Day: January 18, 2024

Far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has reiterated his call for “encouraging” Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip, saying the regime’s occupation of the besieged enclave is the only way to restore security to Israel.  

Ben-Gvir made the remarks during an interview with Israel’s Channel 13 news on Wednesday, weeks after he called for the displacement of the people of Gaza and reoccupation of the besieged territory to build new Israeli settlements.

“There is no other way to restore security to Israel other than a full occupation of the Palestinian territory,” he said, adding, “Voluntary immigration of the residents of Gaza should be encouraged.”

He further criticized the Israeli cabinet for not properly supporting Israeli forces that he claimed are doing an “excellent job” in the ongoing war in Gaza.  

“I hope that Likud elements do not set us back in terms of achievements,” he said of the war.

In recent months, several Israeli officials have called for the occupation of Gaza as well as genocide against the Palestinian people.

Earlier this month, Amichai Eliyahu said the residents of Gaza should be left with no option but to immigrate to other countries as part of revenge measures against them in the wake of the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm operation.

Back in November, Eliyahu called for dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.

Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has also called for encouraging the “emigration” of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in order for extremist settlers to return to the area after the war.

The United Nations has already said it’s “deeply alarmed” by statements from Israeli leaders about the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.

According to the UN, 85% of the population of Gaza is already internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine.

Most Palestinians displaced from their homeland after the Nakba (Catastrophe), when Israel proclaimed its illegal existence on May 15, 1948, have ended up in neighboring Arab states.

Arab leaders have maintained that any latter-day move aimed at forced expulsion of the Palestinians would be absolutely unacceptable.

800,000 Palestinians experiencing real famine

Meanwhile, a senior official of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has noted that 800,000 Palestinians are experiencing a real famine due to Israel’s devastating war and prevention of the entry of necessary supplies into Gaza.

Osama Hamdan, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon and a member of the group’s politburo, made the remarks a day after UN experts warned that “every single person” in the war-torn Gaza is facing hunger amid Israel’s war and blockade against the territory.

He also noted that the medicines that the resistance group is providing to the captives are running out due to the Israeli blockade and aggression, stressing that any initiative to bring medicines to the captives must include bringing medicines to the Palestinians in Gaza.

Hamdan also reiterated that the prerequisite for any prisoner exchange deal is the complete cessation of aggression on Gaza.

The Israeli regime waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s atrocities against Palestinians.

Since the start of the aggression, Israel has killed more than 24,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

The Tel Aviv regime has also imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.