Tag: ethnic cleansing

Israel will keep control over Gaza indefinitely after its war against Hamas ends, Benjamin Netanyahu has stated, saying his country will take “overall security responsibility” for the territory.

One month after Hamas’s attack killed 1,400 people, the Israeli prime minister also said he would consider hour-long “tactical little pauses” in fighting to allow the entry of aid or the exit of hostages from the Gaza Strip, but again rejected calls for a ceasefire.

Asked who should “govern” Gaza after fighting ends, Netanyahu told ABC News in an interview broadcast on Monday night: “Those who don’t want to continue the way of Hamas.”

He added: “Israel will for an indefinite period … have the overall security responsibility [in Gaza] because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have that security responsibility.”

His comments offered the clearest indication yet that Israel plans to keep a tight grip over the territory that is home to 2.3 million Palestinians.

The United Nations and other world bodies, including the EU, consider Gaza as occupied – despite Israel withdrawing its forces from inside the strip in 2005 – as it has maintained effective control over the small territory by land, sea and air.

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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.

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Update, October 24, 2023

After this article was originally published, the Israeli outlet Calcalist reported on a separate plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza that is being circulated by the Israeli Intelligence Ministry headed by Gila Gamliel. The leaked document was reportedly created for an organization called “The Unit for Settlement – Gaza Strip” and was not meant for the public.

In the plan being proposed by the Intelligence Ministry, Palestinians in Gaza would be displaced from Gaza to the northern Egyptian Sinai peninsula. In the report, the ministry described different options for what comes after an invasion of Gaza and the option deemed as “liable to provide positive and long-lasting strategic results” was the transfer of Gaza residents to Sinai. The move entails three steps: the creation of tent cities southwest of the Gaza Strip; the construction of a humanitarian corridor to “assist the residents”; and finally, the building of cities in northern Sinai. In parallel, a “sterile zone”, several kilometers wide, would be established within Egypt, south of the Israeli border, “so that the evacuated residents would not be able to return”. 

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