By Rami Ayyub
JERUSALEM, Sept 4 (Reuters) – Two Israeli ministers floated proposals this week for the mass removal of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, resurfacing an idea voiced repeatedly by right-wing politicians over the past three years as they seek to rally supporters ahead of an election.
The calls by two of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political allies have revived Palestinian fears that Israel ultimately aims to forcibly expel them from Gaza despite U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to end the conflict there.
Far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir laid out a seven-year plan for removing Gaza’s population through “voluntary emigration” during a press conference on Thursday night. He said he would seek the creation of a “ministry in charge of emigration” in the next government.
“Instead of illusions of peace now, we need actions of emigration now,” he said. “Instead of (them) digging tunnels, it’s time to pack suitcases,” referring to tunnels dug under Gaza by Hamas before the war.
Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party said in a statement on Thursday that Turkey, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo were being considered as potential destinations.
Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas government media office, said: “The Palestinian people are deeply rooted in their land and will not be intimidated by such threats.”
Israel is due to hold a general election on October 27. It will be the first since Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, triggered an Israeli military campaign that laid waste to Gaza, which has a population of more than two million.
An October 2025, U.S.-backed, ceasefire halted large-scale fighting, but it has not ended Israeli strikes or produced progress on a plan for permanent peace.
FEARS OF A NEW ‘NAKBA’
Ben-Gvir’s comments followed those of Defence Minister Israel Katz, from Netanyahu’s Likud party, who said on Wednesday there was “no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration”.
“We are fully prepared to move them out if it becomes possible — by sea, by air, by every way possible. Egypt is not willing, so it won’t be through them,” he said during an online conference hosted by Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.
Netanyahu’s office did not immediately provide comment.
Polls suggest Netanyahu, who has led the most right-wing coalition in Israeli history, could lose power next month, his security credentials still shaken by the 2023 attack — though analysts say he can’t be written off.
Israel’s defence ministry in 2025 established an office tasked with overseeing “voluntary emigration” from Gaza, after comments by U.S. President Donald Trump suggesting Gazans could be permanently displaced.
Trump later backed away from the idea, which faced strong resistance from Arab states and was widely rejected internationally. Israel reportedly sounded out several African countries as potential resettlement sites.
Netanyahu has said he supports what his government has described as “voluntary emigration” from Gaza, but that far-right ministers’ goals of re-establishing Jewish settlements in the territory are unrealistic. Israeli officials have denied intending to transfer Gaza’s population out by force.
Calls for resettlement of Gazans have prompted fears among Palestinians of a new “Nakba” (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.
The Gaza Strip is central to Palestinian hopes of statehood in territory captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
GENOCIDE ACCUSATIONS
The 2023 Hamas-led attacks killed 1,200 people in Israel while another 251 were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign, according to Gaza health authorities.
A U.N. inquiry determined that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, arguing that its killings, siege and destruction were carried out with the intent to destroy Palestinian life in the enclave.
Israel, which is fighting a genocide case at the International Court of Justice, rejects genocide allegations as politically motivated and says that its military campaign targets Hamas, not Gaza’s civilian population.
This week, Ben-Gvir posted an AI-generated video depicting dozens of Palestinian prisoners on a conveyor belt, entering a prison facility. They emerge from the other side emaciated, distressed and in tears.
Ben-Gvir later deleted the video, after it had amassed millions of views on X. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a crowded Gaza City displacement camp, some Palestinians said that they believed the latest Israeli calls were an election ploy.
They also said Gaza was their land and they would never leave it.
“We will die on the land of Gaza,” said one resident, 52-year-old Mohammed Abu Al-Qumbuz. “We were born on it, our children grew up on it, so it is very difficult to think of leaving.”
(Additional reporting by Dawoud Abu Alkas in Gaza and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Aidan Lewis)
