The Israeli aim of ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Gaza is well underway. It relies on US finance, compliant allies and rejection of peace plans. Cathy Peters reports.
Israel’s Mossad director, David Barnea, travelled to the US recently to update the White House Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, on the plans to find countries willing to accept millions of Palestinians forcibly displaced from Gaza.
According to Axios, Barnea reported that three countries, Indonesia, Ethiopia and Libya, had ‘expressed openness’ to receive large numbers of Palestinians. However, no public comment has been made by any of these countries regarding this plan. Previously, various countries have been mentioned as potential locations for mass Palestinian relocation.
In January, Trump urged Egypt and Jordan to take up to one and a half million Palestinians to “clean out that whole thing”, however, both countries quickly disavowed him of this idea. On July 20, Western and Israeli media mentioned countries such as Somaliland, Bosnia and Malaysia as possible destinations.
Do as I say, not as I do: BCG consults on ethnic cleansing in Palestine
Boston Consulting Group’s seven-month project ‘Aurora’ constructed a financial model for ‘relocating’ Palestinians out of Gaza. Human Rights Watch summarised this plan, known as “Gideon’s Chariots”, in which large swathes of Gaza will be flattened and millions of Palestinians will be ‘voluntarily relocated’ to third countries. All of this, whether the remaining Israeli hostages are released or not.
IDF Directive
Source: BBC
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz publicly released information on the progress of his directive for the IDF to raze large areas of Gaza in the south around Rafah in preparation for what he has euphemistically called a ‘humanitarian city’ or multiple transit camps where initially hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would be ‘voluntarily’ caged and unable to leave except to a third country.
This development has been widely condemned, including by former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and respected Israeli Jewish journalist Gideon Levy, who both have described these areas as concentration camps.
BBC Verify has exposed the large-scale demolition of thousands of remaining structures and agricultural areas in Gaza, as well as ads seeking demolition and excavation contractors to continue this work in Gaza.
The world is watching
UNRWA and other legitimate aid organisations have thousands of trucks lined up at the Rafah and Karem Shalom borders waiting for proper access to Gaza. Drip feeding starving millions of people and randomly murdering those who walk for hours to queue for hours at the US/Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation death traps is horrific, as are the pictures of emaciated children, which have stirred the consciousness of previously silent world leaders, including Anthony Albanese.
Strong statements of disapproval have appeared with 28 countries, including Australia, signing a joint statement on July 21, condemning
the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians.
But to date, the West and its allies have taken no direct action to stop Israel and are still supplying arms to Israel. This is the crime of complicity.
Despite the largest mobilisation of global citizen opposition in the 21st century, Israel’s genocide, ethnic cleansing and colonisation of all of Palestine continues apace with the overt support of the US, UK and others, including Australia and key Arab states. Recognition of Palestine as a state is not going to stop Israel. Direct action is now required.
But the world is not acting
The harsh realisation we must reckon with is that the sustained efforts of every protestor and every individual for the past 21 months have not forced governments to act to stop Israel. The realisation now that nothing has been done and that nothing was ever going to be done to stop Israel reminds us that mass protest and dissent have not shifted
the moral depravity of leaders protecting their economic and political interests in shielding Israel.
It seems that there are no crimes that Israel can commit that will trigger action to stop this rogue state. Mass murder, mass starvation, dispossession and land theft continue unabated. Expulsions of UN aid organisations (UNRWA) so the population can be starved under the pretext of US supported aid, and the expulsion of the UN’s head of OCHA, for daring to call this aid, ‘weaponised hunger’ and “a death sentence for people just trying to survive” show that Israel is now so empowered that it knows its attempted annihilation and mass expulsion of a people will not be stopped.
All that is needed to encourage third states to take hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians is cash. And Trump is looking like he will make that available as the indicted war criminal Netanyahu again visited the US earlier this month, dining with him, with a senior Israeli official reporting that “Trump has shown interest in continuing to push for the ‘relocation’ of Palestinians from Gaza.” However, there has not yet been any official statement from the White House on this plan.
What peace plan?
What no one is mentioning is the $62b Egyptian plan to rebuild Gaza without relocating Palestinians that was endorsed by the Arab League back in March and also by France, Germany, Italy and the UK. This plan, which proposed a humanitarian solution to rebuilding Gaza, has had hardly any coverage for the last two months because Israel and Trump promptly rejected it.
It remains to be seen if Egypt and the Arab states will bend to the full ethnic cleansing of Gaza and to Trump’s obscene vision for a Gaza ‘riviera’. Just last week, the Israeli Knesset building hosted a meeting of the Lobby for the Renewal of Jewish Settlement in the Gaza Strip, as shared on Facebook by the Israeli dissident former IDF group, Breaking the Silence. Far right Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, spoke at this event, saying,
“We have strong support from President Trump to turn Gaza into a prosperous region, a coastal city with settlement and employment… There is really an opportunity to think big.. I am completely optimistic. To conquer Gaza and settle it as an integral part of the State of Israel and the Land of Israel.”
Meanwhile, the situation for Palestinians in Gaza is critical (as it has been for 21 months). The sadistic torture of starvation is Israel’s preferred method of killing at present, although almost a thousand civilians have been shot dead in the last few weeks as they tried to access food.
Negotiations between Israel and Hamas have broken down for the mooted 60-day ceasefire through mediators in Qatar still appear to be in place, but this possibility doesn’t engender much hope even if implemented. Reports from early July indicate that the ‘humanitarian transit city’ would be constructed in southern Gaza during this ceasefire. So the ‘ceasefire’ would give Israel space to bring in more contractors to build the concentration camps. Hundreds of thousands of starving Palestinians face being locked up (but presumably not bombed or starved to death) until they are shipped out to a life as a refugee in a random country, never to return to their lands.
The 2025 Nakba is well underway. It’s been planned for a long time.
March on Canberra by Gaza protestors amid rising concern for government’s Israel support
Cathy Peters is a former ABC RN producer/executive producer and Greens councillor on the former Marrickville Council. She also worked for a state Greens MP and is a long-time advocate for Palestinian rights. In 2014, she co-founded PSNA / BDS Australia. She has Jewish heritage, has travelled and volunteered in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.