generals’ plan

Israeli Security Cabinet Approves Plan for ‘Mass Ethnic Cleansing’ of Gaza

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Palestinians forcibly displaced by israel’s assault on Gaza walk amid the rubble of the Jabalia refugee camp on January 19, 2025. (Photo: Omar Al-Qataa/AFP via Getty Images)

“There is nothing ‘voluntary’ about the program,” said one critic. “The population of Gaza is to be forced out of their ancestral homeland through deliberate mass starvation and mass killings.”

Israel’s Security Cabinet on Sunday approved the creation of new Defense Ministry directorate tasked with ethnically cleansing Palestinians from the Gaza Strip under the guise of “voluntary emigration.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz euphemistically called the new agency the “Voluntary Emigration Bureau for Gaza residents interested in relocating to third countries” and claimed it will operate in accordance with international law.

However, given Israel’s incessant flouting of international law—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a fugitive from the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice is hearing a genocide case against the country—critics excoriated Katz’s claim.

“In reality, there is nothing ‘voluntary’ about the program the Netanyahu government is implementing,” wroteWorld Socialist Web Site editor Andre Damon. “The population of Gaza is to be forced out of their ancestral homeland through deliberate mass starvation and mass killings by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).”

The Israeli cabinet has approved the establishment of an “administration for the voluntary transition of Gaza’s residents to third countries” – aka for mass ethnic cleansing

— Hanno Hauenstein (@hahauenstein.bsky.social) 2025-03-23T09:55:48.905Z

Katz also said the new directorate would be run “in accordance with the vision of U.S President Donald Trump,” who last month said that the United States would “take over” Gaza after emptying the strip of its approximately 2.1 million Palestinians and transform the coastal enclave into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

After doubling down on his proposal, Trump then attempted to gaslight the world by directly contradicting his previous remarks when he said earlier this month that “nobody is expelling any Palestinians” from Gaza. By then, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had declared that the so-called Trump Plan was “taking shape” in coordination with the U.S. administration.

However, leaders of Egypt and Jordan, where Trump has proposed sending Gazans, vehemently oppose the plan. A counterproposal issued by Egypt and other Arab nations—which involves rebuilding Gaza without forcibly displacing its residents—has the support of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation and nations including China, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy.

The reconquest of Gaza is a longtime goal of Israel’s far-right, which, since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 and subsequent obliteration of the strip, has moved to put its recolonization plans into action.

Israeli Col: Hamas is not the issue Gaza's people are'The population of Gaza are barbaric riffraff….the only solution is Trump's vision,' national security expert and colonel in the Israeli army's reserve force Gabi Siboni called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza during a panel programme.

— Middle East Monitor (@middleeastmonitor.bsky.social) 2025-03-24T15:31:22.293Z

“October 7 changed history. As a result of the brutal massacre, the Gazan Arabs have lost their rights to be here forever, they’ll not stay here,” Daniella Weiss, co-founder of the extremist settler movement Nachala, said during an October 2024 conference on the ethnic cleansing of Gaza attended by Smotrich and numerous other Israeli lawmakers.

“Each of you will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs will disappear from Gaza,” Weiss added.

The modern state of Israel was founded largely through the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians, sometimes accomplished via massacres and death marches. The majority of Gaza’s population today are survivors and descendants of Palestinians forced from their homeland to make way for Jewish immigrants in the post-World War II era.

Palestinians call the mass forced displacement of 1948 the Nakba, or catastrophe, and far-right Israelis today threaten to carry out a new Nakba to “finish the job,” as Smotrich and others have said.

Critics including Israeli troops have claimed that the IDF is carrying out the so-called “General’s Plan,” a blueprint for the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza. Since October 2023, Israel has enforced what former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—who is also wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity—called a “complete siege” of Gaza, a blockade which has exacerbated deadly starvation and illness in the strip.

On Sunday, the Gaza Health Ministry said the death toll from Israel’s 535-day assault on Gaza surpassed 50,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom are women and children. This, as Israeli forces have renewed their ferocious bombardment and invasion of the strip, killing hundreds of Palestinians including nearly 200 children, and wiping out entire families.

The ministry said that more than 113,000 others have been wounded since October 2023, and at least 14,000 more Palestinians are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out buildings.

However, experts—including the authors of two peer-reviewed articles in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet—say the actual death toll is likely much higher.

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingIsraeli Security Cabinet Approves Plan for ‘Mass Ethnic Cleansing’ of Gaza

Far-Right Israeli Lawmakers Demand ‘Complete Cleansing’ of Northern Gaza

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A Palestinian child plays amid the rubble of destroyed buildings at the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza, Palestine on January 2, 2025. (Photo: Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images)

The Knesset members are urging the Israeli military to destroy all sources of water, food, and energy—and to kill “anyone not flying a white flag of surrender.”

At least seven far-right members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, are calling on the country’s defense minister to order the total destruction of northern Gaza’s food, water, and energy sources—most of which have already been obliterated by 15 months of relentless attacks—and the killing of any Palestinian who isn’t clearly surrendering to the attackers.

In a letter to Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz dated December 31, the lawmakers assert that the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) campaign to forcibly expel Palestinians from northern Gaza—which critics have called ethnic cleansing—”isn’t being done properly” and is not “achieving the war objectives as defined by the government, which is the dismantling of Hamas’ governing and military capabilities.”

According to a translation by international humanitarian law expert Itay Epshtain on Thursday, the letter calls on the IDF to:

  • Destroy all energy sources including fuel, solar systems, generators, and power lines;
  • Destroy all food sources including warehouses, water, and water pumps; and
  • Lay siege and remotely kill everyone not flying a white flag of surrender.

That last demand apparently includes men, women, and children. IDF troops would then “enter gradually for a complete cleansing of the enemy’s nests,” according to the letter.

cc ICC

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim.bsky.social) 2025-01-03T02:01:00.806Z

Lawmakers who signed the letter and their party affiliations include: Avraham Bezalel (Shas), Amit Halevi (Likud), Limor Son Har-Melech (Jewish Power), Osher Shkalim (Likud), Zvi Sukkot and Ohad Tal (Religious Zionism), and Nissim Vaturi (Likud).

Vaturi, the deputy Knesset speaker, previously called for Gaza to be “wiped off the face of the Earth” and argued for Israel to “stop being humane” and “burn Gaza now,” because “there are no innocents there.”

Notably, the lawmakers’ letter does not mention anything about freeing the more than 60 hostages believed to be alive and imprisoned by Hamas and possibly other groups in Gaza.

As Israeli journalist Bar Peleg reported Friday from the Jabalia refugee camp:

When the soldiers and officers in Jabalia are asked about their mission, the answer is destroying Hamas and its infrastructure, until the last terrorist is laid to rest. When they are asked, “And what about the hostages?” One soldier answered, “That concerns us, like it does everyone, but it isn’t a part of our operational considerations.”

Northern Gaza is already in ruins. As Peleg noted, “not a single habitable building remains” in Jabalia. Nearly all homes, hospitals, schools, and other infrastructure have been destroyed or damaged.

“Look at the extent of the destruction and annihilation here,” one IDF officer said. “No one has done this before.”

An IDF officer recently told Haaretz that one commander, Brig. Gen. Yehuda Vach, seeks to personally execute the so-called Generals’ Plan—a blueprint for the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza—by besieging and expelling 250,000 Palestinians from the area. United Nations officials estimate that more than 100,000 Palestinians have been forced from northern Gaza, even as the IDF says it disavows the Generals’ Plan.

IDF troops, Palestinian witnesses, international medical volunteers, and others have described alleged war crimes including the indiscriminate killings of Gazans of all ages throughout the embattled strip.

Israel’s “complete siege” of Gaza has also caused the sickening and starvation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans. At least dozens of children and babies have died of malnutrition or hypothermia.

Israeli policies and actions, as well as written and spoken calls for the destruction of Gaza and its people, have been presented as evidence in the South African-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister who ordered the siege of Gaza, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which in November issued arrest warrants for the pair and Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri.

Israel’s 455-day bombardment, invasion, and siege of Gaza has left at least 165,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to officials there.

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA

Continue ReadingFar-Right Israeli Lawmakers Demand ‘Complete Cleansing’ of Northern Gaza

Israeli Scholar Lays Out ‘True Brutality’ of Ethnic Cleansing Now Underway in Gaza

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Palestinians carry their belongings as they flee northern Gaza under Israeli attack on October 12, 2024. (Photo: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP via Getty Images)

“Such dehumanization cannot help but trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars.”

Much alarm has been raised over the so-called “Generals’ Plan,” an ethnic cleansing proposal for northern Gaza that has reportedly garnered attention in the highest reaches of the Israeli government.

But Israeli scholar Idan Landau argued in a column published in English by +972 Magazine on Friday that what the Israeli military is actually doing in northern Gaza “is even more appalling” than the plan outlined by a group of retired generals. Landau argued that focus on the details of the Generals’ Plan has served to obscure the “true brutality” of Israel’s deadly operations in northern Gaza, which has been rendered a hellscape of death and destruction by the military assault and siege.

Landau, a professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, opened his column—first published in Hebrew on his blog—by pointing to two photos: one showing a celebratory event at a camp built by an Israeli settler organization just outside of the Gaza Strip, and the other showing displaced Palestinians lined up at gunpoint amid the ruins of northern Gaza.

“These photos tell a story that is unfolding so rapidly that its harrowing details are already on the brink of being forgotten,” wrote Landau. “Yet this story could start from any point during the past 76 years: the Nakba of 1948, the ‘Siyag Plan‘ that followed it, the Naksa of 1967. On one side, displaced Palestinians with all the belongings they can carry, hungry, wounded, and exhausted; on the other, joyful Jewish settlers, sanctifying the new land that the army has cleared for them.”

The Israeli military’s dehumanization of the people of Gaza, Landau wrote, “cannot help but trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars.”

On the left, Israeli settlers gather at an event celebrating Sukkot near the Gaza Strip. On the right, displaced Palestinians line up at gunpoint in the ruins of Jabalia refugee camp. (Photos via +972 Magazine)
On the left, Israeli settlers gather at an event celebrating Sukkot near the Gaza Strip. On the right, displaced Palestinians line up at gunpoint in the ruins of Jabalia refugee camp. (Photos via +972 Magazine)

Landau wrote that what the Israeli army has been implementing in northern Gaza in recent weeks is “not quite” the Generals’ Plan, which entails giving Palestinians still in the region a week to leave before declaring the area a closed military zone—and designating everyone who remains a militant who can be denied humanitarian assistance and killed.

The actual strategy Israeli soldiers have been deploying in northern Gaza is “an even more sinister and brutal version” of the Generals’ Plan “within a more concentrated area.”

“The first, most immediate distinction is the abandoning of provisions for reducing harm to civilians, i.e. giving residents of northern Gaza a week to evacuate southward,” Landau wrote. “The second departure concerns the real purpose of emptying the area: while portraying the military operation as a security necessity, it was, in fact, an embodiment of the spirit of ethnic cleansing and resettlement from day one.”

“As opposed to the picture painted by the army, implying that residents in the northern areas were free to move south and get out of the danger zone, local testimonies presented a frightening reality: Anyone who so much as stepped out of their home risked being shot by Israeli snipers or drones, including young children and those holding white flags,” Landau noted. “Rescue crews trying to help the wounded also came under attack, as well as journalists trying to document the events.”

The scholar cites one “particularly harrowing video” in which a Palestinian child is seen “on the ground pleading for help after being wounded by an airstrike; when a crowd gathers to help him, they are suddenly hit by another airstrike, killing one and wounding more than 20 others.”

