JERUSALEM –An Israeli government ministry has drafted a wartime proposal to transfer the Gaza Strip’s(opens in a new tab) 2.3 million people to Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, drawing condemnation from the Palestinians and worsening tensions with Cairo.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office played down the report compiled by the Intelligence Ministry as a hypothetical exercise — a “concept paper.” But its conclusions deepened long-standing Egyptian fears that Israel wants to make Gaza into Egypt’s problem, and revived for Palestinians memories of their greatest trauma — the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of people who fled or were forced from their homes during the fighting surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948.

“We are against transfer to any place, in any form, and we consider it a red line that we will not allow to be crossed,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said of the report. “What happened in 1948 will not be allowed to happen again.”

A mass displacement, Rudeineh said, would be “tantamount to declaring a new war.”

So far more than 8,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians, have been killed since Israel went to war against Hamas after its Oct. 7 attack.

AIMED AT PRESERVING SECURITY FOR ISRAEL

The document is dated Oct. 13, six days after Hamas militants killed more than 1,400 people in southern Israel and took over 240 hostage in an attack that provoked a devastating Israeli war in Gaza. It was first published by Sicha Mekomit, a local news site.

In its report, the Intelligence Ministry — a junior ministry that conducts research but does not set policy — offered three alternatives “to effect a significant change in the civilian reality in the Gaza Strip in light of the Hamas crimes that led to the Sword of Iron war.”

The document’s authors deem this alternative to be the most desirable for Israel’s security.

The document proposes moving Gaza’s civilian population to tent cities in northern Sinai, then building permanent cities and an undefined humanitarian corridor. A security zone would be established inside Israel to block the displaced Palestinians from entering. The report did not say what would become of Gaza once its population is cleared out.

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report. But Egypt has made clear throughout this latest war that it does not want to take in a wave of Palestinian refugees.

Egypt has long feared that Israel wants to force a permanent expulsion of Palestinians into its territory, as happened during the war surrounding Israel’s independence. Egypt ruled Gaza between 1948 and 1967, when Israel captured the territory, along with the West Bank and east Jerusalem. The vast majority of Gaza’s population are the descendants of Palestinian refugees uprooted from what is now Israel.

Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah El-Sissi, has said a mass influx of refugees from Gaza would eliminate the Palestinian nationalist cause. It would also risk bringing militants into Sinai, where they might launch attacks on Israel, he said. That would endanger the countries’ 1979 peace treaty. He proposed that Israel instead house Palestinians in its Negev Desert, which neighbors the Gaza Strip, until it ends its military operations.

Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said the paper threatened to damage relations with a key partner.

“If this paper is true, this is a grave mistake. It might cause a strategic rift between Israel and Egypt,” said Guzansky, who said he has consulted for the ministry in the past. “I see it either as ignorance or someone who wants to negatively affect Israel-Egypt relations, which are very important at this stage.”

Egypt is a valuable partner that cooperates behind the scenes with Israel, he said. If it is seen as overtly assisting an Israeli plan like this, especially involving the Palestinians, it could be “devastating to its stability.”

QUESTIONS OF LEGITIMACY — AND OTHER POSSIBLE DESTINATIONS

Egypt would not necessarily be the Palestinian refugees’ last stop. The document speaks about Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates supporting the plan either financially, or by taking in uprooted residents of Gaza as refugees and in the long term as citizens. Canada’s “lenient” immigration practices also make it a potential resettlement target, the document adds.

At first glance, this proposal “is liable to be complicated in terms of international legitimacy,” the document acknowledges. “In our assessment, fighting after the population is evacuated would lead to fewer civilian casualties compared to what could be expected if the population were to remain.”

An Israeli official familiar with the document said it isn’t binding and that there was no substantive discussion of it with security officials. Netanyahu’s office called it a “concept paper, the likes of which are prepared at all levels of the government and its security agencies.”

“The issue of the `day after’ has not been discussed in any official forum in Israel, which is focused at this time on destroying the governing and military capabilities of Hamas,” the prime minister’s office said.

The document dismisses the two other options: reinstating the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority as the sovereign in Gaza, or supporting a local regime. Among other reasons, it rejects them as unable to deter attacks on Israel.

The reinstatement of the Palestinian Authority, which was ejected from Gaza after a weeklong 2007 war that put Hamas in power, would be “an unprecedented victory of the Palestinian national movement, a victory that will claim the lives of thousands of Israeli civilians and soldiers, and does not safeguard Israel’s security,” the document says.  – CTV News

article website here

below is another article on this subject.

A leaked document from the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence to an Israeli news site on Monday lays out a plan to transfer more than 2 million Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt’s Sinai desert, reports Joe Lauria.

