Not Just in Gaza: Where Else Have Population Transfers Occurred in the World?

Trump's revolutionary proposal to transfer the Gaza population to other countries is making waves worldwide and drawing reactions from all corners of the globe. However, if the plan does materialize, it wouldn't be the first time that mass migration became the ultimate solution in long-term conflicts.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is perceived globally as an insurmountable obstacle, a "unique" conflict on the world map in its persistence and long-running, bloody nature. But there have been many similar ethnic conflicts in the world that ended after decades or hundreds of years of bloodshed in exactly the same way.

Throughout the last century, there are many examples of various conflicts whose end, or at least their bringing to a new point of balance, was achieved through massive population migration.

In the early twentieth century, after a long ethnic civil conflict that led to sectarian violence, discrimination, and oppression of minority populations, Turkey and Greece reached an agreement in 1923 that transformed a passionate and bloody conflict into a cold hostility that hasn't manifested for almost a hundred years.

Turkey and Greece signed the Treaty of Lausanne that year, in which both countries agreed to the forced transfer of 1.6 million people - 1.2 million Greeks were expelled from Turkey and 400,000 Turks were expelled from Greece. The two populations that frequently clashed in devastating events became functioning neighbors, even if not great friends.

A later case, on a much larger scale, occurred after World War II. Between 1945-1950, over 12 million ethnic Germans were expelled from Eastern European countries. According to estimates, Poland and Czechoslovakia expelled about ten million Germans from their territory as part of post-war agreements.

In 1962, when Algeria, which had been under French rule, declared independence, about a million people - ethnic French and local Algerians who supported French rule - fled back to France, despite most of them being born in Algeria.

The most similar modern case to the Israeli situation occurred about two years ago, another bloody conflict that lasted decades and caused thousands of casualties ended in a flash. After repeated battles between Azerbaijan and Armenia over control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Armenia launched a special operation in September 2023 in which it took control of the disputed region.

According to estimates, within a few days, about 200,000 ethnic Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh left the region. The operation and subsequent migration effectively ended the 30-year conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

There are additional cases worth mentioning, such as the mass migration from Syria to European countries or the "boat people" from Vietnam, some of whom even reached Israel. However, the American proposal on the table is not to turn Palestinians into refugees but to settle them in host countries.

Ultimately, many conflicts around the world and throughout history that seemed unsolvable were eventually resolved, exactly as President Trump suggests.