Back to Gaza
How Israel’s ‘plan’ for Gaza could turbocharge ethnic cleansing
Israel has launched a new plan for Gaza which could induce ethnic cleansing and advance a genocide, say experts.
Israel’s far-right government has approved a “plan” to carve up and ethnically cleanse Gaza, analysts told Al Jazeera.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the plan, couching it in claims that its goal is to dismantle Hamas and retrieve the 24 or so living captives taken from Israel on October 7, 2023.
Asserting that the “powerful operation in Gaza” was necessary, he went on to emphasise that “there will be a movement of the population to protect it.”
What is this ‘plan’?
Israel will expel hundreds of thousands of hungry Palestinians from the north of Gaza and confine them in six encampments.
It says food will be provided to the Palestinians in these encampments, and that it will allow aid groups and private security contractors to distribute it. Palestinians will be forced to move – or starve.
Some 5,000 to 6,000 families will be pushed into each camp, according to The Washington Post. Each household will send someone to trek miles to pick up a weekly food parcel from what the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Jan Egeland called “concentration hubs”.
It is unclear how the rest of the population – possibly some 1.5 million people – will eat.
Israel says it will use facial recognition to identify people picking up food parcels, to deny aid to “Hamas” – yet Israel treats every fighting-age male as a Hamas operative.
The private security companies from the United States would also guard within the designated areas.
Experts and UN agencies are decrying the plan as impractical and inhumane.
What does this mean for the people of Gaza?
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza continues, and Palestinians will continue to suffer.
Since Israel began its war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, it has cloaked its mass expulsions in what it claims are humane “advance warnings” in which families have mere hours to pack their belongings and flee to a zone Israel determines. Israel often bombs those safe zones anyway.
“If you are viewing this plan through aid distribution, it makes no sense,” Diana Buttu, legal scholar and former adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, told Al Jazeera.
“If you view it through a political project, which is ethnic cleansing and cantonisation by using food as a weapon of war, then this plan does make sense,” she said, adding that the “plan” is consistent with Israel’s aim of carrying out a genocide in Gaza.
What does Israel want?
They want to finish their genocide under the guise of facilitating food aid and rescuing Israeli captives, Omar Rahman, an expert on Israel-Palestine for the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, said.
“Israel has been telegraphing its real intentions from the start of this campaign: Destroy Gaza and eliminate its population both by starvation and mass killing,” he said.
Israel’s “plan” signals its intent to starve Palestinians who resist being expelled from north Gaza, said Heidi Matthews, a legal scholar at York University, Canada.
“It is inconceivable that the population can be adequately provided for … whilst being crowded into southern Gaza,” she said.
This indicates the genocidal intent to inflict on the Palestinian population of Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
Can Israel even manage this?
Israel plans to hire two US private security firms, Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions, to provide security and possibly help with food distribution. The first is headed by Phil Riley, a former CIA intelligence officer. The second is run by Jameson Govoni, a former member of the US Army Special Forces.
These companies could give Israel plausible deniability if abuses or atrocities occur, said Mairav Zonszein, an expert on Israel-Palestine for the International Crisis Group. [Remember Blackwater, Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad?]
She added that Israel will also call up thousands of reservists to maintain a physical occupation over northern Gaza, despite many soldiers being fatigued by war and financial troubles. “There is definitely a lower … turnout among reservists than at the start of the war. But that doesn’t mean there is actually a manpower shortage,” Zonszein told Al Jazeera.
In addition, she noted, despite Israeli society opposing expanding the war on Gaza without first retrieving the captives, Netanyahu is more concerned with appeasing far-right ministers in his coalition by fighting on. Netanyahu risks losing power and standing trial for corruption charges if the coalition collapses.
