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A leaked document from the Israeli Intelligence Ministry, dated less than a week after the October 7 Hamas attack, proposes the permanent transfer of Gazans to Egypt. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed the authenticity of the document, but dismissed it as simply a “conceptual document,” while Egypt and much of the Arab world publicly opposed the forced displacement of millions of Palestinians. But the revealed plans showed fears among many Palestinians that Israel’s ultimate purpose in its current offensive is the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, a reenactment of the 1948 Nakba in which an estimated 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes. and became refugees during the creation of Israel. For more information, we hear from Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, editor of +972 magazine and Local Call, who says that while the Intelligence Ministry is not particularly powerful, “this is an official state document that necessarily recommends that the government expose ethnic cleansing of Gaza. » Meanwhile, radical settlers in the West Bank are increasingly using the war in Gaza as a canopy to drive Palestinians from their homes and towns, under the risk of fatal violence. “Death is everywhere now and things are deteriorating very, very quickly,” says Abraham.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s Democracy Now, Democraticnow. org, Report on War and Peace. My name is Amy Goodman.
Israel is facing growing foreign condemnation for its 28-day assault on Gaza. More than 9,200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the past four weeks, at least 3,800 children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
On Thursday, a U. N. expert organization issued a statement expressing, quote, “its growing horror” at Israel’s repeated airstrikes on the Jabaliya refugee camp, Gaza’s largest, which have killed at least 195 other people in recent days. quote: “The Israeli airstrike on a residential compound in the Jabalia refugee camp is a flagrant violation of foreign law and a war crime. Attacking a camp housing civilians, adding women and children, is a general violation of the norms of proportionality and difference between combatants and civilians,” they said. Residents of Jabaliya say parts of the refugee camp have been razed to the ground.
HASSAN AHMED RAYAN: [translated] The domain is absolutely destroyed. There are no Hamas fighters here. They are all civilians. They are all innocent. There’s no resistance here. There is a bakery and houses here. One of them had a hundred more inmates and another fifty people. It’s destruction. It is a war against God and His prophet. It is a war of extermination.
AMY GOODMAN: As Israeli troops encircle Gaza City and intensify their aerial bombardments, questions are being raised about Israel’s long-term plan for Gaza. An Israeli government office, Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence, has proposed the permanent transfer of Gaza’s 2. 3 million citizens to Egypt’s Sinai. In an October 14 document, the small government company said that forcibly transferring civilians from Gaza to Egypt, quote, “would produce positive long-term strategic results. “It calls for a three-stage process: the status quo of tent camps in Sinai and the opening of a humanitarian corridor, followed by the structure of permanent cities in North Sinai and the creation, quote, of an “arid zone of several kilometers. . . on the inside. ” Egypt” – and it says, and I quote: “The population will not be allowed to return to activities/residences near the border with Israel”, without naming them.
Many Palestinians in northern Gaza refused to comply with Israeli orders to leave their homes, fearing they would never be allowed to return. It’s unclear exactly how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or his cabinet have responded to those proposals, yet the Biden administration has publicly expressed opposition to plans for mass movements of Palestinians. Secretary of State Tony Blinken is in Israel today, where he will reportedly pause the bombing in a humanitarian manner. Blinken also plans to stop in Jordan, where he is expected to reassure Jordan that the U. S. opposes the move. from Palestinians to Egypt or Jordan.
To learn more, we’re joined by Yuval Abraham, a Jerusalem-based Israeli journalist who works for 972 magazine and Local Call. He helped lay out this proposal in his article titled “Expel all Palestinians from Gaza, Israeli government ministry recommends. “Yuval also pointed to the increasing number of attacks on Palestinians by Israeli foot soldiers and settlers in the occupied West Bank. He joined us Wednesday during a storm in Jerusalem. I asked him how he knew that the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence document was real.
YUVAL ABRAHAM: I know it’s true because I checked it in front of the Ministry of Intelligence. And as you said, Amy, this is a document that begs the question: What will happen to the civilian population of Gaza after the war?And this intelligence ministry writes policy documents and stores them with the defense status quo in Israel. And I mean, as you mentioned, the 10-page document goes into detail and explicitly recommends this process of forced movement. It also recommends that the foreign network be presented as a humanitarian need, as something greater than the opportunities it proposes in the documents, i. e. that the population will remain and die by the tens of thousands.
Now, I think it’s vital to emphasize that this branch is small. Despite its name, it does not deal with classified data and is rarely up to the task of an Israeli intelligence organization. And it’s not considered a very real organization. However, it is an official state document that necessarily recommends that the government ethnically cleanse Gaza. And it was written at a time when those concepts are making their way into mainstream Israeli public discourse and the Israeli media.
Amy, I think a lot of us, a lot of other people in Israel, are in shock. They feel the need for things not to go back to the way they were before October 7. They talk about security, especially after all the atrocities committed through Hamas on October 7, the other people who were illegally abducted and taken to Gaza, and the killings. And I think we have politicians who don’t have a political vision for the future. And sadly, they have this sense of security to commit horrendous and appalling war crimes in Gaza and have already killed more than 3,000 children.
