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09-02-2025
JERUSALEM: Israel’s defence minister has told its military to prepare a plan to “allow any resident of Gaza who wishes to leave to do so”, in line with President Donald Trump’s proposal for the US to take over the territory and resettle its 2.1 million Palestinians elsewhere.
Israel Katz said Gazans should have “freedom of movement and migration” and countries critical of Israel’s war with Hamas were “obligated” to take them in. Israel controls the movement of people into and out of Gaza.
Trump meanwhile said Gaza would be “turned over” to the US by Israel “at the conclusion of fighting” but the Palestinian presidency reiterated its rejection of the plan, which it has said would violate international law, and insisted that “Palestine… is not for sale”.
The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.
More than 47,550 people have been killed and 111,600 injured in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Most of Gaza’s population has also been displaced multiple times and almost 70% of its buildings are estimated to be destroyed or damaged.
Healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.
The Israeli defence minister wrote on X on Thursday that he welcomed the US president’s “bold initiative”, saying it could “support long-term reconstruction efforts in a demilitarized, threat-free Gaza after Hamas”.
Katz announced that he had instructed the Israeli military to “prepare a plan that will allow any resident of Gaza who wishes to leave to do so, to any country willing to receive them”.
“The plan will include exit options via land crossings, as well as special arrangements for departure by sea and air,” he said.
“Countries such as Spain, Ireland, Norway, and others, which have falsely accused Israel over its actions in Gaza, are legally obligated to allow Gazans to enter their territory. Their hypocrisy will be exposed if they refuse.”
He alleged that Hamas was preventing people leaving Gaza and said that they should have “the right to freedom of movement and migration”.
Hamas official Basem Naim accused Katz of trying to cover up for “a state that has failed to achieve any of its objectives in the war on Gaza” and said Palestinians would refuse to leave.
Meanwhile, the spokesman for the Palestinian presidency asserted that “Palestine, with its land, history and holy sites, is not for sale”.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh also said the Palestinians would “will not give up an inch of their land”, whether in Gaza or the occupied West Bank.
“The Palestinian people and their leadership will not allow the repetition of the catastrophes of 1948 and 1967, and will thwart any plan aimed at liquidating their just cause through investment projects whose place is neither in Palestine nor on its land.”
The 1948 “Nakba”, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, saw hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flee or driven from their homes before and during the war that followed the creation of the State of Israel.
Many of those refugees ended up in Gaza, where they and their descendants make up three quarters of the population. Another 900,000 registered refugees live in the West Bank, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war along with Gaza, while 3.4 million others live in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. (Int’l News Desk)
