I somewhat favor mass deportation from Palestine. I don't see how the situation on the ground will get better, and while deportation will in itself be awful, "100 years from now, the Palestinian diaspora will enjoy quality-of-life (social, political, economic) equivalent to their local communities" seems more plausible than, "100 years from now, the Palestinian people will enjoy a fair standard of living in Palestine."
I don't like this. I feel bad about this. It's not a "good" plan. But I don't know what else is more than "pie in the sky" thinking, and the status quo is worse.
I am not gonna be an asshole to you about this like I bet you would expect many here to be, I am a realist and I think that realism is typically the right approach. I see the logic that given [X], it would be better for the people of Gaza to simply leave. After all, I approve of refugees in general! I do not blame for "not staying" or some other dumb bullshit, becoming a refugee is the good and right response to many situations. If we could welcome the entire population of Gaza into the wider Austin metro area (climate match + capable of building the housing) I would do so.
But it seems very important to clarify what that [X] is - in this case, it is the myopic obsession the Israeli right has with being genocidal maniacs in order to paint-by-numbers a semi-arid scrubland to match the deranged musings of a book from over a thousand years ago. They could just not do that! They don't have any reason, whatsoever, to do it. The "unsustainability" of the Israeli-Palestine conflict is entirely an invention of the Israeli state. That does not mean there could be kumbaya-levels peace or anything - the PLO are corrupt reprobates and Hamas are, of course, radical authoritarians worshiping at the altar of useless historical grievances and infected with a death cult. But that describes like 30% of the planet, and they get along. China-Taiwan is sustainable, North Korea-South Korea is sustainable, India-Kashmir is sustainable! The median number of deaths from "terrorism" in Kashmir doesn't even glance the murder rate in the typical large Indian city. The world keeps turning, life goes on. It is only human action, direct choices by individuals with full capacity to do better, that takes these conflicts and make them unsustainable.
Israel could, trivially, recognize Palestinian statehood or even just general autonomy, defend its borders, punish the occasional missile strike that would surely still occur with minimalist force, and turn the world against the aggressors diplomatically. Saudi Arabia would sell out Hamas in a heartbeat for that. The rest of the world, could - less trivially but not actually that hard because Israeli is tiny - simply inform Israel they will no longer recognize their silly crusade against Palestinian statehood and if they want to block US/EU navy ships from delivering food they can meet our nuclear weapons out in the parking lot. You will not have perfection but you will have millions of people living their normal lives, neither being faced with anything close to a threat of mass-scale ethnic cleansing.
So I do get what you're saying, I just think that hope has to be framed correctly - given that the millions of other much easier paths to a better outcome that could be easily pursued by any of the involved people are going to be ignored because the actors in question are combinations of vile or incompetent, maybe your path is the right one. That isn't ironic, I actually do get it. But I do think once those paths are fully visible, swallowing that pill becomes a lot harder.
(I'm not saying there are no Palestinian sins or agency btw, this is just a post about depopulating Gaza - this is a situation where Israel holds all the cards. Different topics would have different framings)
