An emerging Israeli debate about the so-called “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip has provoked a chorus of condemnation from the Biden administration and other Western powers.
“They do not want to be forcibly removed from Gaza,” United States State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Wednesday. “They want to remain in Gaza. And that is a choice that we support and that we fully endorse.”
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Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a hard-line politician who has been excluded from the unity government overseeing the war against Hamas, has emerged as a voluble proponent of the idea. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team has downplayed Ben-Gvir’s influence in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and yet nonetheless has issued a series of frank condemnations of the proposal.
“It was irresponsible,” Miller said, referring to recent remarks from Ben-Gvir and Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. “And it was in direct contradiction of the policy of the government, Israel, that has been repeatedly articulated to us, including by the prime minister himself. So, we have been told that those statements do not reflect the policy of the government of Israel.”
The ability of Netanyahu or any number of other Israeli government leaders to set future policy could be on the wane given the simmering anger at the security failures relating to the Oct. 7 rampage across southern Israel that ignited the war.
“Whatever we talk about right now, as a de facto policy, will only last for so long,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior vice president Jonathan Schanzer told the Washington Examiner. “The music will stop here for this government at some point soon — whether that is in six weeks, or in six months. There is a timer. And that timer has already started ticking.”
In the meantime, Netanyahu’s rhetoric has been mixed, according to Israeli reports, as other Israeli politicians express more open interest in the idea.
“Our problem is [finding] countries that are willing to absorb Gazans, and we are working on it,” the Times of Israel quoted Netanyahu as telling his Likud party allies last week.
Israeli Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel argued that week that other countries have a responsibility to aid with the resettlement.
“Voluntary migration is the best and most realistic program for the day after the fighting ends,” she told parliamentary colleagues on Tuesday. “At the end of the war, Hamas rule will collapse. … There will be no work, and 60% of Gaza’s agricultural land will become security buffer zones.”
The discussion has drawn emphatic condemnation from European powers.
“France emphasizes that the forced transfer of populations is a serious violation of international law,” a French Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman said Wednesday. “It is not up to the Israeli government to decide where Palestinians should live on their land.”
Ben-Gvir, who draws his political support from the constituency of Israeli settlers keen to build communities in areas reserved by the United Nations for a future Palestinian state, revels in his role as a lightning rod for Western criticism.
“I really admire the United States of America, but with all due respect, we are not another star in the American flag,” he said Tuesday. “The emigration of hundreds of thousands from Gaza will allow residents [of the border area] to return home and live in security and protect [Israel Defense Forces] soldiers.”
The controversy plays to Ben-Gvir’s potential advantage in the lead-up to snap elections and a political reckoning after the war in Gaza.
“It’s fair to say that he will have some kind of future as a right-of-center politician in the Israeli system,” Schanzer said. “And so, everything that’s happening right now is about playing politics, speaking to the base of the various parties and various segments of Israeli society.”
The political benefit that Netanyahu derives from being perceived as a prudent custodian of the U.S.-Israel alliance indicates that his political interests do not align with Ben-Gvir’s policy preferences, Schanzer said. As U.S. officials took aim at Ben-Gvir, Israeli officials began to leak their own pushback against the far-right lawmaker.
“There are those in Israel who think that there is a willingness on the part of Gazans to emigrate voluntarily,” an unnamed senior Israeli official told Israeli journalists. “It’s a baseless illusion in my opinion. No country will absorb 2 million people, or 1 million, or 100,000, or 5,000. I don’t know where that idea came from.”
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In parallel, another Israeli media outlet reported that military and intelligence officials favor a plan to “hand local management of Gaza over to clans who are traditionally connected to specific cities and sectors,” as the Jerusalem Post put it. Such a proposal could align more easily with the U.S. insistence that Israel avoid any steps that jeopardize a future two-state solution, such as the annexation of territory from the Gaza Strip.
“The secretary has made very clear on a number of occasions that there must be no forced resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza, that Gaza is Palestinian land and should remain so,” Miller said. “And we will continue to make that clear to the government of Israel. And we expect them to make that clear as well.”
