“Voluntary emigration”, the euphemism promoted by the Israeli extreme right to depopulate Gaza

A euphemism has been gaining weight in Israeli political jargon about Gaza: “Voluntary emigration.” It consists of “encouraging” (the other term usually used by its promoters) Palestinians who wish to leave Gaza and be welcomed by other countries. “If there were only 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza, and not two million [en referencia a los 2,3 millones de gazatíes]the speech about the day after [de la guerra] It would be different,” said one of its main defenders, the Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, on December 31.

It is promoted, with increasing force, by the far-right in the Government who want their country to fully control Gaza and rebuild the Jewish settlements that Ariel Sharon evacuated in 2005, but are, at the same time, aware of the impossibility of forcibly displacing to all those who inhabit it. Egypt keeps the border closed for fear of ethnic cleansing. The initiative also has defenders in other parts of the political arc, such as Danny Danon, former United Nations ambassador and deputy for Likud, the party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; and Ram Ben-Barak, deputy of Yesh Atid, the opposition party of former head of Government Yair Lapid. Former deputy director of Mossad, he suggests distributing Gazans among 100 countries, 20,000 in each. Nobody talks about when and if they would return.

Faced with the growing noise and the succession of international condemnations of the proposal, including from strong allies such as Washington, Berlin and London, Netanyahu issued a statement last Wednesday – the eve of the hearing at the International Court of Justice in The Hague for genocide – in English to “make some points absolutely clear.” Among them, that Israel “has no intention of permanently occupying Gaza or displacing its civilian population.”

But displacing the population is not the same as encouraging “voluntary” departure in the role of a Gaza under the most intense bombing in decades that has killed more than 1% of the population and destroyed entire neighborhoods. Two weeks ago, Netanyahu said at a meeting of his party that the “problem” with the initiative is finding “countries willing to absorb Gazans.” “We're working on it,” he said. According to the newspaper Zman Israelthere are secret contacts with Congo, among other countries.

The idea began to be heard in early November, after Israel invaded Gaza and more than a million people were forced to go to southern Gaza, where the border with Egypt is. The Egyptian president, Abdel Fattá Al Sisi, decided to open the Rafah crossing, the only one that does not lead to Israel. “What is happening in Gaza is an attempt to force civilians to take refuge and migrate to Egypt […] “We reject any attempt to resolve the Palestinian issue by military means or through forced displacement from their land,” he had already declared in October. Shortly after, a working document from the Ministry of Intelligence was leaked to the press – in the hands of a current supporter of “voluntary emigration”, Gila Gamliel, of the Likud – which proposed expelling the population of Gaza, by force and forever. , to the Egyptian Sinai. Danny Ayalon, former ambassador to the United States and former number two at the Foreign Ministry, spoke of the “almost infinite space” that there is in the Sinai desert to set up tents.

“Chance”

If “voluntary emigration” occupies more and more space in debates and television sets, it is, in part, because it is openly promoted by up to five ministers, almost all of them ultranationalists. It is the sector of the coalition that the President of the United States, Joe Biden, publicly asked Netanyahu to throw out of the Government last month, because “it is making it very difficult for him to move” and “he does not want a two-state solution” to the Eastern conflict. Next. Biden expressly mentioned the head of Public Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, who two weeks ago saw the war as an “opportunity to focus on encouraging the migration of Gaza residents,” as a “correct, just, moral and humane solution.”

Another supporter is Amijai Eliyahu, the Legacy Minister who sparked controversy by considering dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza as an option. In an interview with the Ynet television network, he caused laughter on the set by defending that voluntary emigration is not a forced displacement, but rather a possibility of “improving housing” for those Gazans who “refuse to live in those conditions,” in reference to the destruction in Gaza. The bombings have left 290,000 houses damaged, 70,000 of them destroyed or uninhabitable, according to figures from the Government of the Strip collected last Monday by the United Nations. Half a million people have nowhere to return.

Shlomo Karhi, Minister of Communications and also of the Likud, recently defended her in an interview on the Parliament television network:

—Clearly, we have to encourage voluntary emigration […] There are actors who, true, perhaps are not involved now [en los enfrentamientos], but they do not love Israel and educate their children in terrorism. We would like to see it. And we have talked about that in Government meetings. There are no Western countries that want to host them, even if we pay a lot of money. Voluntary emigration is important. It does not constitute any violation of human rights.

―Despite what we hear, you say it is the solution…

― Encourage voluntary emigration. And 'force him until he says he wants' [un dicho en hebreo]

– As?

― War itself does it

― That is, continue with strength, hunger, difficult conditions…

― Not with difficult conditions. We provide humanitarian aid to civilians [en referencia a la que Israel permite que entre desde Egipto] to civilians

― But the conditions are
difficult

― Yes, conditions are difficult and will remain so until we bring back the hostages and eliminate Hamas

The interview took place shortly after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed the issue at a press conference at the end of his latest visit to Israel. “In my meetings today I have been clear and clear: Palestinian civilians must be able to return home as soon as conditions allow. They should not be pressured to leave Gaza. “As I told the prime minister, the United States unequivocally rejects any proposal that promotes resettling Palestinians out of Gaza, and the prime minister reaffirmed to me that this is not the Government's policy.”

Humanitarian arguments

Proponents of the proposal often resort to humanitarian arguments. In the opinion article in the newspaper The Wall Street Journal In their presentation in November, Ben-Barak and Danon stated that “the international community has the moral imperative (and opportunity) to demonstrate compassion, help the people of Gaza move toward a more prosperous future, and work together to achieve greater peace and stability in the Middle East.” The authors recalled how several European countries and the United States absorbed refugees from the wars in Bosnia, Kosovo and, more recently, Syria, and called on the West to “offer refuge to Gaza residents seeking relocation.”

“We have to make it easier for Gazans to go to other countries,” which would “make things easier for those who stay and the efforts to rebuild Gaza,” Danon argued in a radio interview in December. The newspaper called it a “bad joke” Haaretz in an editorial. “Although he insists as much as he wants that it would be 'voluntary', what he is proposing is a forced displacement of the population in every sense […] The only desire that plays a role here is that of Danon and his ideological partners, who want to kick out the Gazans and return to the Jewish settlements evacuated from Gaza in 2005, or something along those lines,” he points out.

Reuven Hazan, professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and expert on the Israeli political system, regrets the “disconnection from reality” and the “ethnocentrism” of those promoting the initiative as well as the fact that Netanyahu keeps them in the Executive. “It needs the 64 deputies [de 120, que obtiene con ultranacionalistas y ultraortodoxos] for the day when Benny Gantz leaves the concentration Government. “He knows that they give him what he wants, and Gantz and Lapid don't,” he points out by phone. The proposal, he believes, is also a tool for the far right to mobilize its own public, in favor of rebuilding the settlements in Gaza, and attract the Likud sector closest to religious nationalism.

The latest push took place last week, at a conference in a Jerusalem museum called “Lessons from Gaza, the end of the idea of ​​States”, with 1,000 attendees in person and another 5,000 online, according to the newspaper. The Jerusalem Post. Minister Gamliel assured that the day the war ends there will be “about two million people left in Gaza, many of whom voted for Hamas and celebrated the massacre of men, women and children” on October 7, but it also represents an “opportunity.” ” so that the world, “which claims to care about the Palestinians,” will lend a hand. “In three words: open the door […] I say to the international community: no one is pushing or forcing anyone to leave, but you surely cannot remain indifferent to their suffering.”

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