Global Research

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Deporting all Gazans is the joint plan of the US and Israel. According to the plan, the Palestinians will be ‘relocated’ to Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, and Yemen. This large-scale ethnic cleansing is cynically presented as a “moral and humanitarian” aid plan. 

*

Murderous

In recent war history, there has rarely been such an intensive and massive slaughter of civilians and children as in Gaza, one of the most densely populated places in the world. The destruction of northern Gaza in less than seven weeks approaches the devastation caused by the years of carpet bombing of German cities during World War II.

According to the World Health Organization, a child is killed every ten minutes.

More than half of Gaza City has now been destroyed, including schools and mosques. Hospitals can no longer function. Bakeries are closed and there is almost no drinking water left. Destruction and slaughter are happening on an industrial scale, with the help of Artificial Intelligence.

People were first driven out of the north, but now the south is attacked with heavy bombing and a ground offensive against the town of Khan Younis. According to a top official of the UN humanitarian aid agency, conditions there are now apocalyptic. 

No child still has unlimited access to care, food or water. Famine is looming. And because sewers no longer work, there will be mass outbreaks of disease.

Gazans are now being urged to leave for Rafah, the southernmost point of Gaza, where the border post with Egypt is also located.

Officially, Israel’s goal is to eliminate Hamas. But the intensity and ruthlessness with which the Israeli army is acting reveals that this is an excuse for another goal: the complete expulsion of the population from Palestine, starting with Gaza.

According to the Jewish philosopher Moshé Machover, this plan has been in existence for a long time: “We are actually waiting for a time when they can be permanently expelled to neighbouring countries. That will only be possible during a full-scale war and I fear that Israel is prepared to provoke it.” He said this in 2017.

New Deportation Plan

Israel wants to increase the level of inhumanity to such an extent that the residents of Gaza will ultimately have no choice but to leave. That seems to be the hidden plan, although that plan is getting clearer by the day.

A plan, from the Israeli Intelligence Ministry was already leaked in late October. That plan envisaged a final deportation of Gaza’s population to Egypt’s Sinai desert. That was met with a resounding refusal from Cairo.

But Israel is determined to continue this large-scale ethnic cleansing. In a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, two Israeli members of the Knesset called on Western countries to accept Palestinian refugees. Gila Gamliel, intelligence minister wrote a similar op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, proposing the “voluntary resettlement” of Palestinians in Gaza to other countries around the world.

Minister of Agriculture Avi Dichter does not hesitate to call the current war a ‘Nakba 2023’, referring to the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine  at the founding of the Jewish state in 1948. 

“We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war – as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza – with masses between the tanks and the soldiers. (…) Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”

And it is not just words. A new joint US-Israeli plan has now surfaced in which they want to deport the population of Gaza to four countries: Turkey, Egypt, Iraq and Yemen. In this new plan, Egypt should no longer bear the burden alone.

The numbers per country are already known too: a million Palestinians would go to Egypt, half a million to Turkey, 250,000 to Iraq and another 250,000 to Yemen.

The four countries referred to are receiving generous aid from Washington. The plan states that this support will be linked to a willingness to receive Gazans. In other words, the four countries will be put under serious financial and perhaps diplomatic pressure to ‘harbour’ the Gazans.

The key country is Egypt, which must open its border. Joe Wilson, former Republican MP and one of the initiators of this plan, is very clear about this. According to him, “the only moral way [to solve the Gaza problem] is to ensure that Egypt opens its borders”.

“Israel is trying to keep civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip as low as possible, but Hamas is not allowing the refugees to leave and Egypt is unwilling to open its borders,” the authors of the plan write in the opening paragraph. Meanwhile, six children are being slaughtered every hour…

For its planned population move, the plan refers to other recent conflict hotspots. “It would not be the first time other countries have accepted refugees,” the plan says. Here, the authors refer to the six million Ukrainians who fled the country to Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic, among others. Nearly five million Syrians have also “moved” to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, while other Middle Eastern and European countries have taken in hundreds of thousands of Syrians.

The plan has been submitted to key figures in the US House of Representatives and Congress and has the support of both Democrats and Republicans. The planned large-scale ethnic cleansing is cynically presented as a “moral and humanitarian” aid plan:

“The neighbouring borders have been closed for too long, but it is now clear that in order to free the Gazan population from the tyrannical oppression of Hamas and to allow them to live free of war and bloodshed, Israel must encourage the international community to find the correct, moral and humane avenues for the relocation of the Gazan population.” 

Truly a fine piece of newspeak.

The plan also firmly lashes out at UNRWA, the UN refugee agency dedicated to aid and development for Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. US lawmakers blame the agency of “propagating the refugee narrative” and “inhibiting the rehabilitation of Palestinian refugees for over seventy years and has in fact deepened the refugee crisis”. That’s why they want the agency to be closed down.

*

We may be on the eve of a mass deportation of Palestinians, a second Nakba. If Western countries want to retain any shred of credibility, they must take action immediately.

They must immediately impose economic and diplomatic sanctions against Israel and also convene the Security Council to condemn and thwart the sinister plan of the US and Israel. If not, they are complicit in this declared humanitarian disaster.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Marc Vandepitte is a Belgian economist and philosopher. He writes on North-South relations, Latin America, Cuba, and China. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Sources

Senior US lawmakers review plan linking Gaza refugee resettlement to US aid to Arab countries

US lawmakers review plan linking Gaza refugee resettlement to American aid to Arab countries

US Congress is reviewing a plan to facilitate an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza

Israel and America’s plan to move the people of Gaza to Iraq, Egypt, Turkey and Yemen

‘We’re Rolling Out Nakba 2023,’ Israeli Minister Says on Northern Gaza Strip Evacuation

Featured image: Girl holds improvised white flag, to tell Israel to respect Geneva Conventions and spare her fleeing family. Photo credit: Yasser Qudih