The Dictatorship
Palestinians fear a repeat of their 1948 mass expulsion in the wake of Trump’s remarks on Gaza
JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinians will mark this year the 77th anniversary of their mass expulsion from what is now Israelan event that is at the core of their national struggle.
But in many ways, that experience pales in comparison to the calamity now faced in the Gaza Strip — particularly as President Donald Trump has suggested that displaced Palestinians in Gaza be permanently resettled outside the war-torn territory and that the United States take “ownership” of the enclave.
Palestinians refer to their 1948 expulsion as the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe. Some 700,000 Palestinians — a majority of the prewar population — fled or were driven from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel’s establishment.
After the war, Israel refused to allow them to return because it would have resulted in a Palestinian majority within its borders. Instead, they became a seemingly permanent refugee community that now numbers some 6 million, with most living in slum-like urban refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
In Gaza, the refugees and their descendants make up around three-quarters of the population.
Israel’s rejection of what Palestinians say is their right of return to their 1948 homes has been a core grievance in the conflict and was one of the thorniest issues in peace talks that last collapsed 15 years ago. The refugee camps have always been the main bastions of Palestinian militancy.
Now, many Palestinians fear a repeat of their painful history on an even more cataclysmic scale.
All across Gaza, Palestinians in recent days have been loading up cars and donkey carts or setting out on foot to visit their destroyed homes after a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war took hold Jan. 19. The images from several rounds of mass evacuations throughout the war — and their march back north on foot — are strikingly similar to black-and-white photographs from 1948.
Mustafa al-Gazzar, in his 80s, recalled in 2024 his family’s monthslong flight from their village in what is now central Israel to the southern city of Rafah, when he was 5. At one point they were bombed from the air, at another, they dug holes under a tree to sleep in for warmth.
Al-Gazzar, now a great-grandfather, was forced to flee again in the war, this time to a tent in Muwasi, a barren coastal area where some 450,000 Palestinians live in a squalid camp. He said then the conditions are worse than in 1948, when the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees was able to regularly provide food and other essentials.
“My hope in 1948 was to return, but my hope today is to survive,” he said.
The war in Gaza, which was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into Israel, has killed over 47,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, making it by far the deadliest round of fighting in the history of the conflict. The initial Hamas attack killed some 1,200 Israelis.
The war has forced some 1.7 million Palestinians — around three quarters of the territory’s population — to flee their homes, often multiple times. That is well over twice the number that fled before and during the 1948 war.
Israel has sealed its border. Egypt has only allowed a small number of Palestinians to leave, in part because it fears a mass influx of Palestinians could generate another long-term refugee crisis.
The international community is strongly opposed to any mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza — an idea embraced by far-right members of the Israeli government, who refer to it as “voluntary emigration.”
Israel has long called for the refugees of 1948 to be absorbed into host countries, saying that calls for their return are unrealistic and would endanger its existence as a Jewish-majority state. It points to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who came to Israel from Arab countries during the turmoil following its establishment, though few of them want to return.
Even if Palestinians are not expelled from Gaza en masse, many fear that they will never be able to return to their homes or that the destruction wreaked on the territory will make it impossible to live there. One U.N. estimate said it would take until 2040 to rebuild destroyed homes.
The Jewish militias in the 1948 war with the armies of neighboring Arab nations were mainly armed with lighter weapons like rifles, machine guns and mortars. Hundreds of depopulated Palestinian villages were demolished after the war, while Israelis moved into Palestinian homes in Jerusalem, Jaffa and other cities.
In Gaza, Israel has unleashed one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history, at times dropping 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs on dense, residential areas. Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to wastelands of rubble and plowed-up roads, many littered with unexploded bombs.
Yara Asi, a Palestinian assistant professor at the University of Central Florida who has done research on the damage to civilian infrastructure in the war, says it’s “extremely difficult” to imagine the kind of international effort that would be necessary to rebuild Gaza.
