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U.S. President Donald Trump meets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at White House in Washington DC, United States on July 28, 2026. [Ma’ayan Toaf (GPO)/Handout – Anadolu Agency]

Israel is seeking backing from President Donald Trump to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, as Israeli ministers speak openly about expelling the indigenous, non-Jewish communities from the territories occupied by the apartheid state. Defence Minister Israel Katz said yesterday that the “migration” of more than two million Palestinians out of the territory remains Israel’s preferred outcome.

Katz made the comments at a conference hosted by the Israeli news site Ynet and the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

At the conference, Katz insisted, “There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration,” and said Israel was “organised and prepared to get them out – by sea, by air, by every way possible.” He argued that Washington’s backing was essential, since “every country willing to take them in wants American backing.”

According to Katz, Trump has “not cancelled” the proposal but has “frozen” it while his administration searches for countries willing to accept Palestinian refugees. Katz also claimed, without offering evidence, that 80 per cent of Gaza’s population wants to leave the territory and is being prevented from doing so by Hamas.

Trump first floated a US “takeover” of Gaza and the removal of its population in early 2025, before retreating from the idea after Egypt and other Arab states warned it would amount to forced displacement.

The ceasefire agreement he later sponsored, which took effect in October 2025, states explicitly that “no one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so.” Egypt, which borders Gaza, has continued to reject any plan involving the removal of the territory’s population.

Katz’s remarks, made at a conference days before Israel’s general election, drew criticism in Washington. US Senator Chris Van Hollen said the admission confirmed what critics had long suspected: that Israel’s underlying objective in Gaza is the removal of its population rather than its security.

Forcibly transferring a civilian population out of occupied territory is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which has already issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Katz’s predecessor, Yoav Gallant, over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

READ: Israel’s security chiefs revisit Gaza expulsion plan despite global rejection

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem have each concluded in recent years that Israel’s rule over Palestinians, from Gaza to the occupied West Bank, amounts to apartheid, a designation successive Israeli governments have rejected.

Many view Katz’s comments less as a new position than a public confirmation of Israel’s ultimate goal. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told a settler conference on 26 November 2024 that it was “possible to create a situation where Gaza’s population will be reduced to half its current size in two years” through what he called encouraging “voluntary emigration”, and suggested the same approach could later be applied to the three million Palestinians of the occupied West Bank.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has repeatedly called for Palestinians to be “encouraged” to leave Gaza so that Israelis can resettle it, telling a Jerusalem conference on 28 January 2024, “We must encourage them to leave.”

The rhetoric coincides with Israeli public opinion on the question. A survey published by Haaretz found that 82 per cent of Jewish Israeli respondents supported expelling Gaza’s population. The poll surveyed Jewish Israelis specifically and did not include Israel’s Palestinian citizens, who make up around a fifth of the population.

Writing in her regular Haaretz column, “Otherwise Occupied”, veteran journalist Amira Hass argued this week that the renewed talk in Washington and Jerusalem of a “two-state solution” functions, in practice, as a smokescreen. While officials and commentators debate Palestinian statehood, she wrote, the Israeli state is doing the practical and political groundwork for expelling Palestinians rather than for negotiating with them. Katz’s comments, made in the days after her column was published, appeared to bear that argument out.

Human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and B’Tselem, have for more than a year described Israel’s conduct in Gaza as genocide, and have warned that any plan to depopulate the Strip would compound, rather than resolve, the suffering of its population. With Katz now confirming that removal remains official policy pending a green light from Washington, the question facing Palestinians in Gaza is no longer whether such a plan exists, but whether the US president will let it proceed.

READ: Netanyahu says Israel will not withdraw from Gaza’s ‘Yellow Line,’ plans to expand control

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Tag: argued that Washington’s backing was essential

Israel seeks Trump’s backing to ethnically cleanse Palestinians