And I believe that this document and this bombing crusade are the reflection of a vision of the world that only has the strength to verify in order to solve a political problem. And the harmful thing about this worldview is that it fails. And when that fails, there are calls to use more and more force. And if you take that worldview to the extreme, you’ll end up with concepts like the ones we read in this paper.
And that’s why, and this is the last thing I’ll say for now, that’s why, as an Israeli, it’s very, very vital for me to emphasize that I don’t think we can have security if the Palestinians don’t. have freedom And if we don’t have a long-term political vision that ends the scenario in which I have rights, freedom of movement and a way to vote, and the Palestinians who live next to me don’t, we are not going to have security. . And I am very worried, you know, I feel that this war in Gaza will not bring us security and that it will end, even if we overthrow Hamas, killing as many Palestinian civilians, we will create the next Hamas. . And I don’t think that’s the case; I believe this homicide is unjustifiable. And I’m worried that the next war will break out and they’ll say, “That didn’t work. ” Now we have to use even more force and even more force. And although this document does not seem feasible at this time, I believe this is the harmful path we are on now. And that is why it is so vital to contextualize things and communicate about a long-term political solution to the problem. And our leaders are not doing it now.
AMY GOODMAN: Yuval, can you tell us where this came from, who it went to, and how genuine it is?
YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yes, so this document comes from the Ministry of Intelligence, which has a very small budget. And it turns out they started it. They regularly send their documents to Israeli government offices, as well as to Israeli intelligence and security services.
AMY GOODMAN: So can you tell us what it means to have disclosed it and how you’re responding?
YUVAL ABRAHAM: yes, you know, to me it’s very, very disturbing and disturbing, because the government hasn’t identified the newspaper. And none of us know what the ultimate goal of the government in Gaza is. I think in the Israeli media this has been minimized as anything that might undermine Israel’s legitimacy in the war abroad. Many other people don’t take this very seriously. This branch is not considered, as I said, very influential. But we have not heard a transparent and categorical rejection of the document by the government. And yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you know what the right-wing Israeli Misgav Institute is, which has a similar proposal?
YUVAL ABRAHAM: Sure, yes. It’s a very engaging story. So, this right-wing think tank called Misgav, led by Meir Ben-Shabbat, who was a very close collaborator of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a very high-ranking former Israeli security official. A little over two weeks ago, the same conclusion was reached, namely that Israel will have to forcibly transfer all civilians from Gaza, from Gaza, to Egypt.
And this report was written and drafted through Amir Weitmann, who is also a Likud member and an associate of Gila Gamliel, who is the Likud member who heads the Ministry of Intelligence, who wrote a report with the same conclusions. Today, those links between Likud and right-wing think tanks are also drawing attention since the Ministry of Intelligence hired the Misgav Institute a month ago to conduct studies as a freelancer for the Ministry of Government.
Now, officially, the Department of Intelligence (you know, I’ve talked to resources there) says, “In this document, we fully endorse the recommendation and independently proposed it. “In my opinion, it is very transparent that there is an aggregate here between the ministry and this far-right think tank. And all of this, it turns out, boils down to other types of ruling Likud party officials.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about Egypt’s role?Earlier this month, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi rejected the forced displacement of millions of Palestinians to the Sinai, which is Egypt. That’s what he
PRESIDENT ABDEL FATTAH EL-SISI: Egypt rejects any attempt to increase the Palestinian factor through military means or by forcibly displacing the Palestinians from their lands, which would be at the expense of the countries of the region. The concept of moving Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Egypt simply means that a similar scenario will occur if Palestinians move from the West Bank to Jordan. This means that the concept of a Palestinian state that we are discussing and that the foreign network is discussing will no longer be possible.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s what President Sisi, the Egyptian president, said. Middle East Eye reported in the Israeli media, saying: “Israel is proposing to cancel a significant portion of Egypt’s foreign debt through the World Bank in order to induce the cash-strapped government of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to open its doors to displaced Palestinians. is revealed once again through the Israeli news Ynet. Yuval?
YUVAL ABRAHAM: Wow, yes, I mean, it’s clear that Egypt’s refusal to open its borders is one of the many reasons why this forcible movement plan may not come to fruition. You know, I think it’s a feasible scenario, if they open their borders and tens or hundreds of thousands of Palestinians leave Gaza, at least some of them are not allowed to return. This happened in 1967 and 1948.
And the document, which you can read in its entirety in 972 magazine or Local CallArray, actually deals with that. The document states that Egypt will have a legal responsibility under humanitarian law to allow Palestinian civilians to flee, enter and seek safety. refuge in their territory. And it calls for mobilizing the United States and other Western countries to pressure Egypt to do so. Now, you know, everything: we’re in an excessive fog situation and we don’t know how it’s going to evolve, but the fears are absolutely justifiable.
AMY GOODMAN: Yuval, I need to thank you for putting up with this rain in Jerusalem. But I tried to keep going.
YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yes. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to another article you wrote, “Settlers Exploit Gaza War to Release Pogroms in West Bank. “While the U. S. government, before Hamas’ wonderful attack on Oct. 7 that killed some 1,400 Israelis, the U. S. government, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, about 10 days earlier, said that the Middle East is now calm and that we can just move on to other issues. But in fact, in the West Bank it’s been the deadliest year in years, hasn’t it?Every day, more than one Palestinian dies, either through the Israeli army or Jewish settlers. And now, since October 7, Israeli settler attacks have left at least 115 Palestinians dead, more than 2,000 injured and some 1,000 forced to flee their homes. Can you tell us what it’s like to be in the West Bank, this increased violence by Jewish settlers?And also, do you have a friend who has been the target of violence?
YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yes, yes, Amy, of course. I mean, I just got a text message saying that 123 Palestinians have already been killed in the West Bank since the beginning of the war, and seven of them have been killed by Israeli settlers. And I spend a lot of my time in the West Bank, specifically in a domain called Masafer Yatta, which is a domain in the far south of the West Bank, a network of villages that for decades have faced very intense tensions and violence from the Israeli army, which destroys their homes and refuses to give them permits. as well as the settlers who attack them. And I think what’s happening now is that the settlers and the foot soldiers are taking advantage of the chaos of the war to continue and prevent this forced relocation.
And it was unbelievably terrible to be there the last few nights. We have had incidents where settlers entered a village called Susiya. They grabbed a boy and his father and told them, “You have 24 hours to leave the village, in a single day you will kill each and every one of the villagers differently. We had an incident where a settler came to the village and shot a Palestinian who was next to the mosque. There are incidents of torture, abuse and humiliation. And it happens each and every night. For example, last night I stayed up with a family. They don’t sleep. And each and every one of them just. . . We see the settlers entering the village.
And I think that, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, thirteen Palestinian communities have already been displaced in the West Bank because of this settler violence. As long as the war continues, the bombardment of Gaza will continue and this scenario will continue.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is a guy who, for more than 15 years, has been convicted in an Israeli court of being part of a terrorist organization and inciting violence against Palestinians. acquisition of 10,000 rifles for Israelis in West Bank settlements. Can you explain what that means, has this been achieved, and what does it mean for settler violence?What does it mean, especially now?
YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yes, of course. So what’s being conveyed now is a total inability to differentiate between who’s a soldier and who’s a settler. Is it a settler who’s in reserve? Is it a settler who got a gun from Ben-Gvir and put on, you know, his military uniform?Are they soldiers? There is widespread confusion. And we witness, quote-unquote, many “independent settler initiatives,” in which they dress in soldiers’ uniforms, enter villages, and harass Palestinians. That’s what the army calls it, referring to all the territories in the West Bank, where there are 180 small Palestinian villages and all Israeli settlements. And Israel’s policy for many years has been to try to forcibly expel those 180 communities.
And I think today, with more and more settlers getting guns, with all those incidents of killings and threats, this eviction is taking place. And I think, without a doubt, arming such a huge number of people is part of this process. , which, as you know, is also understood in Israeli society as a reaction to 7 October, to the desire for other people to be armed in order to protect themselves. At least in the West Bank, such weapons are used to drive Palestinians from their homes.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, how have Israeli activists and foreign charities supported Palestinians in the West Bank?
YUVAL ABRAHAM: So, I’m not sure about foreign charities. I mean, I know that many of them have provided those communities that are in danger of forcible relocation, little houses that we can live in, because Israel is coming to destroy their homes. . They can’t get a building permit. And it was incredibly ironic. For example, two days ago I was in a village called Zenuta, in this domain of Masafer Yatta, and the locals were dismantling all those houses with their own hands. And they were essentially abandoning the village. I spoke to a 70-year-old man who told me that. . . You know, we drank tea, and he said, “This is probably the last time I’ll drink tea in this position that I grew up in. “those foreign organizations. . . You know, all that aid is now being dismantled through the locals, who care about their lives.
I think what we Israeli activists try to do there, and it doesn’t work either, but the fact that we’re Israelis, the fact that we speak Hebrew, gives us a limited privilege. And when those attacks happen, we try to de-escalate the situation. We try to make sure that the settlers who attack the village see us, that we are the first, that we can film them, that there are bloodhounds here. We tried to speak in Hebrew. But things. . . You know, death is everywhere now and things are deteriorating very, very quickly. And I feel like all the things we used to do don’t work anymore.
And, once again, I have to ask the world to wake up and call for a ceasefire. If we continue to destroy Gaza in this way, it will destroy us as well. We will have no security in the future, and that will destroy the West Bank and the option to live here in equality and peace between Israelis and Palestinians. So it’s time to change course and communicate about the political issues of the moment.
AMY GOODMAN: Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist based in Jerusalem who works for 972 mag and Local Call. We will link to his article “Expel all Palestinians from Gaza, Israeli government ministry recommends. “
Upon our return, we spoke with Josh Paul. I resigned from the State Department in protest of the Biden administration’s policies toward Israel and Palestine. I’ll be back in 30 seconds.