Mustafa Barghouti On Trump, Ethnic Cleansing & Israel “Moving the War” From Gaza To The West Bank

“Something has to be clear: Palestinians will not leave their country. Israel tried to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians during a horrible genocide which lasted for 15 months, killing more than 70,000 Palestinians, including 17,000 children. And they failed, because Palestinians stuck to their land, and they are not planning to leave anywhere.”

By Mustafa Barghouti and Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!

Israel “has moved the war from Gaza to the West Bank,” says the Palestinian National Initiative’s Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, who joins us from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli military’s ongoing assault there has displaced over 35,000 Palestinians through evictions, destruction of infrastructure and indiscriminate attacks resulting in over 80 deaths. Barghouti also condemns Donald Trump’s declaration that the U.S. should take over the Gaza Strip. He calls both the “theft of Gaza” and the military campaign in the West Bank war crimes.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end today’s show in the occupied West Bank as Israel is intensifying its military assault, which has displaced 35,000 Palestinians in recent weeks. On Saturday, Israeli troops raided the Nur Shams refugee camp, where they killed two women, including one who was eight months pregnant, her husband critically injured. Palestinian health officials said efforts to save the woman’s fetus failed in part because the Israeli military prevented the couple from being transferred to the hospital. This comes as President Trump has doubled down on his proposal for the United States to own Gaza and forcibly displace Palestinians living there.

For more, we go to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, where we’re joined by Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian physician, activist, politician, who serves as general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative. He’s been a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council since 2006.

Dr. Barghouti, welcome back to Democracy Now! There’s so much to discuss and so little time. If you can start off by talking about President Trump’s proposal, clearly not off the cuff, as he was reading it, and has doubled down almost every day, on saying the U.S. will own Gaza, and the millions of Palestinians who live there should go elsewhere? In fact, he’s talked about Jordan. He’s talked about Egypt. And the Jordanian king is coming to the White House tomorrow to meet with Trump.

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: I think what President Trump announced is nothing but an advocacy of two major war crimes. And what he said should be described as it is, very, very clearly. He is calling for ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people of Gaza, which is an act of war. It’s an act — it’s a criminal — it’s a war crime. And second, he’s calling for theft of Gaza from its owners, from the Palestinian people, who live in Gaza, who lived there for more than 4,000 years, who own the place, who have their civilization there. Their houses used to be there. Their whole life was there. And he wants to simply ethnically cleanse them and then take away the land from them. I wonder how would President Trump respond if somebody suggested that all people of New York should be evicted to Afghanistan, for instance, so that somebody else can take their land and create a constructive project there.

Something has to be clear: Palestinians will not leave their country. Israel tried to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians during a horrible genocide which lasted for 15 months, killing more than 70,000 Palestinians, including 17,000 children. And they failed, because Palestinians stuck to their land, and they are not planning to leave anywhere.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what you think the king, the Jordanian king, should say when he meets with Trump tomorrow, or what you understand he is going to say?

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Well, as you have seen, not only Jordan, but Egypt, as well, and Saudi Arabia and all Arab countries were very angry at what Trump said. And Egypt and Jordan made it very clear that they will not cooperate in this crime of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people.

I think the Jordanian king will tell President Trump several things: first of all, that his people, the people of Jordan, will never accept that the regime would cooperate in any act of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people; second, that a new transfer of Palestinians to Jordan will simply mean the end of Jordan as a Hashemite kingdom. This will mean the end of the place completely. And it would fulfill what Netanyahu and his crowd, his fascist crowd, are calling for, which is, let Jordan be the Palestinian state, and simply evict all Palestinians, not only from Gaza, but also from the West Bank. And thirdly, I think President Trump will try to pressure the king by threatening to cut down the foreign aid to Jordan and maybe use other methods of pressure.

But the king has leverage here, which will be the summit of the Arab countries. And we’ve been calling on all Arab countries to do three things: first of all, to issue a very clear position rejecting Trump’s plan of conducting a new war crime against the Palestinian people; second, that they should establish some sort of a safety net for both Jordan and Egypt if they are subjected to manipulations from Trump, from President Trump; and third, that all Arab countries must provide every support they can to Palestinians to help their steadfastness not only in Gaza, but also in the West Bank, since the Israeli army is already conducting ethnic cleansing of Jenin refugee camp, of Tulkarm refugee camp, of Nur Shams refugee camp, and practically it has moved the war from Gaza to the West Bank.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about what’s happening right now in the West Bank. Just in the last few weeks, we’re talking about tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians. I’m not talking about Gaza, right? We’re talking about the West Bank. Explain more about what’s happening in Nur Shams, in Jenin. Talk about the eight-[months-pregnant] woman who was killed by the Israeli military.

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: What the Israelis are doing in the West Bank is nothing but another war crime. They’ve already — in addition to arresting 12,500 people since October 7th, during the last month, January alone, the Israeli army arrested 580 more Palestinians, many of whom will be put under administrative detention because they cannot charge them with anything.

And most importantly, the Israeli army initiated a military operation in the north of the West Bank, which has affected up to now four major refugee camps. In Jenin camp, they’ve already destroyed more than 150 homes and houses, and they are now — and they’ve evicted 20,000 people, who are the whole inhabitants of the refugee camp. They evicted them out of the camp, conducting an act of ethnic cleansing. Eighty percent of the people in Tulkarm refugee camp have also been evicted. The same in Nur Shams refugee camp. And now there is a huge attack, since nine days, on al-Faraa refugee camp in Tubas area. So, we are talking here about a terrible military campaign with destruction of infrastructure, destruction of houses. Footage that comes out of Jenin actually shows us something very similar to the destruction and damage that was caused in many parts of Gaza.

But more than that, more than 80 people have been killed since the initiation of this operation. About one-third of them are children and women. And the last woman who was killed was eight months pregnant. She was eight months pregnant. She tried, with her husband and two of their children, to get out of the camp, to get medical — to get to go to a clinic, to get medical consultation, because she was worried about her pregnancy. And when they were trying to leave the camp, the Israeli soldiers saw them and shot them. The father was critically injured. The mother was very seriously injured. An ambulance managed to get to them, transported them. When they were in front of the main governmental hospital, the Israeli army stopped the ambulance for 30 minutes, and that woman bled to death, and her child died, too, because of her bleeding. And the most horrifying thing is that the two other children watched the horror of the death of their mother and the injury of their father. This is the kind of what the Israeli — the kind of thing that the Israeli army is doing, not only in Jenin and in Tulkarm refugee camps, but also in Jenin and in other places.

But the whole West Bank, Amy, is now under attack, because Israel has imposed on this little area no less than 920 military checkpoints and gates. What does a gate mean? It means that the army comes into a village or a town and puts a gate in front of the main road to that place. They shut off all other roads. And then they close the gate and leave, which means these villages become prisons, small prisons, where everybody is stuck, cannot go to their work, cannot go for medical care if they need it, cannot go for their education in schools or universities. This is the kind of life we live in. And now transportation in the West Bank is totally obstructed, because a trip that usually takes 40 minutes could take five hours. Sometimes it is totally impossible. On Saturdays, almost the whole West Bank is shut off. So, it’s a real situation of war, and everything is affected. Trade is affected. Economy is affected. Medical care is affected. We are unable to reach many people who need our healthcare.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Mustafa Barghouti is a medical doctor, as well as an activist and a politician, who serves as general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative. We thank you so much for being with us from Israeli-occupied West Bank, from Ramallah. Dr. Mustafa has been a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council since 2006. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.