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News

The document from the Ministry of Intelligence is being downplayed by Israeli officials, who are saying it is not being actively considered while the ground operation is underway.  The document was first published in Hebrew by the news website Sicha Mekomit. The article’s blurb says:

“A document on behalf of the Ministry of Intelligence, the full content of which is published here for the first time, recommends the forced transfer of the population of the Gaza Strip to Sinai permanently, and calls for the international community to be harnessed for the move. The document also suggests promoting a ‘dedicated campaign’ for the residents of Gaza that will ‘motivate them to agree to the plan.’”

The news site’s source said the Ministry’s “personnel stand behind these recommendations” but that they are “not based on military intelligence” and are only used as “a basis for discussions in the government.”

The Times of Israel reported:

“The document is being downplayed by government officials, with the Prime Minister’s Office telling Haaretz that it represents ‘initial thoughts’ on the issue, which is currently not being considered by authorities focused on the war effort and not the day after.

The document, which is dated October 13, calls for the civilian population to be moved to tent cities in northern Sinai, and eventually the building of permanent cities and the opening of a humanitarian corridor. The plan includes a several-kilometer-wide ‘sterile’ buffer zone inside Egypt, to ensure the population cannot settle on Israel’s borders.”

Verified document from Israeli Ministry of Intelligence on October 13 suggests forced displacement of Gaza civilians to Egypt would “yield positive and long term strategic results”

The advisory document envisions a three stage process including the establishment of tent cities… pic.twitter.com/T5JWp9QGkv

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 30, 2023

According to Sicha Mekomit, the document says, “The messages [to the Gazans] should revolve around the loss of the land, that is, to make it clear that there is no longer any hope of returning to the territories that Israel will occupy in the near future … The image should be ‘Allah made sure that you lost this land because of the leadership of Hamas – there is no choice but to move to another place with the help of Your Muslim brothers.”  

It is a cynical message in the extreme to sell a crime against humanity to a totally desperate population. “The term ‘forcible transfer’ describes the forced relocation of civilian populations as part of an organized offensive against that population. It is a crime against humanity punishable by the International Criminal Court (ICC),” according to the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School.  The ICC is currently investigating possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel and Palestine.

According to Sicha Mekomit, the Israeli government is well aware of the international damage to Israel’s reputation that would result from implementing such a plan by force:

“It is claimed [in the document] that if the population of Gaza remains in the Strip there will be ‘many Arab deaths’ during the expected occupation of Gaza, and this will damage Israel’s international image even more than the deportation of the population. For all these reasons, the recommendation of the Ministry of Intelligence is to promote the transfer of all citizens from Gaza to Sinai permanently.”

According to The Washington Post, Egypt and the United States have discussed ways to keep the Palestinian population from being forced out of Gaza.  According to a White House readout of a call, the U.S. and Egyptian leaders “discussed the importance of protecting civilian lives, respect for international humanitarian law, and ensuring that Palestinians in Gaza are not displaced to Egypt or any other nation.”

Most Gazans are already refugees or descendants of refugees who were expelled from their homes by Israel in 1948 in the violent creation of the state of Israel.  – Consortium News

article website here

Document was likely leaked by Israel to test the water for support about this idea.  I am sure the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the the West Bank of Palestinians has always been front and centre in the minds of many Israelis all the way back to well before 1948. This is their chance to make it happen.  Is this what this Hamas attack on Israel was about?  Something does not smell right.

I still have not heard any believable excuse yet as to how Israel’s military and Intelligence Agencies did not notice that the October attack by Hamas,  Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, was being planned.  That hundreds people were training.  All of this over a long period of time.  In a very small area of the Middle East.  It just does not make sense.

As for the elimination of all Palestinians from Gaza, this would create a huge global response the likes that thee world has never seen.  Israel would become an international pariah as any country that supports this. Global civil unrest and violence.  Attacks against Jews all over the world.  Things would get ugly very quickly. Would Canada support this?  If the US supports it, then Canada will fall in line. Its what we do. What foreign policy does Canada have that is different from the US?

“Egypt would not necessarily be the Palestinian refugees’ last stop. The document speaks about Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates supporting the plan either financially, or by taking in uprooted residents of Gaza as refugees and in the long term as citizens. Canada’s “lenient” immigration practices also make it a potential resettlement target, the document adds.”

Imagine Canada taking in 2 million Palestinians refugees.  Just think about that. “Lenient” immigration practices…. Is this how the rest of the world see our country?  I guess, seeing how we welcomed former Ukrainian Waffen SS Nazis with open arms, its hard to argue against that.