Israeli officials are in secret talks with several African countries to welcome Palestinians from Gaza, Israeli newspaper Zman Yisrael mentionted on Wednesday.
The policy of wholesale cleansing of Gaza by Palestinians is “slowly becoming the leading and official policy of the government and the coalition,” the report said.
Speaking to Zman Yisrael on Tuesday, Israel’s Information Minister Gila Gamaliel said that “voluntarily [emigration] it is the best and most realistic plan for the next day of fighting.”
According to Zman Yisrael’s report, “Congo” appears willing to accept thousands of Palestinian refugees, although it did not say whether it was referring to the Democratic Republic of Congo or the Republic of Congo.
The Israeli government likes to say that Palestinians are not being ethnically cleansed from Gaza, but rather that the move would be a “voluntary migration policy”.
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The distinction has been scrutinized because Israeli politicians have recorded explicit plans to make Gaza unlivable for its residents and replace the population with Israeli settlers.
Another option put forward by the Israeli cabinet on Tuesday is to negotiate with Saudi Arabia to potentially arrest thousands of Palestinians, the report added.
It is unlikely that Saudi Arabia wants to be seen publicly helping Israel to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip.
Historical echoes
The latest Israeli plan also echoes an earlier British plan called the “Uganda Plan,” which sought in 1903 to offer the Jews of Europe a state of their own in a part of present-day Kenya.
The offer, which was ultimately rejected, was a response to the pogroms in the Russian Empire and it was hoped that the area could provide a refuge from persecution for the Jewish people.
Voices in Israel are increasingly open to plans to remove Palestinians from Gaza after nearly three months of shelling of the besieged Palestinian territory.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich backed a plan for the “voluntary immigration” of Palestinians in November.
In addition to Smotrich, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said on Monday that there should be “emigration of Gazans” outside the besieged enclave.
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On Tuesday, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller took the unusual step of calling the two ministers directly.
“The United States rejects recent statements by Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir supporting the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza. This rhetoric is inflammatory and irresponsible,” he said in a statement.
In October an Israeli Intelligence Ministry document was leaked to the Israeli news website Calcalist that described alleged plans to forcibly transfer Palestinians to Gaza in the Sinai Peninsula.
According to the leaked draft policy, after their expulsion, Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians would initially be housed in tent cities, before permanent communities are established in the northern part of the peninsula.
Cairo has repeatedly rejected the idea that Palestinians could be temporarily displaced to Egypt as Israel conducts its military operation against Hamas in Gaza.
Israel has even reportedly offered to write off a significant portion of Egypt’s international debts through the World Bank to entice the country’s leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to open his doors to displaced Palestinians.
War broke out between Israel and Gaza on October 7 when Hamas and armed Palestinian groups launched an attack on Israel that killed 1,140 Israelis and other civilians, according to the government’s death toll.
Meanwhile, Israel has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians in its campaign of airstrikes and ground attacks, the majority of them women and children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
In late December, South Africa filed a case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians.