“Concept paper” by Israel’s Intelligence Ministry outlines plan to displace 2.3 million Palestinians out of Gaza Strip to Egypt or Gulf States.
An Israeli ministry drafted a wartime proposal to transfer the 2.3 million Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip to Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, drawing condemnation from Palestinians and Egypt.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office downplayed the report compiled by the Intelligence Ministry as a “concept paper” that was meant to be a hypothetical exercise.
“The issue of the ‘day after’ has not been discussed in any official forum in Israel, which is focused at this time on destroying the governing and military capabilities of Hamas,” the prime minister’s office said.
From the Associated Press:
The document is dated Oct. 13, six days after Hamas militants killed more than 1,400 people in southern Israel and took over 240 hostage in an attack that provoked a devastating Israeli war in Gaza. It was first published by Sicha Mekomit, a local news site.
In its report, the Intelligence Ministry — a junior ministry that conducts research but does not set policy — offered three alternatives “to effect a significant change in the civilian reality in the Gaza Strip in light of the Hamas crimes that led to the Sword of Iron war.”
The document’s authors deem this alternative to be the most desirable for Israel’s security.
The document proposes moving Gaza’s civilian population to tent cities in northern Sinai, then building permanent cities and an undefined humanitarian corridor. A security zone would be established inside Israel to block the displaced Palestinians from entering. The report did not say what would become of Gaza once its population is cleared out.
The document acknowledged the plan “is liable to be complicated in terms of international legitimacy” but claimed it would reduce civilian casualties as Israel’s assault on Gaza continues.
“In our assessment, fighting after the population is evacuated would lead to fewer civilian casualties compared to what could be expected if the population were to remain,” the paper states.
Palestinian leadership condemned the plan, claiming the mass displacement of Palestinians would be “tantamount to declaring a new war.”
“We are against transfer to any place, in any form, and we consider it a red line that we will not allow to be crossed,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said of the report.
“What happened in 1948 will not be allowed to happen again.”
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi earlier this month likewise rejected “the liquidation of the Palestinian cause and the explosion of Palestinians to Sinai.”
Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said the paper threatened to damage relations with Egypt.
“If this paper is true, this is a grave mistake. It might cause a strategic rift between Israel and Egypt,” said Guzansky. “I see it either as ignorance or someone who wants to negatively affect Israel-Egypt relations, which are very important at this stage.”
The document dismisses two other options to address tensions with the Palestinians: reinstating the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority as the sovereign in Gaza, or supporting a local regime.
The Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority lost power when Hamas took over Gaza and the West Bank in 2007 following the Battle of Gaza.
Reinstating the Palestinian Authority would be “an unprecedented victory of the Palestinian national movement, a victory that will claim the lives of thousands of Israeli civilians and soldiers, and does not safeguard Israel’s security,” the document says.
The document also proposes Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates support the plan either financially or by taking in uprooted residents of Gaza as refugees that would become permanent citizens.
