One of the more revolutionary aspects of President Trump’s proposal for the rebuilding of Gaza is that, unlike proposals from Arab states or Europe or the “pro-Palestinian” activist ecosystem, it suggests that Palestinians deserve a better life than the one they have.

The good news is that if the president wants to follow this path, there are other, less controversial policies that would have the effect of improving the lives of Palestinians, increasing Israel’s security, and obligating Arab states to actually play a role in resolving this conflict.

Trump should start by insisting the few remaining Palestinian refugees from 1948 and their many descendants be granted citizenship, or at least permanent residence with a path to naturalization, in their host countries.

Most of these people aren’t refugees. In Egypt, they aren’t even serviced by UN refugee organizations, because Egypt doesn’t permit it. There are fewer Palestinians in Egypt than in other neighboring Arab countries, but that hasn’t convinced Cairo to allow for their naturalization. This is by design: As Oreb el-Abed has written, a 1952 resolution from the Arab League “advised Arab governments to postpone efforts to settle Palestinian refugees and called on the United Nations to implement resolutions concerning the return of Palestinian refugees to Palestine and to compensate them for damage and property losses. In Article 2, it recommended that Arab countries hosting refugees create projects employing Palestinians and help them better their living conditions. While requesting Arab countries to coordinate with UNRWA in employment projects for Palestinians, the political committee confirmed that these projects would not permanently settle Palestinians and would preserve their right of return and right to compensation.”

That is, the Arab states made a conscious, concerted decision to make Palestinians a permanent underclass so they could be used as a cudgel against Israel. Palestinians’ statelessness is the official policy of the Arab states, with the exception of Jordan, which granted Palestinian refugees citizenship while simultaneously insisting they keep their “refugee” status as far as the UN is concerned, thus obligating UN agencies to subsidize their absorption while artificially inflating the number of claimed Palestinian “refugees” in the region. (In the real world, you can be a refugee or you can be a resettled citizen.)

Lebanon has always made its position clear. In 2006, President Emile Lahoud explained: “We have today around half a million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, their birth rate is three times higher than the Lebanese. That is a time bomb. It is the basic problem of our country, it led to the outbreak of civil war in 1975 and still remains unsolved today. Everybody today is talking about UN resolution 1559, but nobody mentions resolution 194, which recognizes the Palestinians’ right of return (to Israel). Lebanon is small and can’t integrate the Palestinians.”

That is, the Lebanese position has always been that Palestinians are a demographic threat and keep their host country constantly on the verge of civil war, so they should go to Israel.

In Lebanon, Palestinians still mostly live in camps. In addition, “Laws, decrees, and regulations of professional associations specify that members must hold Lebanese nationality for at least ten years or that there must be reciprocity of treatment for Lebanese professionals in the country of citizenship of the foreign professional applying to practice in Lebanon,” which means Palestinians cannot legally work in major industries.

In Syria, Palestinians are lucky if their camps even still stand. “The Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus was considered the capital of the Palestinian diaspora before the war in Syria reduced it to row after row of blasted out buildings,” reported the Associated Press in December. Bashar al-Assad’s forces flattened Yarmouk and left it abandoned, then made it nearly impossible to legally rebuild.

What’s the purpose of all this? Very simply, the point is to prevent full acceptance of Israel’s existence and prepare the ground for a perpetual cycle of wars of annihilation against the Jewish state. The Palestinians suffer most from the Arab world’s policy, not because they are the target but because they are the weapon.

Egypt receives over a billion dollars a year in U.S. aid. In Syria, Assad has fallen, potentially opening up an opportunity to renegotiate its official policy of using Palestinians as cannon fodder against Israel. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has been greatly weakened and the U.S. is currently overseeing a ceasefire agreement there.

If Trump wants to save Israeli and Palestinian lives and keep the peace in the Middle East, he should use U.S. leverage to end the permanent refugee status of Palestinians.