Ben Gvir: Netanyahu showing ‘some openness’ to encouraging Palestinian migration from Gaza
Far-right minister also calls on Israel to intensify fighting in Gaza, says terms of hostage deal being discussed are ‘unacceptable,’ threatens to bolt coalition
Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said on Sunday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was showing “some openness” over the idea of “encouraging migration” of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“Ideas like settling in Gaza are welcome; the only times we defeated our enemies were when we took territory from them,” Ben Gvir told Army Radio in an interview on Sunday morning. “But that doesn’t satisfy me. I also want to encourage emigration [of Palestinians from Gaza].”
“I am working hard to promote the encouragement of migration from Gaza with the prime minister, and I am beginning to discover some openness on the matter,” he said.
When pushed, the minister would not definitively say whether the premier supports the so-called “transfer” of the Gaza population.
The stance is shared by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the far-right Religious Zionist Party, who said last week that Israel should resettle Gaza and that half of the roughly 2.2 million Palestinians who currently live there should be encouraged to leave within the next two years.
Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 under the Disengagement Plan, uprooting some 9,000 people and demolishing 21 settlements.
Ben Gvir also called for fighting to be intensified in Gaza.
“We have a historic opportunity to collapse Hamas. We have a historic opportunity to restore deterrence, reoccupy the Gaza Strip and encourage voluntary emigration. This is what will bring peace to the south,” he said.
The Israeli far right has been pushing for population transfer and “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from Gaza, and the reestablishment of Jewish settlements in their place.
Ultra-Orthodox Housing and Construction Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf also called for Israelis to resettle Gaza as he toured the border last week with Daniella Weiss, the head of the Nachala Settlement Movement.
Netanyahu has repeatedly said such actions are not the goal of the war, nor are they on the agenda.
Former defense minister and IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon said on Saturday that Israel’s leadership, driven by far-right elements who seek to resettle Gaza, was taking the country down a path of ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, and warned that Netanyahu’s government was leading the nation to “destruction.”
Ben Gvir also issued an ultimatum over the renewed push for a hostage-ceasefire deal during his interview with Army Radio, warning that the terms under discussion were unacceptable to him.
“The terms currently being discussed are irrelevant as far as I am concerned, and the prime minister very much does not want Otzma Yehudit to leave the government,” Ben Gvir said.
Ben Gvir and Smtorich have repeatedly threatened to leave the coalition, thus toppling the government, in the last year as they strongly oppose a deal that would bring the hostages home in exchange for a ceasefire and Israel releasing Palestinian prisoners from its prisons.
Supporters of such a deal have accused Netanyahu of failing to exert his control and authority over his government and allowing himself to be swayed by the more extreme ends of his coalition.
Hamas representatives arrived in Cairo on Saturday for talks with Egyptian negotiators on a potential hostage-ceasefire deal in Gaza as efforts for a second deal continue, as Israel marks a year since the first one saw 105 hostages returned home.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Other than the 105 hostages released in the last deal, four were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 37 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
