Israeli minister calls for settlers return to Gaza, encourages Palestinian emigration

An Israeli minister on Monday called for the return of settlers to Gaza and said Palestinians should be encouraged to leave, a day after similar remarks by another far-right politician.

“We must promote a solution to encourage the emigration of Gaza’s residents,” Israel’s firebrand National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said as war with the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers rages on.

Israel unilaterally withdrew the last of its troops and settlers in 2005, ending a presence inside Gaza that began in 1967 but maintaining near complete control over the territory’s borders.

The government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not officially suggested it has any plans to evict Gazans or to send Jewish settlers back to the territory since the current war broke out on October 7.

But Ben Gvir argued that the departure of Palestinians and re-establishment of Israeli settlements “is a correct, just, moral and humane solution”.

“This is an opportunity to develop a project to encourage Gaza’s residents to emigrate to countries around the world,” he told a meeting of his ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit, or “Jewish Power”, party.

Ben Gvir’s comment came the day after far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also called for the return of settlers to Gaza, equally saying Israel should “encourage” the territory’s approximately 2.4 million Palestinians to leave.

Smotrich said that for Israel to “control the territory militarily for a long time, we need a civilian presence”.

Both Ben Gvir and Smotrich live in settlements in the occupied West Bank, considered illegal under international law.

Hamas on Sunday condemned Smotrich’s comments as a “vile mockery and a war crime” and added that Gazans “will stand firm and steadfast in the face of all attempts to displace them from their land and homes.”

The October 7 Hamas attack left about 1,140 people dead in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Israel’s ongoing offensive, aimed at destroying Hamas, has killed at least 21,978 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

With heavy combat raging on, 85 percent of people in the besieged Gaza Strip have been internally displaced, according to the United Nations.