Press Releases

While Palestinians in the Gaza Strip face Israeli and US orchestrated  starvation and famine,  a $2 billion proposal coordinated by the Israeli regime and supported by the U.S. backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) outlines the creation of expulsion camps for Palestinians in Gaza. According to Israeli war minister Katz, these “Humanitarian Transit Areas” will be constructed during the supposed upcoming 60-day ceasefire. It is no secret that the sites will be used to imprison and then forcibly transfer Palestinians under the guise of “voluntary migration.” As the US and the Israeli regime move forward with their plans to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, states continue to evade their legal obligations to impose sanctions, and instead increase their complicity.

Israeli war minister Israel Katz has publicly confirmed that initial plans aim to begin with 600,000 Palestinians and aim for the entire population of 2 million in the Gaza Strip.  Those who are ‘vetted and approved’ will be forcefully confined into "humanitarian cities"—in reality, fenced camps under US-Israeli military control and will be unable to leave. Unless, of course, they participate in the Israeli “voluntary migration” scheme which equates to their forcible transfer outside the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu, during his visit to the White House, stated “We’re working with the United States very closely about finding countries” to take Palestinian refugees from the Gaza Strip, with Trump claiming “We’ve had great cooperation from… surrounding countries.”

Those not approved or who refuse to go to the “humanitarian cities” are effectively marked for death: in areas designated as “military zones,” or the  85% of the Gaza Strip that is already under forced displacement orders, Palestinians will be subject to ongoing Israeli bombardment, destruction and starvation. The Israeli regime has promised that only those inside the camps will be spared from attack. But given its consistent pattern of deception—fake evacuation corridors, killing during evacuations, and the bombing of UN shelters—these promises carry no credibility. Once again the choices given to Palestinians in Gaza is either forced displacement and transfer or death. Forced into the transit camps brings Palestinians more firmly under the Israeli system of oppression: inhumane and degrading treatment, torture, sexual violence, and extrajudicial killing.

This latest proposal follows the failure of the Israeli regime’s stated objective: namely to dismantle the resistance, revealing the limits of the Israeli forces and its failures to eradicate it. Now, the Israeli regime is pivoting to isolate the resistance from its people through mass incarceration in the transit sites and ultimately forcibly displace them outside the Gaza Strip.

The ethnic cleansing plan includes the involvement of international bodies; so, it's not surprising that the EU recently announced an agreement to support increased aid distribution in the Gaza Strip.  Instead of fulfilling its obligations to impose sanctions against the Israeli regime and uphold the UN-led humanitarian system, the EU has instead brokered an agreement with the Israeli regime to increase the amount and distribution of aid in the Gaza Strip. In a similar move aimed at salvaging its credibility, the GHF has proposed a new distribution approach, where aid will be delivered in coordination with “community leaders,” instead of only distributed at its militarized sites in the south of the Strip. These actions signify attempts to minimize deep criticism of both the EU and the GHF; but constitute the continued failure and deliberate evasion of states and the EU to take practical measures to halt the Israeli genocide and its weaponization of aid, through the GHF. 

Regardless of how the Israeli regime and the US administration attempt to dress up their plans for the Gaza Strip, the real aim remains the same: the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population there. As “ceasefire talks” are utilized once again to continue the genocide and entrench Israeli  military presence, states continue to fail to fulfill their obligations to impose sanctions, such as the severing of EU-Israel Association Agreement. Meanwhile, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are faced with either death or displacement.