Why “transfer” from Gaza is the Hamas war’s biggest taboo
NY Post
The massacre by Hamas of 1,200 Israelis last October 7 triggered the Israeli army’s invasion of the Gaza Strip to eradicate Hamas, demolish its military infrastructure and liberate 240 hostages from captivity.
Nearly 28,000 Palestinians have died in the months since, according to the Hamas-run health administration. And Israel’s military operations have displaced hundreds of thousands more. The result: The Hamas assailants are increasingly portrayed as victims in a manipulative twisting of the truth. In its 1988 Covenant, Hamas made its goals clear: “To raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.” If not destroyed, the war of Hamas against Israel will continue without end.
One solution to Hamas’ intractable violence has been the transfer of Gazans from Gaza. In November, Israel’s Right-wing Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for upwards of 1.8 million Gazans to “voluntarily” leave the Gaza Strip, while last month Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhyu was reportedly in talks to resettle Gazan to locations as far flung as Congo.
The idea of Arab population transfer is nothing new. Indeed, resettlement touches upon Zionism’s century-long predicament with its Arab neighbors. Stalwart Zionists – Theodore Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion – favored encouraging Arab migration to nearby countries during the period around Israel’s independence. Approximately 500,000 Arabs fled Israel amid the turmoil of 1948; another 250,000 left the West Bank for Jordan in the decades that followed.
Confounded by a large hostile Arab population within the territorial additions that followed 1967’s Six-Day War, Israeli political leaders, Levi Eshkol and Moshe Dayan, promoted Arab emigration to nearby Jordan and even distant Latin America. Although no plan was ever enacted, today, some half a million people of Palestinian origin make their home in Chile.
In recent years, Israel’s security establishment began to revisit Gazan resettlement following a series of brief, yet bloody, battles with Hamas. According to the noted Israeli television commentator Ohad Hemo, who specializes in Arab Affairs: “The dream of every youth in Gaza is to emigrate [to the West].” An estimated 250,000 – 350,000 young Palestinian men already have since Hamas overthrew the ruling Palestinian Authority in 2007. Some departed permanently, while others left for temporary work in European countries.
