Israeli defense minister Israel Katz has claimed that plans to facilitate the mass removal of Palestinians from Gaza remain under discussion and some 80 per cent of the residents want to leave the war-torn enclave.
“There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration,” he insisted. “Hamas isn’t allowing them [to leave] and there are no countries in the world taking them in. President Trump put the issue on the agenda. Now every country needs to take people in,’’ he said.
His comments coincided with a visit by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to Israel Defence Forces (IDF) units in the Gaza Strip, where he vowed that a military redeployment was not on the agenda.
“We control the territory here,” he said at an IDF position on the temporary demarcation line, dubbed the yellow line, that separates IDF troops from the Palestinian-controlled areas.
“We are not withdrawing. We are staying on this line. We control 60 per cent of the strip. And there is still more to come, because we are eliminating the terrorists who threaten us – we do this day in and day out.”
Maintaining an IDF presence in Gaza and calls for the expulsion of Palestinian residents is in direct contradiction to the 15-point Gaza peace plan presented by Donald Trump in July, which calls for a phased withdrawal of Israeli troops and Hamas disarmament.
Last year Israel set up a special bureau to facilitate Palestinian emigration but found no country willing to absorb Gaza residents.
Human rights organisations in Israel and abroad have warned that the forced expulsion of residents would constitute a war crime, arguing that the conditions Israel has imposed on Gaza mean no departure could be considered voluntary and the policy would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
The bellicose comments by Israeli leaders on Gaza are matched by similar hardline positions on Iran, the West Bank and Lebanon.
The Israeli elections are less than two months away and it appears that all the parties on the right are competing over who can make the most extreme comments in the belief that any suggestion of compromise, and certainly territorial concessions, will be perceived as weakness.
A Channel 13 TV poll on Wednesday night showed for the first time the pro-Netanyahu bloc of right-wing and religious parties pulling even with the anti-Netanyahu bloc, comprised of parties from across the political spectrum.
According to the results of the poll, the opposing blocs would each win 53 seats if the October 27th elections were held today, eight short of a 61-seat majority in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
Two Arab parties held the balance of 14 seats. The two Arab parties are also opposed to Netanyahu but some parties in the anti-Netanyahu bloc insist they will not sit in a coalition with an Arab party, particularly after the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7th, 2023.
That result marked a significant change from Channel 13’s poll of a week ago, which showed the opposition leading the pro-Netanyahu parties 57 to 48, with 15 for the Arab parties.
The change appears to be due to two new right-wing pro-Netanyahu parties making it into the Knesset – the People of Israel party, led by far-right ex-general Ofer Winter, with four seats, and a new party formed by the merger of the far-right Religious Zionist party with a smaller right-wing party, with the new list projected to win six seats.
However, analysts warn that everything is still up for grabs and the smaller right-wing parties could still fall below the minimum 3.25 per cent threshold required to enter the Knesset.