Even before the war, many Palestinians spoke of an ongoing Nakba, in which Israel gradually forces them out of Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories it captured during the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for a future state. They point to home demolitions, settlement construction and other discriminatory policies that long predate the war, and which major rights groups say amount to apartheidallegations Israel denies.
Asi and others fear that if another genuine Nakba occurs, it will be in the form of a gradual departure.
“It won’t be called forcible displacement in some cases. It will be called emigration, it will be called something else,” Asi said.
“But in essence, it is people who wish to stay, who have done everything in their power to stay for generations in impossible conditions, finally reaching a point where life is just not livable.”
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Associated Press reporters Wafaa Shurafa and Mohammad Jahjouh in Rafah, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press is republishing this story from May 14, 2024, to update with the ceasefire and President Donald Trump’s comments about the Gaza Strip.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President JD Vance announced Wednesday that the Trump administration would “temporarily halt” some Medicaid funding to the state of Minnesota over fraud concernsas part of what he described as an aggressive crackdown on misuse of public funds.
Vance, who made the announcement with Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the administration was taking the action “in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligations seriously to be good stewards of the American people’s tax money.”
Oz, who referred to people committing fraud as “self-serving scoundrels,” said the federal government would hold off on paying $259.5 million to Minnesota in funding for Medicaid, the health care safety net for low-income Americans.
“This is not a problem with the people of Minnesota, it’s a problem with the leadership of Minnesota and other states who do not take Medicaid preservation seriously,” Oz said.
Wednesday’s move is part of a larger Trump administration effort to spotlight fraud around the country. That effort comes after allegations of fraud involving day care centers run by Somali residents in Minneapolis prompted a massive immigration crackdown in the Midwestern city, resulting in widespread protests. President Donald Trump, in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, announced Vance would spearhead a national “war on fraud.”
Trump also recently nominated Colin McDonald to serve as the first assistant attorney general in charge of a Justice Department division dedicated to rooting out fraud.
Minnesota pushes back
Oz said the administration was simultaneously notifying Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz as he was making the announcement publicly.
“We will give them the money, but we’re going to hold it and only release it after they propose and act on a comprehensive corrective action plan to solve the problem,” Oz said.
He said Walz would have 60 days to respond and advised health care providers and Medicaid beneficiaries who were concerned to contact Walz’s office.
Walz, former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 running mate, said in a pair of social media posts that the administration’s move had nothing to do with fraud.
“This is a campaign of retribution. Trump is weaponizing the entirety of the federal government to punish blue states like Minnesota,” Walz said. “These cuts will be devastating for veterans, families with young kids, folks with disabilities, and working people across our state.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a statement that his team has secured over 300 Medicaid fraud convictions since he took office in 2019. And he noted that he called on the Legislature earlier Wednesday to give him more staff and new legal tools to combat Medicaid fraud.
“Courts have repeatedly found that their pattern of cutting first and asking questions later is illegal, and if the federal government is unlawfully withholding money meant for the 1.2 million low-income Minnesotans on Medicaid, we will see them in court,” Ellison said.
Oz said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services were also taking action to crack down on fraud in Medicare, the health care system relied upon by millions of older adults.
He said CMS for six months would block any new Medicare enrollments for suppliers of durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics or other supplies used to treat chronic conditions or assist in injury recovery.
The Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found last year that Medicare improperly paid suppliers nearly $23 million for durable medical equipment from 2018 through 2024. But it found that most of that was before January 2020, when changes to the system were implemented.
Oz also announced a new crowdsourcing effort he said would help “crush fraud” by soliciting Americans’ tips and suggestions.
“All of us are smarter than any one of us,” he said.
In a news release accompanying the announcement, CMS said the funding being paused in Minnesota included some $244 million in unsupported or potentially fraudulent Medicaid claims and about $15 million in claims involving “individuals lacking a satisfactory immigration status.”
