Donald Trump's Gaza plan: Ethnic cleansing or crime against humanity?

US President Donald Trump has said he plans to take over the Gaza Strip, transfer its Palestinian population to other countries, and rebuild the territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

Speaking at a White House press conference on Tuesday, with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looking on, Trump also said that Egypt and Jordan would “give us the kind of land that we need to get this done”.

More than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed during the 15 months since Netanyahu declared war on Gaza after the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023 on southern Israel that left 1,139 people dead. Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Gaza has been reduced to rubble by Israeli forces using US-supplied armaments. The UN agency Ocha says almost all of the homes in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.

The destruction also extends to 80 percent of Gaza's commercial facilities, 88 percent of its school buildings, 68 percent of the road networks, and 68 percent of farmland.

Palestinians, Arab states and US allies have condemned Trump’s suggestion. “What Trump is proposing is a text-book case of ethnic cleansing of Gaza, a 21st-century version of ‘final solution’ to the Palestinian question,” Balakrishnan Rajagopal, UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, told Middle East Eye.

But is Trump committing a crime against international law with his plan for Gaza?

What is 'ethnic cleansing?'

The term “ethnic cleansing” originated during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and is a translation of “etnicko ciscenje”, which is Serbo-Croatian. Broadly speaking, it means the forcible removal of a distinct group of people from an area to which they belong to make the area ethnically homogenous.

The United Nations Commission of Experts investigated violations of international humanitarian law in the former Yugoslavia. In February 1993, it defined ethnic cleansing as "… rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area”. 

The following year, the commission called it “… a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas”.

Ethnic cleansing, the commission said, can be implemented through serious international crimes, such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Does the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ have legal status?

Ethnic cleansing does not have an official legal definition and is not recognised as a crime. During Israel’s war on Gaza, the term has been used as a catch-all expression to describe both the war crimes and crimes against humanity relating to displacement, deportation and the forcible transfer of a civilian population.

The deportation or forcible transfer of a civilian population is a war crime under international humanitarian law. And if it is part of a widespread or systematic attack against civilians, then it’s also a crime against humanity, according to the Rome Statute that underpins the ICC.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says that this is an accepted part of international law. That means it's binding on any states which have not persistently objected to it.

Ardi Imseis is a professor of international law at Queen's University and author of The UN and the Question of Palestine. He told MEE: "Under international humanitarian law and international criminal law, individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the occupying power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”

The thinking behind the prohibition, Imseis said, was to stop any occupier usurping and colonising occupied territory, as Nazi Germany did during World War Two.

Are there examples of ethnic cleansing?

The idea first emerged during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, when Serb-led forces conducted ethnic cleansing against Bosniaks and Croats, not least during the Srebrenica genocide of July 1995, when 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered.

It has also been used retrospectively to describe the systemic campaigns of forced deportations and mass destruction that Nazi Germany carried out against Jews, Roma, Slavs, and other groups deemed "undesirable" in occupied Europe.

Has Israel been accused of ethnic cleansing before?

For Palestinians, ethnic cleansing has echoes of the Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe), when 750,000 people were forced from their homes and into neighbouring countries during the creation of Israel in 1948.

The term has also been used to describe plans by Israeli settlers and far-right officials to forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza and replace them with Israeli settlers.

Rights groups and activists say the expansion of settlements and displacement of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem is also part of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Israeli-occupied lands. 

Is Trump's plan ethnic cleansing?

Experts suggest Trump’s idea constitutes ethnic cleansing as it was described three decades ago. But it's important to classify it as a crime of forced transfer and deportation, which would enable its prosecution internationally.

Additionally, Trump's idea is a clear violation of the foundational principles of the United Nations, as stipulated in the 1945 Charter. Article I says that the UN is intended “to maintain international peace and security” and to take collective measures to prevent and remove threats to peace.

The Charter also upholds “the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples” and prohibits the conquest of another state's territory. 

But Trump, in his comments about Gaza, suggested that Palestinians may not have a choice as to leaving the territory, implying that they may do so under duress.

Rajagopal said: “There is no Palestinian exception to these rules - they have equal rights to self-determination and to their own land as any other people do.”

The crime against humanity and war crime of forced deportation and transfer of a civilian population is not only carried out through physical force.

According to the elements of crimes guidance by the Rome Statute: "The term forcibly' is not restricted to physical force, but may include threat of force or coercion, such as that caused by fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or abuse of power against such person or persons or another person, or by taking advantage of a coercive environment." 

