Far-right minister wants to settle Israelis in the Gaza Strip
For months, Israel's army has been dropping thousands of bombs on the Gaza Strip in order to defeat Hamas. The far-right Finance Minister Smotrich apparently has another plan: if Israel acts correctly, Palestinians will leave "and we will live in the Gaza Strip", he says.
A far-right Israeli minister is advocating an Israeli resettlement of the Gaza Strip after the war. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told the Israeli Army Radio that if Israel does the right thing, there will be an exodus of Palestinians "and we will live in Gaza".
According to a post by the channel on Platform X, Smotrich also said: "We will not allow a situation in which two million people live there. If there are 100,000 to 200,000 Arabs living in Gaza, the discussion about the day after will be completely different." He added: "They want to leave, they have been living in a ghetto and in suffering for 75 years."
Fearing a mass exodus, both Egypt and Jordan have refused to accept refugees from the embattled Gaza Strip. This also has to do with the fear that this could ultimately become a permanent expulsion. Smotrich is an advocate of the vision of "Greater Israel" and is also in favor of annexing the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinians, on the other hand, claim the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Arab-dominated eastern part of Jerusalem as the territory of a future state of their own. Israel conquered the territories in 1967.
In 2005, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip and evacuated more than 20 Israeli settlements. For the United Nations, the Gaza Strip is still occupied territory for Israel because it controls all but one border crossing. Israel maintains that the occupation ended with the withdrawal in 2005.
USA against reoccupation
The USA is clearly opposed to Israel reoccupying the Gaza Strip. It also rejects the forced expulsion of the 2.2 million Palestinians living in the narrow coastal strip. The USA wants a reformed Palestinian Authority to take control of the Gaza Strip after the war. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects this. He wants the army to retain security control even after the war and is calling for Gaza to be demilitarized.
According to the health authority in Gaza, which is controlled by the Islamist Hamas, almost 21,700 people have been killed in the coastal area so far. The Gaza war was triggered by the worst massacre in Israel's history, carried out by terrorists from the Islamist Hamas and other groups in Israel on October 7.
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The far-right Finance Minister Smotrich has suggested that if Israel acts appropriately, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip might leave, enabling Israelis to live in the strip. This proposal has sparked concern among neighboring countries, such as Egypt and Jordan, who fear a mass exodus could lead to a permanent displacement of Palestinians. The conflict in the Gaza Strip has been marked by ongoing clashes between Israel and the militant group Hamas, resulting in thousands of casualties among the Palestinian population.
Source: www.ntv.de
