Israel says ‘concept paper’ isn’t policy, but Palestinians fear ethnic cleansing.
An Israeli government document suggesting the mass relocation of Gaza’s 2.3 million people to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula is fuelling concerns about the possible ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
The leaked document, first reported in Israeli media, was compiled by an Israeli government research agency known as the Intelligence Ministry and was dated Oct. 13 — six days after Hamas led deadly attacks on Israel and the Israeli government declared war against the Palestinian militant group, which controls Gaza.
Although not a binding policy, it has deepened long-standing Egyptian fears that Israel wants to make Gaza into Egypt’s problem and revived Palestinians’ memories of the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people who fled or were forced from their homes during the fighting surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948, which Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe.
“What happened in 1948 will not be allowed to happen again,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, told The Associated Press in reaction to the paper.
He said a mass displacement of Palestinians would be “tantamount to declaring a new war.”
A long-term plan
A Hebrew-English translation of the document, published by the Israeli website +972 Magazine, outlined three options regarding the civilian population of Gaza.
One would see the civilians remain in Gaza under the rule of the Palestinian Authority — which was ejected from Gaza after a weeklong 2007 war that put Hamas in power — while the second suggested an attempt to establish “a local Arab non-Islamist political leadership” to govern the population.
Neither of these options were considered feasible strategies to create ideological change and deter future militancy against Israel.
The third option, the evacuation of civilians in Gaza to Sinai, would “yield positive, long-term strategic outcomes for Israel,” the document stated.
The proposal does not indicate this would be a temporary relocation.
“In the first stage, tent cities will be established in the area of Sinai,” it reads. “The next stage includes the establishment of a humanitarian zone to assist the civilian population of Gaza and the construction of cities in a resettled area in northern Sinai.”
Growing sentiment about Gaza
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office played down the report as a hypothetical exercise, saying it was a “concept paper, the likes of which are prepared at all levels of the government and its security agencies.”
But the paper does not exist in isolation.
An Israeli think-tank, the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, released a paper inferring the situation presented “a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip in co-ordination with the Egyptian government.”
“At the moment, these conditions exist, and it is unclear when such an opportunity will arise again, if at all,” reads a Hebrew-English translation published by the website Mondoweiss.
Israeli officials and other political figures have openly expressed similar sentiments, according to an article from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The question of ethnic cleansing
Pushing Palestinians out of Gaza into Sinai would be “ethnic cleansing,” said Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian physician and politician.
He believes there is no chance they would ever be allowed to return and that it would set “a very dangerous precedent” for all Palestinians.
“The ultimate goal will not only be ethnic cleansing of Gaza, but also of the West Bank,” he told CBC News. “We already see terrorist settlers’ attacks on Palestinian communities in the West Bank.”
Ethnic cleansing is a term that emerged during the war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
The United Nations describes it as “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”
It is not recognized as an independent crime under international law. Attributes of ethnic cleansing — including murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture and rape, among others — can, however, constitute other crimes under international law, such as crimes against humanity or genocide.
Israeli-American historian Gil Troy, a history professor at McGill University in Montreal, cautions against the suggestion that Israel plans to “transfer” Palestinians out of Gaza, saying the concept paper is “not even a plan that is being actioned, but simply it’s a thought.”
But Troy said he thinks a loss of some territory in Gaza isn’t out of the question.
“I think in the wake of the savagery of Oct. 7, Israel has to create a much bigger buffer zone between the Gazans and the Israelis on the Gaza corridor,” he said.
“That’s not about ethnic cleansing, that’s about creating territorial defence.”
The Israeli government says Hamas-led militants killed more than 1,400 civilians and soldiers in the surprise assault on Israeli communities more than three weeks ago, and took 240 people hostage. More than 8,700 Palestinians have been killed, and nearly 2,000 more have been reported missing, since Israel began attacking the Gaza Strip, according to the territory’s Hamas-run Health Ministry.
Under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, Israel has the “inherent right” to defend itself against an armed attack, but several human rights groups have alleged that violations of international humanitarian law, and possibly war crimes, have been committed on both sides.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reiterated that right of self-defence and “unequivocally” condemned Hamas, but he expressed strong concerns.
“The price of justice cannot be the continued suffering of all Palestinian civilians,” he said.
Marketing mass displacement
Whether or not Israel can or will carry out such a plan, the leaked document argued there would be a need to win over international support for a relocation of Palestinians.
It suggests relying on “large advertising agencies” to promote messaging to Western nations “in a way that does not incite or vilify Israel” but instead focuses on “assisting the Palestinian brothers and rehabilitating them, even at the price of a tone that rebukes or even harms Israel.”
At the same time, campaigns would be needed to “motivate” Gaza residents to accept the plan by pinning the loss of land on Hamas and “making it clear that there is no hope of returning to the territories Israel will soon occupy, whether or not that is true.”
As for Egypt and other regional countries that may have to bear the brunt of a mass deportation of Palestinians, the document proposes incentives, including financial assistance for Egypt, specifically, to aid its current economic crisis.
Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has said a mass influx of refugees from Gaza would eliminate the Palestinian nationalist cause. It would also risk bringing militants into Sinai, where they might launch attacks on Israel, he said.
Egypt has long feared that Israel wants to force a permanent expulsion of Palestinians into its territory, as happened during the war surrounding Israel’s independence. Egypt ruled Gaza between 1948 and 1967, when Israel captured the territory, along with the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