Therefore, even if Palestinians eventually leave Gaza under Trump's plan, without being subjected to physical force, the plan may constitute a crime against humanity, at least given the "coercive environment" imposed by the devastation of the enclave by Israel's military campaign, which has rendered Gaza largely uninhabitable. 

Is it legal for Israel to cede Gaza to the US?

On Thursday, Trump doubled down on his White House statements of two days earlier, saying: “The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting.”

But Israel is an occupying power. It has no right to cede Gaza to the US or any other state. 

“Israel cannot legally cede Gaza to the United States,” said Janina Dill, co-director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict. “According to the best reading of International Law, Israel is an occupying power in Gaza, but the rights and obligations of an occupying power do not include ceding the territory to another state."

In fact, Israel’s presence itself is unlawful.

In July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) confirmed that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands is unlawful as it involves the conquest of territory and violates the right to self-determination.

Israel, the ICJ said, has a legal obligation to end its occupation of Palestinian lands, dismantle settlements, provide full reparations, and ensure forcibly displaced people can return. Due to the ruling, the UN General Assembly has demanded Israel withdraw from occupied Palestine land on or before 17 September 2025.

Dill explained that it does not matter that some countries, such as Israel, contest Palestine's status as a state.

"There are strong arguments for considering Gaza a part of a sovereign State of Palestine, but even observers disinclined to grant this status must understand that the alternative is not that Gaza is a part of Israel," she told MEE.

"Finally, it is worth mentioning that even the legitimate government of a sovereign state cannot without further consideration cede a part of its territory to another state since the population on the territory has rights which might be violated in the process."

Imseis said that Trump’s plan was a clear violation of the ICJ ruling. The US also has a legal obligation, confirmed by the ICJ, not to recognise nor support Israel's occupation.

“In effect, Israel is present in the occupied Palestinian territories as an aggressor," Imseis told MEE, "and any support it receives to maintain that aggression, including to ethnically cleanse the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territory) of its rightful sovereign, the Palestinian people, would be unlawful and include individual criminal responsibility for those responsible.

In other words, should the plan go ahead, Trump and other officials behind this plan may be liable for criminal prosecution for breaching international law.

What does the US think about the ICC?

Historically, the US has a rocky relationship with the two main international justice institutions: the ICC (which prosecutes individuals for serious international crimes) and the ICJ (which hears legal disputes among states).

For example, the US played a role in the early development of the ICC and signed the Rome Statute in 2000 under the presidency of Bill Clinton.

But it was never submitted to the Senate for ratification amid fears that the ICC could prosecute US military personnel and officials for alleged war crimes, especially in conflicts like Afghanistan and Iraq. 

In 2002, the administration of President George W Bush formally withdrew and passed the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act (ASPA), which restricted US cooperation with the ICC. ASPA even authorises the use of force to free detained US personnel, earning it the nickname, the "Hague Invasion Act". Washington also pressured countries into signing bilateral immunity agreements to prevent them from surrendering US nationals to the ICC.

This means that the US has no legal obligation to arrest and surrender those wanted by the court, such as when Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House this week.

Washington has backed the ICC occasionally, such as the prosecution of alleged war criminals in Sudan (Darfur), the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, and Russia.  Under Barack Obama, the US engaged with the court more constructively but still avoided full membership. 

In contrast, the first Trump administration imposed sanctions on ICC officials when the court investigated alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan. 

These were reversed under the presidency of Joe Biden, who conditionally backed ICC investigations into Russian war crimes in Ukraine. But it still opposed ICC jurisdiction over US citizens.

On his first day back in the Oval Office last month, Trump reversed Biden’s ending of the 2020 sanctions.

What does the US think about the ICJ?

US relations with the ICJ are, if anything, even more complicated. For the ICJ to hear a case, it must have jurisdiction, which can take three forms: compulsory, treaty-based, or ad hoc consent. 

The US withdrew from the ICJ’s compulsory jurisdiction in 1986, meaning it cannot be sued at the ICJ unless it explicitly agrees. 

However, if there is a dispute between the US and another state and both have signed a treaty over which the ICJ has jurisdiction, then a case could proceed.

This has happened in cases involving treaties like the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, when Mexico challenged the US over the treatment of its nationals. As a result, the US has withdrawn from several treaties that allow ICJ jurisdiction, limiting any potential legal problems.