By: Rob Geist Pinfold
Less than a week after Hamas’s devastating attacks on October 7, Israel’s intelligence ministry produced a chilling document. It advocated that Israel remove all of Gaza’s Palestinian population and forcibly resettle them in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula.
In November, a poster advertising a far-right rally in Tel Aviv juxtaposed an image of two cherubic Jewish-Israeli children on a beach (presumably in a vision of a future Gaza) with the ominous policy prescriptions of “occupy, expel, settle.”
Most worryingly, a cabinet minister suggested that Israel could use nuclear weapons against the Gaza Strip. Does this bellicose and dehumanizing rhetoric suggest that Israel’s long-term plan for Gaza is to ethnically cleanse the territory, or even commit genocide there?
There is scant evidence that Israel’s government has any intent or capability to achieve these unsettling goals. Israel’s regional and international partners – Egypt and the US – steadfastly reject any population transfer. Jordan has gone further, claiming that any such policy would constitute a “declaration of war.”
Turnout at the far-right Tel Aviv rally was negligible, and neither the minister who considered “nuking” Gaza, nor the intelligence ministry have any tangible input in Israel’s national security decision-making.
What is more likely is that Israel will indefinitely occupy parts of Gaza, while seeking to eschew responsibility for civilian governance elsewhere in the territory. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, himself claimed that “we don’t seek to govern Gaza”, but added that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) should have “overall security responsibility” in the territory for “an indefinite period.”
This strategy is unsurprising, given that Israel has pursued it in all of its diverse occupations to date. These experiences provide a projection of what Israel’s planned “day after Hamas” scenario in Gaza might look like.
https://asiatimes.com/2023/11/what-gaza-might-look-like-the-day-after-the-war/