“This is the reality amid which the people of northern Gaza were supposed to walk, starved and exhausted, into the ‘humanitarian zone,” Landau wrote. “Since the Israeli army began its operation in northern Gaza, it has killed over 1,000 Palestinians. The Israeli Air Force usually bombs at night while the victims are sleeping, slaughtering entire families in their homes and making it more difficult to evacuate the wounded. And on October 24, rescue services announced that the intensity of the bombardment left them with no choice but to cease all operations in the besieged areas.”

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The deadly military assault, Landau stressed, has been accompanied by a “starvation policy” that has severely hindered the flow of humanitarian assistance to northern Gaza.

The heads of prominent United Nations agencies and human rights organizations warned Friday that conditions on the ground in the region are “apocalyptic” and that “the entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine, and violence.”

Landau noted that on October 16, following pressure from the Biden administration, the Israeli government reportedly allowed 100 aid trucks to enter northern Gaza.

“But journalists in the north were quick to correct the record: Nothing at all had entered the besieged areas,” Landau wrote. “On October 20, Israel denied a further request by U.N. agencies to bring in food, fuel, blood, [and] medicines. Three days later, in response to a request for an interim order by the Israeli human rights group Gisha, the state admitted to the High Court that no humanitarian aid had been allowed into northern Gaza up to that point. By this time, we are already talking about a three-week-long food siege.”

Addressing the question of “what is left for us to do” in the face of such a catastrophe, Landau wrote that “the consensus concerning the war of extermination poisons Israeli society and blackens its future so profoundly that even small pockets of resistance can proliferate stamina and hope to those who have not yet been carried away by the currents of madness.”

“We can also look for partners in this fight abroad, where the critical lever of pressure is the pipeline of American weapons,” he added. “The struggle to end this intensifying war of extermination and transfer in Gaza, particularly in the north, is first and foremost a human fight. It is a fight for life, both in Gaza and Israel: for the very chance that life can continue to exist in this blood-soaked land. Nothing could be more patriotic.”

+972 Magazine published Landau’s column a day after Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, warned in a statement that “time is running out” to stop the far-right Israeli government’s attempt to “erase the Palestinians from their own land and allow Israel to fully annex Palestinian territory.”

“Genocide and a man-made humanitarian catastrophe are unfolding in front of us and in Gaza,” said Albanese. “I regret to see so many member states are avoiding acknowledging the suffering of the Palestinian people and instead look away.”

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingIsraeli Scholar Lays Out ‘True Brutality’ of Ethnic Cleansing Now Underway in Gaza

‘Conquer, Kick Out, Resettle’: Israel’s Far-Right Gathers to Plan Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Israeli settler leader Daniella Weiss (center) and other advocates of “Greater Israel” hold up a map showing Jewish recolonization of the Gaza Strip in Palestine during an October 21, 2024 rally in Be’eri, Israel. (Photo: Enes Canli/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“Each of you will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs will disappear from Gaza,” said one prominent Israeli settler.

Hundreds of Israelis including numerous senior state officials gathered Sunday near the Gaza border for a festive two-day rally at which members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and leaders of the settler movement openly spoke of ethnically cleansing Palestinians in the embattled coastal enclave to make way for Jewish recolonization.

“We came here with one clear purpose: to settle the entire Gaza Strip… Every inch from north to south,” Daniella Weiss, who co-founded the extremist settler movement Nachala—which organized the rally backed by Netanyahu’s Likud party—told attendees on Monday as joyous music played in the background.

“We’re thousands of people and ready to move to Gaza at a moment’s notice,” she continued. “October 7 changed history. As a result of the brutal massacre, the Gazan Arabs have lost their rights to be here forever, they’ll not stay here.”

“We plan to take what we have acquired in the years of settling Judea and Samaria and to do the same thing here in Gaza,” Weiss asserted, referring to the historic Jewish names for the illegally occupied Palestinian West Bank territories being gradually usurped by Israeli seizure and settlement. “Each of you will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs will disappear from Gaza.”

“I want to say to the world: This isn’t just for the Jews. We’re doing this for the benefit of the entire world,” added Weiss, who earlier this year was sanctioned by Canada for inciting violence against Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank. “Ending the evil powers is for everyone. I call on the democracies of the world to stand with us. Adopt the values of the Bible.”

