MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In the first major Israeli-Arab war in 1948, many Palestinians were driven from their homes and sought shelter in Gaza. The direct descendants of those refugees make up most of Gaza's population today, so President Trump struck an extremely sensitive nerve when he called for uprooting all Palestinians in Gaza. NPR's Greg Myre has made dozens of reporting trips to Gaza over the years. He joins me now from Damascus, Syria. Hi, Greg.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: Just walk us back in the history and explain in a little more detail why so many Palestinian refugees came to be concentrated in this tiny strip, the Gaza Strip.
MYRE: Yeah, the 1948 war was really the critical moment. Israel had just declared statehood and was immediately at war with several Arab countries, as well as the Palestinians, who didn't have a state then or now. Hundreds of thousands of civilians fled or were driven from their homes, and many are Palestinians who went to Gaza. So now you have this large refugee population. And the very young, new United Nations sets up a refugee agency just for the Palestinians, which helps the Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank and neighboring countries. This same arrangement has remained in place to this day. And the descendants of those original refugees are still classified as refugees, even if they were born in Gaza and have lived there all their lives.
KELLY: Understanding that there's, of course, a range of views, if Palestinians in Gaza had their choice, how would they like to see this resolved?
MYRE: Certainly, the dream for many has been to return to their former homes, which are now inside Israel's internationally recognized borders. In Gaza and other areas, Palestinians will often show you around their homes. And they'll proudly display these large, oversized rusting keys and yellowing land deed documents to those former family homes. But Israel's always rejected a large-scale return of Palestinian refugees, saying it would be swamped demographically. And during periodic peace talks over the years, the focus has been on making Gaza part of a Palestinian state that would also include the West Bank and a capital in East Jerusalem.
KELLY: So when President Trump comes along and says Palestinians in Gaza should be uprooted because the U.S. is going to take over, based on your experience, is there any reason to think some Palestinians would be willing to leave Gaza?
MYRE: Palestinians in general, and the refugees in particular, harbor this deep fear of being displaced ever since the trauma of 1948, which they call the Nakba - or the catastrophe. And Trump's comments really struck that chord. It's just hard to see how you'd ever get past such a core emotional issue. We've just seen more than 15 months of a devastating war in Gaza, and very few Palestinians left during that time. A couple of reasons for this. First, they really couldn't - Israel blocked its borders. Egypt, which is sympathetic to the Palestinians, kept its border with Gaza closed except for aid deliveries. You know, a very small number of Palestinians did bribe their way out of Gaza to Egypt at the cost of thousands of dollars, but very few. Very little sign that they would want to leave.
KELLY: NPR's Greg Myre in Damascus. We'll leave it there for now. Thank you.
MYRE: Sure thing, Mary Louise. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
