How can it be ethnic cleansing when the Palestinian population is steadily growing?

Ethnic cleansing is defined by the forced removal of a civilian population from a territory, not by wiping out an entire ethnic group. Indeed, Zionism ethnically cleansed three-quarters of Palestinians in Palestine during the Nakba of 1948, more than a third of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza during the Naksa of 1967, and 90% of Gaza's population during the ongoing genocide.

Ethnic cleansing has also been defined as "rendering an area ethnically homogenous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area." For eight decades, Israel has openly pursued demographic engineering policies to maximize Jewish control over the land while minimizing Palestinian presence. From denying millions of refugees the right to return, to official policies aimed at maintaining a 70% Jewish majority in Jerusalem, settlement expansion, land confiscation, home demolitions, forced evictions, and now the genocide of Gaza, Israel has repeatedly created new waves of refugees and internally displaced Palestinians.

This claim suggests that as long as Palestinians continue to have children, Israel cannot have committed ethnic cleansing. This is a classic colonial deflection. Palestinians can have one of the world's fastest-growing populations while simultaneously being ethnically cleansed. Rather than examining decades of forced displacement, demographic engineering, and the denial of the right of return for millions of refugees, the myth shifts attention away from the perpetrator and places the burden on the victims to "prove" the crime through their own disappearance, delaying justice and accountability.

Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth precisely because of ethnic cleansing. Around 70% of its population are refugees expelled from elsewhere in Palestine during the Nakba of 1948 and subsequent waves of displacement. Denied the right to return, they have been confined for decades to a tiny strip of land under land, air, and sea blockade. Confining a displaced population in ghetto areas is in fact one of the coercive practices to ethnically cleanse a people.

The real question is not whether the Palestinian population has grown, but under what conditions Palestinians are forced to live. Today, around 15 million Palestinians remain fragmented by Israel's settler-colonial regime: millions are refugees and exiles denied the right to return, while Palestinians across colonized Palestine endure military occupation, blockade, repeated forced displacement, settlement expansion, land confiscation, and now genocide. Palestinian population growth is irrelevant to settler-colonial atrocities, including ethnic cleansing.