On Sunday, a prominent member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition demanded that Gaza’s Palestinian citizens evacuate their area to make room for Israelis who might “make the desert bloom.”
Fears in much of the Arab world that Israel wants to drive Palestinians out of the land where they want to build a future state appear to be reinforced by the remarks made by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has been left out of the war cabinet and talks of day-after arrangements in Gaza. This appears to be a repeat of the mass dispossession of Palestinians when Israel was created in 1948.
Encouragement of emigration is what the Gaza Strip needs to see,” Smotrich said on Army Radio. “If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after will be different.”
He claimed that Israel would view Gaza differently if its 2.3 million inhabitants had not been there, “growing up on the aspiration to destroy the state of Israel”.
“Most Israeli society will say, ‘Why not, it’s a nice place, let’s make the desert bloom; it doesn’t come at anyone’s expense’.”
Smotrich has made similar remarks in the past, putting himself at odds with Israel’s most significant partner, the United States. His hard-right Religious Zionism party receives backing from Israel’s settlement community.
