JERUSALEM: One of the senior figures in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition called on Sunday for Palestinian residents of Gaza to leave the besieged enclave, making way for Israelis who could “make the desert bloom.”
The comments by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has been excluded from the war cabinet and discussions of day-after arrangements in Gaza, appear to underscore fears in much of the Arab world that Israel wants to drive Palestinians out of land where they want to build a future state, repeating the mass dispossession of Palestinians when Israel was created in 1948.
“What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,” Smotrich told Army Radio. “If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after will be totally different.”
He said if the 2.3 million population were no longer there “growing up on the aspiration to destroy the state of Israel,” Gaza would be seen differently in Israel.
“Most of Israeli society will say ‘why not, it’s a nice place, let’s make the desert bloom, it doesn’t come at anyone’s expense’.”
Smotrich, whose hard-right Religious Zionism party draws support from Israel’s settler community, has made similar comments in the past, setting himself at odds with Israel’s most important ally, the United States.
But his views do not reflect the official government position that Gazans will be able to return to their homes after the war against Hamas which controls Gaza, now nearing the start of its fourth month.
Smotrich’s party, which helped Netanyahu secure the majority he needed to become prime minister for the sixth time almost exactly a year ago, has seen its approval ratings slump since the start of the conflict.
Opinion polls also indicate that most Israelis do not support the return of Israeli settlements to Gaza, after they were moved out in 2005 when the army withdrew.
Palestinians and leaders of Arab countries have accused Israel of seeking a new “Nakba” (catastrophe), the name given to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes in the wake of the 1948 war that accompanied the founding of the state of Israel.
Most ended up in neighboring Arab states, and Arab leaders have said any latter-day move to displace Palestinians would be unacceptable.
Israel withdrew its military and settlers from Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation, and Netanyahu has said it does not intend to maintain a permanent presence again, but that Israel would maintain security control for an indefinite period.
However there has been little clarity about Israel’s longer-term intentions, and countries including the United States have said that Gaza should be governed by Palestinians.
Israeli minister repeats call for Palestinians to leave Gaza
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Israeli minister repeats call for Palestinians to leave Gaza
- “What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,” Smotrich told Army Radio
UN humanitarian chief’s fresh funding call as Sudan crisis passes 1,000 days amid famine, mass displacement
- ‘Today we are signaling that the international community will work together to bring this suffering to an end,’ Tom Fletcher tells fundraising event in Washington
- Sudan is a central pillar of the UN’s global humanitarian plan for 2026, which aims to save 87m lives worldwide, he adds
NEW YORK CITY: The UN on Tuesday launched a renewed appeal for funding and the political backing to address what it described as the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Sudan, which has now been locked in civil war for more than 1,000 days.
Speaking at a fundraising event for Sudan in Washington, organized by the US Institute for Peace, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Tom Fletcher, said the scale of the suffering in Sudan had reached intolerable levels marked by famine, mass displacement and widespread sexual violence against women and girls.
“The horrific humanitarian crisis in Sudan has endured more than 1,000 days — too long,” he said. “Too many days of famine, of brutal atrocities, of lives uprooted and destroyed.”
The global community was now united in its desire to halt the suffering and ensure life-saving aid reaches those most in need, Fletcher said.
“Today we are signaling that the international community will work together to bring this suffering to an end,” he added.
Sudan is a central pillar of the UN’s global humanitarian plan for 2026, which aims to save 87 million lives worldwide, Fletcher explained as he thanked donors, including the US, the EU and the UAE, for stepping forward.
“Sudan is the most important component of that plan,” he said, noting that humanitarian operations there have been chronically underfunded and plagued by danger. “We have lost hundreds of colleagues in Sudan, colleagues of incredible courage.”
The UN plans to provide food, medicine, water and sanitation services to more than 14 million people across Sudan this year, as well as protection for vulnerable groups, Fletcher said.
He stressed that funding alone would not be sufficient, however, and called for stronger measures to protect civilians and aid workers, secure humanitarian access and support a temporary truce between the warring factions.
“The money is not enough,” he said. “We need the air assets, the security, the medical support for our teams, and the mediation work that has to underpin the access.”
The UN will work, through the Sudan Humanitarian Initiative, with the so-called “Quad” group of international partners (the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE) and others to identify priority areas for urgent action and remove obstacles to the delivery of aid, Fletcher said.
He added that the UN seeks visible progress toward a humanitarian truce in Sudan within the next few weeks, and called for those guilty of any violations in the country to be held accountable.
“We have set a target date of the beginning of Ramadan to make visible progress on this work,” Fletcher said. Ramadan is expected to begin on or around Feb. 17 this year.
Quoting UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, he added that the urgency of ending the conflict was growing as the third anniversary of its outbreak on April 15, 2023, approaches.
“The guns must fall silent and a path to peace must be charted,” Fletcher said, adding that the UN fully supports efforts to secure a humanitarian truce and rapidly scale up aid across Sudan.
“Today, we’re saying, ‘Enough.’ Let today be the signal that the world is uniting in solidarity for practical impact.”