Immigrants who are not living in the U.S. legally, as well as some lawfully present immigrants, are not allowed to enroll in the Medicaid program that provides nearly-free coverage for health services.
CMS said in the release that if Minnesota fails to satisfy its requirements, it may defer up to $1 billion in federal funds to the state over the next year. CMS spokesperson Catherine Howden said the agency’s review of potential fraud cases would include sampling claims to see if they comply with federal requirements, and potentially requesting more information about specific claims.
Akeiisa Coleman, the senior program officer for Medicaid at the Commonwealth Fund, said CMS was taking a “highly unusual step” in deferring funding. She said if the state doesn’t have enough funds available, it may have to halt payments to providers, which could affect care.
Democratic-run states face cutoffs
The administration has threatened to cut off funding for various programs for some Democratic-run states over fraud concerns over the last few months.
One judge blocked those actions and required that payments flowing to Minnesota and four other states — California, Colorado, Illinois and New York — for a variety of social service programs. The government had said that there was “reason to believe” that those states were granting benefits to people in the country illegally. It did not initially explain where that information came from, but a government lawyer told the judge it was largely in reaction to news reports about possible fraud.
Another judge said she would not let it cut off funding for administrative costs for 22 states that have refused to hand over information about applicants and recipients of food aid through the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.
The latest action was prompted in part by a series of fraud cases, including a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future accused of stealing pandemic aid meant for school meals. Prosecutors have put the losses from that case at $300 million.
Since then, Trump has targeted the Somali diaspora in Minnesota with immigration enforcement actions and has made a series of disparaging comments about the community. During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump said “pirates” have “ransacked Minnesota.”
Federal agencies have also been enlisted to assist in targeting fraud in Minnesota.
Last December, the U.S. Treasury Department issued an order requiring money wire services that people use to send money to Somalia to submit additional verification to the Treasury.
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services told Minnesota in January that it intended to freeze parts of payments for some Medicaid programs that were deemed high-risk. The state said that those cuts would add up to more than $2 billion annually if they lasted and made an administrative appeal.
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Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill in Philadelphia, Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis and Fatima Hussein in Washington contributed to this report.
Conservatives’ crusade against reproductive freedom is deathly serious. Two controversies over the past week highlight some of the violence undergirding the MAGA movement’s assault on the idea of people choosing when and whether to bear children.
In Tennessee, two GOP state lawmakers are gauging interest in legislation that would make people eligible for homicide charges — and potentially the death penalty — for receiving or assisting with an abortion.
The bill’s co-sponsor in the state Senate said he doesn’t think the bill currently has the votes but ultimately could. Per the WSMV television station in Nashville:
“We want to be very open and have a conversation, whether it’s controversial or not — let’s hear from all sides to see where we are as Tennessee and where we stand,”[stateSenMark[stateSenMark] Pody said. “Talking to some colleagues, we don’t have the votes to move something like that in the Senate at this moment.”
Pody said he does not consider the bill dead on arrival in the Senate, adding he believes there is a possibility for negotiation and that Republicans in the House and Senate could reach an agreement on language that could pass both chambers.
Most Americans seem to think we shouldn’t kick the tires on state-sponsored executions for abortion recipients. Pody apparently disagrees.
His fellow co-sponsor in the House, state Rep. Jody Barrett, didn’t sound any more sane in his exchanges about the bill with reporter Chris Davis from WTVF, the CBS affiliate in Nashville.
“Murder should be murder, whether it’s a person in being or a person in utero,” Barrett said.
I asked Barrett directly about the criticism that the bill unfairly targets mothers.
“I think that’s a talking point saying that you’re targeting mothers. We’re not targeting mothers. We’re targeting unborn children and trying to protect them and give them the protection under the law for you and me,” Barrett said.
The tacit admission came later:
“A simple examination of the death penalty in Tennessee would show that that’s just not realistic. Now, do I have to admit that the death penalty is a possibility? Sure. But since the death penalty was reinstated in Tennessee in 1977, there’s been less than 200 people sentenced to death, and only 16 have actually been executed — none of them women,” Barrett said.
