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Karam Alakklouk lives in Australia. But he longs for the day he can return to his home in Gaza.
He fled with his wife and five-year-old son just five days before the Rafah crossing closed last May.
“You cannot imagine the struggle of going to a safe place, leaving your whole family back, where every day there’s a chance that it’ll be, or it might be the last day that you can talk to them,” Alakklouk told SBS News.
To Alakklouk, Gaza is home, as it is for more than two million people.
But according to United States President Donald Trump, it’s — a proposal that has been .
“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday, claiming he would transform the seaside enclave into the “Riviera of the Middle East” and forcibly remove Palestinians from their homeland.
He later doubled down on his comments on Thursday on his social media platform, Truth Social.
Should Trump follow through with his plans, it could be considered a war crime and a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). , but the ICC has jurisdiction over actions in Gaza.
‘It’s our bond with the soil’
Alakklouk said he “couldn’t process” Trump’s words.
“It’s our land. It’s our memories. It’s our bond with the soil of that land. And you’re simply neglecting all that. That’s something that we couldn’t even process until this moment,” he said.
Rasha Abbas, founder and executive director of Palestine Australia Relief and Action (PARA), said Trump’s words have already affected Palestinian people, even if there is no action behind them.
“It’s already affected them emotionally and with trauma because this is something we, as Palestinians, have lived multiple times,” Abbas told SBS News. “This is multi-generational trauma when those displacements happen.”
‘We managed to have a life’
Alakklouk, 35, has lived through several wars in Gaza. None, he said, were harder than the latest round of fighting where his brother’s homes were destroyed.
“We never had any more than five or six years without something major that could affect our lives. But despite all of that, we managed to have a life — to create family, to just try as hard as we can to be normal, to be as anybody else in this world,” he said.
Referring to Trump’s statement about taking over Gaza, made alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Alakklouk said: “It’s something very, very, very, very surprising, very shocking.”
“The strength of saying that Gaza is a place that is totally destroyed and it’s not a livable place anymore — and the one that is responsible for doing so just sitting next to you, smiling.”
“It was not me — all of my family, my friends, all of the Palestinians that I know, they felt the same,” he said. “They’re shocked when they finally had the chance that, okay, we can now stop running for our lives. Now it’s time for us to grieve our losses and try to figure out how we will survive the next journey of struggle.”
Israel has bombarded Gaza for 15 months following Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attack in which some 1,200 people were killed and over 200 hostages taken, according to the Israeli government. More than 47,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
Another Palestinian in Australia, who asked remain anonymous, shared in a PARA-operated private community group that they will never “relinquish our rights”.
“Neither Trump nor anyone else will ever force us to relinquish our rights or abandon our dreams of returning to our occupied lands,” they wrote.
“Our connection to our homeland is rooted in our history, our identity and the blood of our ancestors.”
“If it is not achieved by our generation, then our children, our grandchildren, and the generations after them will carry the torch of our struggle until justice is served.
“Trump may have four years in office, but after that, he will return to his home, while our cause will endure, stronger and more alive with every passing generation.”
A ‘miracle’ he could come to Australia
PARA said it supports about 1,600 Palestinian migrants and refugees to live safe and fulfilling lives in Australia.
Abbas said that many members of the Palestinian community in Australia had expressed sadness about Trump’s comments and how much it had impacted them as they were forced to leave Gaza, rather than leaving by choice.
“They’re all hopeful to be able to go back one day,” she said. “It’s important to continue to rebuild and help the families that are remaining in there. A number of them still have the majority of their families in there.”
Alakklouk arrived in Australia last July on a government scholarship to obtain his master’s degree in engineering, which he applied for in early 2023.
He said it was a “miracle” his scholarship was approved and he could move to Australia in the middle of the war.
He’d hoped he would return to Gaza to help rebuild it. Now, he said he’s not even sure whether his small family will have a homeland to come back to.
“Palestinians are rooted in their heritage and their history in Palestine,” Abbas said. “We have the right to be in Palestine, in our land, by national law, by the declaration of the United Nations.”
“It’s simply our land and our homes and our grandparents and our history. It’s very hard for any human to have an identity that’s disconnected from their roots and heritage … we’re rooted in that heritage that goes for thousands of years.”
Alakklouk hopes for a world where he and the Palestinian people decide their own future.
“We are not able to imagine how our future will be when someone else is deciding on our behalf, neglecting our right to determine our future,” he said.
“It’s the home of two million people. Those two million are outside, waiting for the moment that they have the right to return to their homeland.”
