Israeli Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel on Sunday called on the international community to “promote the voluntary resettlement” of Palestinians “outside the Gaza Strip”, “rather than sending money to rebuild” the territory currently being shelled by Israel. In a text published by the Jerusalem PostGila Gamliel, member of Likud, the party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, proposes “to promote the voluntary resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza outside the Gaza Strip, for humanitarian reasons”.
“It would be a win-win”
The Israeli minister also overwhelms the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). “Rather than sending money to rebuild Gaza or to the failing UNRWA, the international community can help finance resettlement and help Gazans build their new lives in their new host countries,” writes Gila Gamliel .
“We have tried many different solutions: withdrawal (of settlements from the Gaza Strip), enrichment, conflict management and building high walls in the hope of keeping the monsters of Hamas out of Israel. They all failed,” she continues. “It would be a win-win: for the civilians of Gaza, who want a better life, and for Israel, after this terrible tragedy.”
More than 1.6 million people displaced
On October 7, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which took power in Gaza in 2007, launched an attack on an unprecedented scale in Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities. Some 240 people were kidnapped and taken to Palestinian territory. Since then, the Israeli army has relentlessly bombed the Gaza Strip to “eradicate” Hamas. According to the Hamas government, 13,000 people, two-thirds of them women and children, were killed.
After 44 days of war, more than 1.6 million people are displaced in the Gaza Strip, or two thirds of the small territory’s population. While 80% of Gazans are themselves refugees or descendants of refugees who left their homes during the “Nakba”, the “catastrophe” that the creation of Israel represented for them in 1948, many of them , including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, today denounce a “second Nakba”.