Israel tells army to prepare plan for Palestinians to voluntarily leave Gaza | Gaza

Israel’s defence minister has ordered the military to prepare plans to allow Palestinians “who wish to leave” Gaza to exit, after Donald Trump suggested the US take over the territory and resettle its residents in other countries.

A Hamas official attacked the proposal as a “declaration of intent to occupy” Gaza, as Egypt, which Trump named as a possible destination for Palestinians, launched an intense behind-the-scenes diplomatic campaign to block it going further.

Cairo’s envoys warned the US and its allies that it would resist any attempts to move Palestinians across the border, and said the plan threatened its decades-old peace deal with Israel, a template for later regional normalisation deals.

Inside Israel, mainstream political reactions to Trump’s comments have ranged only on a spectrum of approval, from delighted celebration among the far right, to the opposition leader, Benny Gantz, saying Israel had “nothing to lose” from the proposal, and Yair Lapid describing the press conference as “good for the state of Israel”.

Their positions reflect popular opinion inside Israel. Eight out of 10 Jewish Israelis support Trump’s call for the “relocation” of Palestinians from Gaza, although only half think it is a practical proposal, according to a poll by the Jewish People Policy Institute.

The only strong opposition to the plan came from a handful of politicians on the far left of Israel’s spectrum; some relatives of hostages still held in Gaza, who said they feared the project could derail the ceasefire deal; and some activists and journalists who echoed international warnings against ethnic cleansing.

“If there were a true opposition in Israel, one with a conscience, a worldview and even some sort of plan for the future, it would’ve raised a loud warning: don’t drink Trump’s potion,” Gur Megiddo wrote in a column for Haaretz.

“The idea of clearing an area of a specific ethnic group, even if it’s a bitter and ruthless enemy, is a concept that Jews – especially the sons of Holocaust survivors like Lapid and Gantz – must never support, no matter the circumstances.”

The announcement by the defence minister, Israel Katz, of orders to the military to prepare air, sea and land options for Palestinians to leave Gaza appeared more political than practical, even if any wanted to go, because no countries have offered to host them.

“The people of Gaza should have the right to freedom of movement and migration,” Katz said in a statement on X, although it was clear the journeys would only be in one direction.

Before the war, Israel’s tight controls on movement in and out of Gaza made it difficult for Palestinians to travel internationally. Restrictions got even tighter after the conflict began; and after Israeli troops began operating near the Rafah crossing last May it was impossible for Palestinians to leave.

An agreement to allow medical evacuations from Gaza was part of the ceasefire deal, and the first group of sick children left on Saturday, although two died before they could be taken out and others had become too sick to move.

Trump’s plan to turn Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East” caused international outrage, including a warning from the UN secretary general, António Guterres, that “it is essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing”.

Forced or coerced displacement is a crime against humanity, illegal under the Geneva conventions, to which Israel and the US are signatories.

In a post on Truth Social on Thursday, Trump said Israel would turn the Gaza Strip over to the US after the fighting ended and that no US soldiers would be needed there.

“The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting. The Palestinians … would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region,” Trump said in a post building on his controversial comments about Gaza’s future this week. “No soldiers by the U.S. would be needed!”

Palestinians in Gaza responded to Trump’s plans with anger and disbelief, and said they would reject any attempt to force them out.

Many have traumatic family memories of the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948, in which about 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes in the war surrounding Israel’s creation, a history that means they are determined to resist further displacement.

Katz also demanded that countries including Spain, Norway and Ireland allow Palestinians from Gaza to “enter their territory”.

Last year the three countries formally recognised a Palestinian state, in a move aimed at supporting a two-state solution. Their decision prompted fury in Israel, which ordered back its ambassadors and accused the countries of rewarding terrorism.

Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, was quick to reject the demand. Palestinians who needed support, including urgent medical treatment, would be welcomed in Spain, but “Gaza is the land of the people of Gaza”, he said in a radio interview. “It should be part of a future Palestinian state.”

Inside Israel the far right embraced Trump’s comments as vindication of their long-term call for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and for Jewish settlement.

The legislator Limor Son Har-Melech said Trump was hailed as “original and creative” for laying out plans that had led her party leader, Itamar Ben-Gvir, to be labelled “fascist, extremist, delusional”.

In a radio interview she described a vision of Jewish Israeli children playing in Gaza, Haaretz reported. Her party would only return to the coalition government, which it left in opposition to the ceasefire deal, when “we see buses coming out” of Gaza carrying its Palestinian residents, she added.