JERUSALEM: An Israeli minister on Monday called for the return of settlers to Gaza and said Palestinians should be encouraged to leave, a day after similar remarks by another far-right politician.
“We must promote a solution to encourage the emigration of Gaza’s residents,” Israel’s firebrand National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said as war with the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers rages on.
Israel unilaterally withdrew the last of its troops and settlers in 2005, ending a presence inside Gaza that began in 1967 but maintaining near complete control over the territory’s borders.
The government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not officially suggested it has any plans to evict Gazans or to send Jewish settlers back to the territory since the current war broke out on October 7.
But Ben Gvir argued that the departure of Palestinians and re-establishment of Israeli settlements “is a correct, just, moral and humane solution.”
“This is an opportunity to develop a project to encourage Gaza’s residents to emigrate to countries around the world,” he told a meeting of his ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit, or “Jewish Power,” party.
Ben Gvir’s comment came the day after far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also called for the return of settlers to Gaza, equally saying Israel should “encourage” the territory’s approximately 2.4 million Palestinians to leave.
Smotrich said that for Israel to “control the territory militarily for a long time, we need a civilian presence.”
Both Ben Gvir and Smotrich live in settlements in the occupied West Bank, considered illegal under international law.
Hamas on Sunday condemned Smotrich’s comments as a “vile mockery and a war crime” and added that Gazans “will stand firm and steadfast in the face of all attempts to displace them from their land and homes.”
The October 7 Hamas attack left about 1,140 people dead in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israel’s ongoing offensive, aimed at destroying Hamas, has killed at least 21,978 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
With heavy combat raging on, 85 percent of people in the besieged Gaza Strip have been internally displaced, according to the United Nations.
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Second Israeli minister calls for return of settlers to Gaza
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Second Israeli minister calls for return of settlers to Gaza
- “We must promote a solution to encourage the emigration of Gaza’s residents,” Israel’s firebrand National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said
South Sudan says its troops are guarding strategic Heglig oil field in Sudan
NAIROBI: South Sudan has sent its troops to neighboring Sudan to guard the strategic Heglig oil field near the border, its military head said on Thursday, days after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took control of it.
Heglig houses the main processing facility for South Sudanese oil, which makes up the bulk of South Sudan’s public revenues. Some oil has continued to flow through Heglig, though at much reduced volumes.
Sudanese government forces and workers at the Heglig oil field withdrew from the area on Sunday to avoid fighting that could have damaged facilities there, government sources told Reuters on Monday.
General Paul Nang, South Sudan chief of defense forces, said the troop deployment was agreed between South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir, Sudan Army Chief General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and RSF head Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
“The three agreed that the area of Heglig should be protected because (it) is a very important strategic area for the two countries,” Nang said in comments on state-owned South Sudan Broadcasting Radio.
“Now it is the forces of South Sudan that are in Heglig.”
Oil is transported through the Greater Nile pipeline system to Port Sudan on the Red Sea for export, making the Heglig site critical both for Sudan’s foreign exchange earnings and for South Sudan, which is landlocked and relies almost entirely on pipelines through Sudan.
Another pipeline, Petrodar, runs from South Sudan’s Upper Nile State to Port Sudan.
The war that started in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the RSF has repeatedly disrupted South Sudan’s oil flows, which before the conflict averaged between 100,000 and 150,000 barrels per day for export via Sudan.
Heglig houses the main processing facility for South Sudanese oil, which makes up the bulk of South Sudan’s public revenues. Some oil has continued to flow through Heglig, though at much reduced volumes.
Sudanese government forces and workers at the Heglig oil field withdrew from the area on Sunday to avoid fighting that could have damaged facilities there, government sources told Reuters on Monday.
General Paul Nang, South Sudan chief of defense forces, said the troop deployment was agreed between South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir, Sudan Army Chief General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and RSF head Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
“The three agreed that the area of Heglig should be protected because (it) is a very important strategic area for the two countries,” Nang said in comments on state-owned South Sudan Broadcasting Radio.
“Now it is the forces of South Sudan that are in Heglig.”
Oil is transported through the Greater Nile pipeline system to Port Sudan on the Red Sea for export, making the Heglig site critical both for Sudan’s foreign exchange earnings and for South Sudan, which is landlocked and relies almost entirely on pipelines through Sudan.
Another pipeline, Petrodar, runs from South Sudan’s Upper Nile State to Port Sudan.
The war that started in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the RSF has repeatedly disrupted South Sudan’s oil flows, which before the conflict averaged between 100,000 and 150,000 barrels per day for export via Sudan.
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