It’s safe to say the latter remarks are probably not going to be enough to soothe concerns about this morbid proposal — one that mirrors several others across the country in the past year.
In Vermont, a different controversy is unfolding over a right-wing influencer named Hank Poitras, who was elected chairman of a county GOP committee — and who once delivered an extremely graphic diatribe about committing an act of violence on a woman’s womb after she got pregnant.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
The Trump administration is temporarily halting $259 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota, Vice President JD Vance announced Wednesday.
Vance said the payments will be paused “until the state government takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud that’s being perpetrated against the American taxpayer.”
The news of the temporary halting of the massive amount of federal funding — which provides health insurance to low-income people — comes as the state has been a target of the federal government following allegations of fraud perpetrated by child care providers in the state. In December, federal officials froze $185 million in child care funds to Minnesota, and last month, the administration announced it was freezing $10 billion in funding for social services programs in five Democratic-led states, including Minnesota.
The latest news also follows President Donald Trump’s announcement at the State of the Union address Tuesday night that he was tasking the vice president with waging a “war on fraud.”
Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said Wednesday that officials identified “scammers” who he claimed “hijacked … a certain part of the Minnesota Medicaid system.”
Federal prosecutors have confirmedthere was large-scale social services fraud in Minnesota, with dozensof people — many of whom are Somalis — having been convicted of stealing more than $1 billion in public funds intended for food, housing and services for people with disabilities. But the administration did not provide detailed evidence on Wednesday of the alleged large-scale Medicaid fraud in Minnesota that Oz claimed.
“These schemes disproportionately involve immigrant communities,” Oz said. Generally, undocumented people are not able to be enrolled in Medicaid.
Vance mentioned a program that he said claimed to offer after-school services to autistic children but did not actually do so, though he did not offer any identifying information.
Oz added that the top fraudulent biller in the state “submitted 450 days where they claim they were working more than 24 hours a day,” but also did not provide corroborating information.
According to the health policy research organization KFF, Medicaid covers nearly 1.2 millionkids and adults in Minnesota, more than half of whom are nursing home residents. More than three-quarters of Medicaid enrollees in the state are working full time, that data also shows.
Oz said the federal government will only release the funds “after they propose an act on a comprehensive corrective action plan to solve the problem,” adding that Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., has 60 days to do so. He suggested similar announcements to come in other states “soon,” and mentioned Florida, New York and California as potential future targets.
“This is not a problem with the people of Minnesota,” Oz said. “It’s a problem with the leadership of Minnesota and other states who do not take Medicaid preservation seriously.”
Vance added: “The main reason that we’re doing this is that we want to make sure that the people of Minnesota have access to the services that they’re entitled to.”
In a post on X on Wednesday night, Walz said the announcement “has nothing to do with fraud,” and added, “The agents Trump allegedly sent to investigate fraud are shooting protesters and arresting children. His DOJ is gutting the U.S. Attorney’s Office and crippling their ability to prosecute fraud. And every week, Trump pardons another fraudster.”
Minnesota lawmakers and the state’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, have introduced legislation that would add more than a dozen new staffers to the AG office’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and that would strengthen state fraud laws.
In a statement provided to MS NOW, Ellison hinted the state may sue in response.
“Courts have repeatedly found that their pattern of cutting first and asking questions later is illegal, and if the federal government is unlawfully withholding money meant for the 1.2 million low-income Minnesotans on Medicaid, we will see them in court,” he said.
Shireen Gandhi, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Services, which administers Medicaid, said the government’s actions “significantly harm the state’s health care infrastructure and the 1.2 million Minnesotans who depend on Medicaid,” adding that federal officials “chose to ignore more than a year of serious and intensive work to fight fraud in our state.”
Spokespeople for Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
Nour Longi and Emily Hung contributed reporting.
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
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