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Three prominent Palestinian activists and journalists condemned Israel’s war in Gaza and President Donald Trump’s proposal to seize the territory at a Thursday webinar held by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.
The talk came two days after Trump suggested at a White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States should expel Palestinians from Gaza and take control of the territory. Trump’s remarks sparked shock and anger among other Middle Eastern countries and U.S. allies.
“After 16 months of genocide and starvation, the Palestinian people had hoped that the rebuilding of Gaza would finally begin, but then came Trump's recent statements,” said Aseel Mousa, a freelance journalist who spoke at the webinar.
“The people of Gaza are deeply worried. Many are starting to believe that reconstruction may never happen,” she said.
Trump’s team on Thursday appeared to soften some of his remarks, suggesting that the displacement of Palestinians — a war crime under the Geneva Conventions — would be temporary rather than permanent.
Muhammed Shehada, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and columnist for the Jewish Forward, said he feared Trump’s remarks would embolden right-wing politicians in Netanyahu’s coalition who support expelling Palestinians from Gaza.
“You can only imagine what credence this lent to elements that you’re trying to sideline and marginalize, that you consider dangerous or extremists,” Shehada said.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and former National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, the leaders of two far-right nationalist parties, have both backed Trump’s plan.
Shehada said the war in Gaza was the most brutal conflict he had seen in the territory. By February 2024, he said, 34 of his relatives had been killed.
“I’ve lived through three Israeli wars, 10 military operations, and two grand invasions,” he said. “None of them come close to this one in any way whatsoever in terms of grave magnitude, scale, and severity.”
Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire deal in mid-January. The parties have so far exchanged 18 hostages for more than 500 Palestinian prisoners, and Israel allowed the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt to reopen.
But the first phase of the deal, which is slated to last 42 days, does not establish a permanent ceasefire, a full withdrawal of Israeli troops, or a plan for reconstruction. The second phase of negotiations began Tuesday.
Mousa said her friends and relatives who had been displaced to southern Gaza were struggling to return to the north.
“They are actually struggling to survive,” she said. “There’s no water. They are trying to get rid of the rubble of their houses so they can build the tents.”
Issa Amro, an activist, condemned Western institutions’ ties to illegal Israeli settlements.
‘There are many contributors from the West, and there are a lot even investing in Israeli settlements. And it’s against the international law,” Amro said. “They invest money, they invest technology, they invest research.”
Student activists at Harvard have urged the University to divest from Israeli companies that operate in the occupied Palestinian territories — and some have called on Harvard to cut ties with Israeli universities as well.
But Harvard recently reinvested $150 million in Booking Holdings, which owns a rental company that has faced scrutiny from human rights organizations for listing properties in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The University also agreed to establish a partnership with an Israeli university as part of its January agreement to end two lawsuits accusing it of tolerating antisemitism.
Shehada praised participants in the pro-Palestine protests that have swept U.S. cities and college campuses for the past year.
“The amount of solidarity that we’ve seen with the people in Gaza — not with Hamas, but with the people in Gaza themselves, with their suffering and pain — that we’ve seen across the United States is deeply inspiring,” he said.
—Staff writer Frances Y. Yong can be reached at frances.yong@thecrimson.com.
—Staff writer Kenith W. Taukolo can be reached at kenith.taukolo@thecrimson.com.
