Summary Itamar Ben-Gvir said the plan aimed to remove 250,000 Palestinians from Gaza in the first year, followed by the rest of its population of roughly 2 million over the next six years.
JERUSALEM (Web Desk) - Israel’s far-right national security minister has set out a plan for the illegal forced expulsion of all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, with the intention of sending them abroad.
Speaking in the run-up to close-fought Israeli elections, Itamar Ben-Gvir said the plan aimed to remove 250,000 Palestinians from Gaza in the first year, followed by the rest of its population of roughly 2 million over the next six years.
“It’s realistic,” Ben-Gvir said, claiming there were countries that were “ready” to take in Palestinians from Gaza, without naming which ones.
While the forced displacement of civilians in occupied territory is considered a war crime under the Geneva conventions, Israeli political figures have competed over the harshness of their visions for Gaza, rebuffing efforts by the US president, Donald Trump, to advance a half-baked and largely moribund ceasefire deal that has been marked by continuing Israeli attacks.
Ben-Gvir said the far-right Jewish Power party would demand “a ministry in charge of emigration” during the formation of the next government, adding that his plan was “the result of a year and a half of work and … is concrete”.
The proposal is contained in a 20-page document with the euphemistic title of “National Work Plan for Voluntary Emigration from the Gaza Strip”.
Despite the use of the word “voluntary”, the plan will be seen as coercive by the international community because of the dire conditions imposed on Gaza’s population by Israel and because of Ben-Gvir’s explicit intention: to remove Gaza’s Palestinian population.
Earlier this year, an independent UN inquiry found that Israel continued to commit genocide by deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza.
Ben-Gvir’s comments follow hard on the heels of comments by Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, who said Israel was seeking the approval of the Trump administration to displace Palestinians from Gaza, which he claimed was still under discussion after being “frozen” by Trump.
