Israel has planned to depopulate Gaza for decades.
During the Nakba – the mass expulsions leading to and following Israel’s establishment in 1948 – about 200,000 Palestinians from the surrounding district became refugees in Gaza.
About 70 percent of Gaza’s population are refugees as a result of the Nakba. They have firmly rejected subsequent efforts to uproot them.
The efforts have come both from Israel and from international bodies.
In the 1950s, the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) proposed a plan to Gamal Abdel Nasser, then Egypt’s president. Under it, 250,000 acres would be allocated to Palestinian refugees, who would be resettled in the northern Sinai.
The plan was called off following protests. Among those who played a prominent role in the protests were Ahmad al-Haj.
Al-Haj still lives in Gaza City’s Beach refugee camp. He lives in a rented home as he thinks that buying a house of his own in Gaza would mean accepting his refugee status as permanent.
Before the Nakba, Al-Haj lived in the village of al-Swafer al-Sharqia. As he was uprooted from his original home, he still regards his refugee status in Gaza as temporary.
Israel’s military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank began in June 1967. Soon after the occupation started, Yigal Allon, then Israel’s labor minister, recommended “transferring” – a euphemism for expulsion – the people of Gaza to the Sinai en masse.
At the time the population of Gaza was approximately 400,000. Israel saw this population as a threat, whereas its “transfer” would ensure that no Palestinian state would be established based on boundary lines preceding the 1967 occupation.
In 1969, the Israeli government a secret plan from the spy agency Mossad to send large numbers of people living in Gaza (especially young men) on a one-way trip destined for Latin America.
The scholar Hadeel Assali had a relative who was tricked into emigrating through this plan. Assali has documented how the people in question were promised jobs that would pay substantial salaries.
Paraguay’s government was complicit. It received a $350,000 payment from Israel as part of the plan.
The existence of the plan was exposed in 1970 when two of these refugees opened fire at the Israeli embassy in Paraguay.
In 1971, Ariel Sharon, an Israeli general who later became prime minister, forced 12,000 Palestinians out of Gaza, sending them to the Sinai.
Hellbound and Down 