Remember "Holiday In Cambodia?" How About A 2025 Update: "Exile In Libya?"

Eyeless in Gaza

By now you’ve probably heard about the NBC News scoop that revealed that the Trump Regime is in talks to permanently relocate as many as a million Gazans to Libya. “Shocking” doesn’t even begin to describe that. Courtney Kube, Carol Lee and Gordon Labold reported that “In exchange for the resettling of Palestinians, the administration would potentially release to Libya billions of dollars of funds that the U.S. froze more than a decade ago… Libya has been plagued by instability and warring political factions throughout the nearly 14 years since a civil war broke out in the country and its longtime dictator, Moammar Gadhafi, was toppled. Libya is struggling to care for its current population as two rival governments, one in the west led by Abdul Hamid Dbeibah and one in the east led by Khalifa Haftar, are actively and violently fighting for control. The State Department currently advises Americans not to travel to Libya ‘due to crime, terrorism, unexploded landmines, civil unrest, kidnapping, and armed conflict.’”

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has also looked at Libya as a place where it could send some immigrants it wants to deport from the U.S. However, plans to send one group of immigrants to Libya were stalled by a federal judge this month. 

Moving up to 1 million Palestinians to Libya could put far more of a strain on the fragile country.

The CIA’s most recent publicly available estimate of Libya’s current population is about 7.36 million. In terms of population, Libya absorbing 1 million more people would be equivalent to the U.S. taking in about 46 million.

Precisely where Palestinians would be resettled in Libya has not been determined, according to the former U.S. official. Administration officials are looking at options for housing them and every potential method for transporting them from Gaza to Libya— by air, land and sea— is being considered, according to one of the people with direct knowledge of the effort.

…The plan under discussion is part of Trump’s vision for a postwar Gaza, which he said in February the U.S. would seek to “own” and rebuild as what he called “the Riviera of the Middle East,” two current U.S. officials, the former U.S. official and the two people with direct knowledge of the effort said.  

“We’re going to take over that piece, develop it and create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it will be something the entire Middle East can be proud of,” Trump said at the time.

To achieve his goal for the reconstruction of Gaza, Trump has said Palestinians there would have to be permanently resettled elsewhere.

“You can’t live in Gaza right now, and I think we need another location. I think it should be a location that’s going to make people happy,” Trump said in February during a White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump outlined a goal of finding “a beautiful area to resettle people permanently in nice homes, and where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed, not be knifed to death like what’s happening in Gaza.”

“I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza,” he said. 

Trump’s idea, which blindsided some of his top aides, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, when he announced it, drew criticism from America’s Arab allies and U.S. lawmakers from both parties.

As for Libya… it really is a hell on earth. Since Gadhafi was overthrown and murdered on 2011, life for Libyans hasn’t improved. Keep in mind that while Gadhafi’s rule was repressive, it provided stability and a unified state. Today’s rival governments and militias have made governance chaotic and anarchic. And while their oil reserves could theoretically fund prosperity… that’s not how the oil wealth is being spent. The public sector dominates, employing most of the workforce, while the private sector is underdeveloped due to bureaucracy, weak legal systems and instability. Corruption is rampant, with Libya ranking 171st out of 180 on the 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index. Black-market smuggling is all pervasive. While Gadfafi’s rentier state distributed oil wealth via subsidies and public jobs, maintaining a high per capita GDP (about $15,000 in 2010), post-2011, economic dysfunction from civil war slashed GDP by 62.1% in 2011, with only partial recovery. As of 2024, per capita PPP GDP is 65% of 2010 levels. Life is economically worse for most Libyans compared to Gadhafi’s era, when oil wealth more reliably trickled down. Today, access to healthcare, education, water and electricity is unreliable.

Human rights abuses persist. Armed groups detain political opponents and civic activists arbitrarily. Boding poorly for Trump’s “plan,” migrants and refugees (705,746 and 50,986 respectively last year) face xenophobia and expulsion. Women endure gender-based violence and virtually no legal protections.

Basically, the plan is, at best a recipe for calamity, but more likely a disaster for the Palestinians and the Libyans, especially considering Libya’s history of mistreating migrants outsiders, with according to human rights reports, detention centers that are “inhumane,” with rampant torture, trafficking, and sexual violence. Gazans, already traumatized from conflict, would face severe risks in such a volatile setting and social tensions could be expected to erupt, Libyans probably seeing Gazans as competition for already stained resources, while Gazans would face discrimination and exploitation.

Obviously, the plan violates international law, which prohibits forced population transfers from occupied territories. Arab states like Egypt and Jordan, already hosting millions of refugees, have rejected similar proposals, fearing destabilization. Palestinian leaders have already condemned the racist, dehumanizing scheme as “ethnic cleansing,” which would be sure to further inflame tensions in Gaza and beyond. Gazans’ certain refusal to leave voluntarily would lead to coercion, escalating violence and resistance.