{"id":279304,"date":"2024-01-02T10:17:40","date_gmt":"2024-01-02T10:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=279304"},"modified":"2024-01-03T09:13:39","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T09:13:39","slug":"israeli-minister-repeats-call-for-palestinians-to-leave-gaza-making-way-for-settlers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=279304","title":{"rendered":"Israeli minister repeats call for Palestinians to leave Gaza, making way for settlers"},"content":{"rendered":"

South China Morning Post \u2013 Dec 31, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

One of the senior figures in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s right-wing coalition called for Palestinian residents of Gaza to leave the besieged enclave, making way for Israelis who could \u201cmake the desert bloom\u201d.<\/p>\n

The comments by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has been excluded from the war cabinet and discussions of day-after arrangements in Gaza, appear to underscore fears in much of the Arab world that Israel wants to drive Palestinians out of land where they want to build a future state, repeating the mass dispossession of Palestinians when Israel was created in 1948.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,\u201d Smotrich told Army Radio on Sunday. \u201cIf there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after will be totally different.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said if the 2.3 million population were no longer there \u201cgrowing up on the aspiration to destroy the state of Israel\u201d, Gaza would be seen differently in Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of Israeli society will say \u2018why not, it\u2019s a nice place, let\u2019s make the desert bloom, it doesn\u2019t come at anyone\u2019s expense\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smotrich, whose hard-right Religious Zionism party draws support from Israel\u2019s settler community, has made similar comments in the past, setting himself at odds with Israel\u2019s most important ally, the United States.<\/p>\n

But his views do not reflect the official government position that Gazans will be able to return to their homes after the war against the Islamist movement Hamas which controls Gaza, now nearing the start of its fourth month.<\/p>\n

\u201cContrary to false allegations, Israel does not seek to displace the population in Gaza,\u201d an official in the prime minister\u2019s office said in a statement to Associated Press later on Sunday. \u201cSubject to security checks, Israel\u2019s policy is to enable those individuals who wish to leave to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smotrich\u2019s party, which helped Netanyahu secure the majority he needed to become prime minister for the sixth time almost exactly a year ago, has seen its approval ratings slump since the start of the conflict.<\/p>\n

Opinion polls also indicate that most Israelis do not support the return of Israeli settlements to Gaza, after they were moved out in 2005 when the army withdrew, ending a 38-year occupation.<\/p>\n

The United Nations still sees the Gaza Strip as territory occupied by Israel as it controls all but one border crossing.<\/p>\n

Palestinians and leaders of Arab countries have accused Israel of seeking a new \u201cNakba\u201d (catastrophe), the name given to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes in the wake of the 1948 war that accompanied the founding of the state of Israel.<\/p>\n

Most ended up in neighbouring Arab states, and Arab leaders have said any latter-day move to displace Palestinians would be unacceptable.<\/p>\n

In a speech on Sunday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rejected any move to force Palestinians to leave their homes. \u201cWe will not allow displacement, whether from the Gaza Strip or the West Bank,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hamas condemned Smotrich\u2019s comments as a \u201cvile mockery and a war crime\u201d.<\/p>\n

Gazans \u201cwill stand firm and steadfast in the face of all attempts to displace them from their land and homes\u201d, the group said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The stated goal of Israel\u2019s military is to eliminate Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that launched a surprise cross-border assault on Israeli towns on October 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and grabbing 240 hostages.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s air and artillery bombardment has killed more than 21,800 people according to health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza, with many more feared dead in the rubble, and pushed nearly all its 2.3 million people from their homes.<\/p>\n

Palestinian health ministry casualty figures do not differentiate between fighters and civilians but the ministry has said 70 per cent of Gaza\u2019s dead are women and under-18s. Israel disputes Palestinian casualty figures and says it has killed 8,000 fighters.<\/p>\n

Washington is clearly against Israel reoccupying the Gaza Strip and also opposes the forced expulsion of Palestinians living there.<\/p>\n

The US is calling for a reformed Palestinian Authority to take control of the Gaza Strip after the war, though Netanyahu is against this. He wants the army to retain security control even after the war and is calling for Gaza to be demilitarised.<\/p>\n

At a news conference Saturday, Netanyahu said the war would continue for \u201cmany more months\u201d and that Israel should assume control of the Gaza side of the border with Egypt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Officially Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich\u2019s views do not reflect Israeli policy on Palestinian population displacement. However, that doesn\u2019t explain why the IDF has systematically demolished Gaza together with its water, sewage and power infrastructure. Making a return of Palestinians to their old homes almost impossible <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[118,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-7-10-gaza-war","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=279304"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279349,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279304\/revisions\/279349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=279304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=279304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=279304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}