Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu tasked Israel’s Mossad foreign intelligence agency with finding countries that would agree to receive large numbers of Palestinians displaced from the Gaza Strip, two Israeli officials tell Axios.
This comes after US President Donald Trump suggested in February that the US could “take over” the Gaza Strip and expel Palestinians. His declaration prompted Egypt to draft an alternative plan for Gaza’s reconstruction, which has since been adopted by Arab leaders.
The $53bn Egyptian plan rejects the displacement of Palestinians and instead focuses on redeveloping the enclave without depopulating it.
Earlier this week, Trump appeared to signal a retreat from the proposed mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. When asked about it during a meeting in the White House with Irish leader Micheal Martin, he said: “Nobody is expelling any Palestinians from Gaza.”
Earlier, AP reported that the US and Israel began discussing the forced displacement of Palestinians last month with the governments of Sudan, Somalia and its breakaway region Somaliland.
Already, talks have already taken place with Somalia and South Sudan — two poor conflict-plagued countries in East Africa — as well as other countries including Indonesia, according to the two Israeli officials and a former U.S. official.
However, AP’s report suggests that the US may have responded to the rejection of its displacement plan by Arab governments last month by looking further afield.
The foreign ministers of Somalia and Somaliland denied on Friday that they had received any proposal from the US or Israel to resettle Palestinians in their countries. Somalia’s foreign minister, Ahmed Moalim Fiqi, said his country rejected “any proposal or initiative, from any party, that would undermine the Palestinian people’s right to live peacefully on their ancestral land.”
A senior Sudanese official also denied that Sudan had received a proposal, telling Reuters that such a plan would be unacceptable.
Meanwhile, sources said Netanyahu gave Mossad the secret assignment several weeks ago, the Israeli officials say. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office declined to comment.
Israel is pushing this move and other measures to encourage the removal of Palestinians from Gaza, while at the same time resuming the war and issuing evacuation orders for Palestinians from parts on the enclave.
Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials have vowed to occupy more and more of Gaza if Hamas refuses to release the remaining hostages. Israeli officials have discussed, but not yet ordered, a massive ground invasion of Gaza that would involve forcing most of the population into a small “humanitarian area” in the south of the Strip.
Around 90% of Gaza’s residents have already been displaced by the war, and over 50,000 have been killed according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
Despite the horror they have endured, many Palestinians vehemently oppose any efforts to remove them from their homeland. The Palestinian Authority, numerous Arab countries and most Western countries have long opposed the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.
Israel’s Cabinet this week approved the formation of a special directorate in the Ministry of Defense that will oversee the “willful departure” of Palestinians from Gaza.
Despite the label, the expulsion policies pushed by officials like ultranationalist Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich can hardly be described as “willful.”
Speaking in in the Knesset last month, Smotrich spoke in vivid terms about the timeline for expelling the entire population of Gaza. “If we take out 10,000 a day it will take six months. If we take out 5,000 a day it will take a year,” he said.
U.S. and Israeli Legal experts contend that such a massive displacement would be a war crime.
While several countries have agreed to take small numbers of sick Palestinians, mainly children, from Gaza, no country has agreed to accept massive numbers of Palestinians from Gaza.
Egypt and Jordan have both strongly opposed Trump’s plans to relocate large numbers of Palestinians to those countries.
Trump isn’t actively pursuing his displacement plan at the moment, and his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff is totally focused on getting a new deal between Israel and Hamas that will secure the release of hostages and restore the ceasefire, two U.S. officials tell Axios.
Written with reports from Axios and Middle East Eye