Let the people go!

Gazans, desperate to relocate, represent less than one percent of recent global immigrations. Help them. 

By Dr. Michael L. Wise Apr 5, 2024,

My grandson has been serving in Gaza since day one. When he had cell phone access, he told me that he saw many people walking south and east. Then he said, “Zeide (Grandpa) Mike. ‘If these people go back up north there will be another war in just a few years.’”

How true. Israel must finally win a war. Peaceful Gazans who are desperate to relocate should be assisted to find homes in new host countries. All Hamas and all Hamas supporters must be removed from Gaza.

Who are these Hamas supporters? Until recently, Palestinian Arabs poll themselves every three months and ask people in Gaza and the ‘West Bank’ whether they are in favor of killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel. From 2001 to 2005, when Israel still controlled Gaza, 62% of Gaza’s adult population were in favor of killing Jewish civilians. That percentage increased to 65% of after Hamas took over Gaza in 2007 and all the Jews had been removed from the Gaza Strip by Israel.

Unfortunately, the World ignores these facts and does not want to allow Israel to enter Rafah in southern Gaza and complete the destruction of an armed Hamas. The World is desperately trying to force a Gaza ceasefire to save Hamas.

Remarkably, the World is once again scheming to force a two-state solution combining Gaza and the ‘West Bank’ in spite of the fact that the Arabs have rejected for 100 years the existence of any Jewish state. The Arabs rejected the 1922 Palestine Mandate calling for a Jewish National Home, the Peel Commission in 1937, the UN partition Plan in 1947, and multiple attempts by the US and the UN and the Euro to implement two-state solutions contrary to the PLO and Hamas Charters.

The creation of a contiguous Palestinian state as the outcome to the October 7 Massacre is a guaranteed formula for ongoing violence and consequences too ominous to describe.

The answer is None of the Above. The World has lost the opportunity to rehabilitate the population of Gaza. Gaza has been a source and base for unbroken terrorism for the past 100 years. Gaza can never again be allowed to attack a peace-loving Israel with fedayeen murderers and rockets.

Fortunately, there is a solution for those Gazans who have been oppressed by Hamas and other terrorist organizations. In the past 80 years we have seen multiple population exchanges involving millions of people. There is ample room for all Gazans that prefer to join the hundreds of thousands of Gazans who have already escaped from Hamas since the violent Hamas coup of 2007. People saw dozens of Fatah supporters thrown from the roofs of buildings and understood that living under Hamas rule would be insufferable. Most of the people who escaped were young people who understood that even though Egypt would not accept them, bribes to Egyptian and Hamas border guards, would let them escape to Turkey on the way to other homes.

In our demographic analysis we were able to document even before 2007, a minimum of 11,000 escapees per year. Since the Hamas coup, it is not possible to document the number of escapees but the evidence indicates that a multiple of that number may have annually succeeded in escaping.

It is easy to calculate that the current true number of Gazans is significantly less than 1.7 million and probably no more than 1.45 million. This compares with the inflated 2.3 million claims of Hamas and Palestinian Authorities. Even UNRWA’s claim of 2.1 million acknowledges that there are 200,000 missing Gazans. UNRWA’s 2.1 million includes what they claim are 1.7 million refugees of whom 1.467 million are officially on their lists.

The UNRWA count includes significant numbers of people long gone from Gaza as well as deceased. These so-called Gazans ‘refugees’ (an oxymoron, since they consider Gaza theirs, ed.) include children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of those who escaped Palestine during the 1947 to 1949 war of independence or Nakba. There are very few residents of Gaza who are descended from those who lived in Gaza prior to 1948.

Numerous polls over the last dozen years have indicated that between 60 and 75% of the Gazan residents would seek other addresses. Who can blame them? Gaza was never their ancestral home and they do not want to be cannon fodder for the multi billionaire leaders of Hamas. They do not want to continue to live in the open-air prison governed by the Hamas wardens who used the billions of dollars received from Qatar, UNRWA, the PA and others to build military complexes, tunnels, rocket factories, and to enrich their personal bank accounts.

The Philadelphi Corridor was controlled by Hamas and Egyptians allowing transfer of people, materials, supplies and massive amounts of weapons to pass through provided the proper bribes were paid to the appropriate authorities and Egypt, supposedly our friend, turned a blind eye. How much did it cost to drive a new Mercedes from Egypt into Gaza? Who was paid off? What was the cost to decorate the palaces of the Hamas leaders? Of the luxury hotels? We will never know.

The time has come to let the people go!

Gazans wait to cross into Egypt through Rafah border crossing

On 24 November 1947, the head of the Egyptian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly, Muhammad Hussein Heykal Pasha, said, “the lives of 1,000,000 Jews in Moslem countries would be jeopardized by the establishment of a Jewish state.” After Israel’s independence in 1948, 900,000 Jewish refugees fled, or were expelled from Muslim countries. Two-thirds fled the French- and Italian-controlled regions of North Africa, 15–20% lived in Iraq, approximately 10% lived in the Egypt, and approximately 7% lived in the Yemen. 200,000 Jews lived in the Iran and Turkey.

More than 650,000 of these Jews resettled in Israel, doubling the country’s Jewish population. For example, the peak exodus from Egypt occurred in 1956, following the Suez Crisis. In 1948, the Jewish population of Egypt was 75,000. Today, the Jewish community numbers fewer than 10. Similar displacements occurred elsewhere. For example: 63000 Jews in Yemen in 1948 dropped to 20; 24,000 Jews in Lebanon, now fewer than 10; 30000 Jews in Syria down to maybe 5; 40,000 Afghan Jews to zero; and Libya zero.

Today, these and other Moslem countries with hundreds of millions of people and millions of square kilometers surely have room for all the Gazans that seek to relocate. Let them open their doors. (Europe has room for 6 million, ed.)

The U.S.A House of Representatives on April 1, 2008 passed the bilateral Resolution 185, which recognized the fact that 850,000 Jews were driven from Arab countries subsequent to 1948 Independence War. The Resolution in part states: “Whereas the international definition of a refugee clearly applies to Jews who fled the persecution of Arab regimes; Whereas it would be inappropriate and unjust for the United States to recognize rights for Palestinian refugees without recognizing equal rights for Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Now, therefore: Recognition of the legitimate rights of and losses incurred by Jewish refugees displaced from Islamic countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf from Arab countries must be finally recognized.” Islamic countries should now finally open their doors to Gazans who seek new lives.

Gazans who are desperate to relocate represent less than one percent of recent global immigrations.

If the Gaza population remains, Gaza will once again become a regional epicenter of anti-US Islamic terrorism, adjacent to Sinai which is already a platform of ISIS, Iran-supported Iraqi, Syrian and Libyan terrorism. The USA has a clear strategic interest in preventing Gaza from again becoming terrorist center. If Gaza is repopulated it will remain a significant Iran supported base for terror against Israel, the region, and the western world.

Dr. Michael Wise is a founder and investor in numerous technology companies. He is a graduate of YU and holds a PhD .in Theoretical Physics from Brandeis U., is the author of Israel demography study (BESA).and has published numerous articles about Israel sovereignty and demographics in Judea and Samaria. mlwise@gmail.com