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, told attendees: “What we have learned this year is that everything is up to us. We are the owners of this land.”

“Yes, we experienced a terrible catastrophe,” he added. “But what we need to understand, one year later—so many Israelis have changed their thinking… They understand that when Israel acts like the rightful owners of this land, this is what brings results.”

May Golan, Minister for social equality and the advancement of the status of women of Israel, told rallygoers, “We will hit them where it hurts—their land.”

“Anyone who uses their plot of land to plan another Holocaust will receive from us, with God’s help, another Nakba,” Golan added, referring to the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine by Jewish militants during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948. Around two-thirds of Gaza’s population are descendants of Nakba refugees.

Sima Hasson of the group Mothers’ Parade told the audience that “I’m going to say something that not everyone here is prepared to say, but I am, and I know a lot of you are: Conquer, kick out, resettle.”

“I’m not just talking about one area of Gaza,” she continued. “I’m not just talking about northern Gaza. I mean every single sliver of land. It’s the only way we’ll save our boys from constantly going to war.”

“To everyone in Europe who has an opinion about what’s happening here, I say: Don’t get involved,” Hasson added. “Worry about yourselves. Radical Islam is taking over your whole continent. You want to help? Take in the Gazans who we want to leave Gaza.”

Other Cabinet members who spoke at the rally included Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party and Negev and Galilee Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf of Jewish Power. Knesset members in attendance included Ariel Kallner, Avichai Boaron, Osher Shkalim, Tally Gotliv, and Sasson Gueta of Likud; Tzvi Sukkot of the Religious Zionist Party; and Limor Son Harmelech from Jewish Power.

“We need to occupy the complete land of Israel. There are no innocent people in Gaza,” Gotliv toldMiddle East Eye. “Everybody who has refused to leave the north is a collaborator.”

“There are no innocent people in Gaza.”

While numerous Israeli officials called for the recolonization of a Gaza Strip prior to the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, such calls have accelerated since then. In January, Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and other senior Israeli officials attended a similar but smaller conference hosted by Nachala on the Jewish recolonization of Gaza.

Last year, Amir Weitmann, who chairs Likud’s Libertarian faction, published a plan examining the economics of forcibly transferring Gazans to Egypt’s Sinai Desert. A separate 2023 proposal by then-Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel, who is also a Likud member, would ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, forcing them into the Sinai.

Monday’s rally came as Israel’s military continued its relentless 381-day assault on Gaza, which has left more than 152,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and for which Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

In recent weeks, Israeli forces have intensified attacks on northern Gaza—seen by numerous observers as the part of the coastal strip most likely to be seized by Israel—including Saturday airstrikes in Beit Lahia in which more than 120 Palestinians were killed, wounded, or are missing.

The intensified assault comes as some Israeli troops claim the Israel Defense Forces has launched the so-called “Generals’ Plan,” a blueprint for the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza. The U.S., which provides Israel with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover, last week warned Israeli leaders against any such “policy of starvation,” which critics countered is already being implemented throughout Gaza with deadly results.

More than 20 Israeli settlements were built in Gaza following Israel’s conquest of the territory during the 1967 Six-Day War. While Israeli troops and settlers withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the besieged enclave is still considered occupied under international law, as Israel maintains a physical and economic stranglehold on the territory.

As in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s settlements in Gaza, as well as the occupation itself, were illegal under international law. In July, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion stating that Israel’s 57-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is an illegal form of apartheid that must end “as rapidly as possible.”

However, in language resembling the Palestinian liberation slogan “from the river to the sea,” Likud’s founding platform states that “between the sea and the Jordan [River], there will be only Israeli sovereignty.” On multiple occasions over the past year or so, Netanyahu has publicly displayed maps showing the Middle East in which there is no Palestine and all Palestinian lands are labeled as “Israel.”

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Continue Reading‘Conquer, Kick Out, Resettle’: Israel’s Far-Right Gathers to Plan Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza