Minister: Israel ready to forcibly relocate Gaza residents
Israel continues to have far-reaching plans to forcibly relocate Gaza's population, says Defense Minister Israel Katz, without specifying where the Palestinians would be taken.
- There is no real solution for Gaza without that migration, he claims, and says that the Israeli government is prepared to "get them out by sea, by air, by all possible routes".
US President Donald Trump claimed last year that the US would "take over" war-torn Gaza and relocate all of the approximately two million Gazans to Jordan or Egypt - a proposal he later withdrew after massive international criticism. But Katz claims that the proposal is not being dropped, but merely paused.
- It is being discussed all the time, he says at a political conference in Israel
- But for them to happen, we must have the US with us. When will we get their approval? When it is clear that Hamas is not fulfilling its commitments.
Katz claims without evidence that the plan would be “good for everyone” and that 80 percent of Gaza’s residents want to leave the bombed strip of land but that the Islamist Hamas is preventing them.
In July, Trump’s so-called peace council was reported to be preparing the construction of a “humanitarian zone” in the southern Gaza Strip. There, tens of thousands of “vetted” unarmed Palestinians would be guarded by international soldiers from a newly established so-called stabilization force, ISF, who would act on behalf of the council.
The forced transfer or deportation of civilians is prohibited under the Geneva Convention and may constitute a war crime.
According to authorities in the Gaza Strip, a total of over 73,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Hamas’s terrorist attack on October 7, 2023, when over 1,200 people were killed. Since the ceasefire came into effect in October last year, over 1,300 Palestinians have been killed.
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