction and denial of the right to return were part of a well-planned policy to ensure Israeli Jewish dominance over Palestinians, including demographic superiority, through apartheid. This was al-Khalasa's school, also destroyed.

Al-Khalasa is one of hundreds of Palestinian villages ethnically cleansed in 1948, as the fledgling Israeli state sought to maximize the land under its control while minimizing the number of Palestinians living there. This was the flour mill, a regional resource at the time.

This week, guided by the excellent NGO Zochrot, I visited the ruins of al-Khalasa, a Bedouin village destroyed by Israeli forces in 1948 to prevent its residents from returning. A thread on the past, future and present of Palestinian refugees, Gaza's "day after" and Trump's Riviera plan.

What's happening in Goma and surrounding towns is heartbreaking. Human Rights Watch is offering an opportunity to be part of the solution through rigorous research, advocacy & media work. Please repost our search for a senior DRC researcher based in Kinshasa: job-boards.greenhouse.io/humanrightsw...

Beautiful, bittersweet images of Palestinians in Gaza moving north, to homes from which they were forcibly displaced. Even for those who will camp in front of destroyed homes, the reunion with loved ones offer solace & a response to Trump's offer to exile them to Jordan or Egypt.