By Andre Damon
On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the creation of a directorate in the Defense Ministry tasked with overseeing the implementation of the plan announced by US President Donald Trump to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Katz’s office held an assessment Monday on Trump’s proposal, which resolved to form the directorate, the Times of Israel reported.
“The plan includes extensive assistance that will allow any Gaza resident who wants to emigrate to a third state to receive support, including special departure arrangements through sea, air, and land,” the Defense Ministry stated.
Earlier this month, Katz ordered the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) to create a plan for the implementation of what he called “Trump’s bold plan, which could allow a large portion of Gaza’s population to relocate to various places around the world.”
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office stated that the prime minister was “committed to US President Donald Trump’s plan for the creation of a different Gaza.” Netanyahu pledged that “there will be neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority” governing Gaza.
Over the weekend, Netanyahu held a meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at which Netanyahu praised “Trump’s bold vision for Gaza’s future.”
Earlier this month, Trump declared that the Gaza Strip “should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people that lived a miserable existence there.” Trump called for “other countries” to “build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza.”
His plan violates the Fourth Geneva Convention’s prohibition of the forcible transfer of civilians during armed conflicts.
Last week, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, condemned Trump’s plan as “unlawful, immoral and completely irresponsible.” She added, “It’s incitement to commit forced displacement, which is an international crime.”
In an article in the Forward, Eric Kurlander, professor of Modern European History at Stetson University, warned of the parallels between Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the plans for the relocation of the Jewish people that preceded their mass killing during the Holocaust.
Kurlander wrote:
Imagine the leader of a global superpower announcing a plan for removing an entire ethnic group from a territory they’ve long inhabited. Neighboring states would have to make land available to that superpower to resettle the displaced peoples. The refugees would “have their own administration in this territory” but they would “not acquire … citizenship” since any “sense of responsibility towards the world” would forbid making “the gift of a sovereign state” to a people “which has had no independent state for thousands of years.”
No, the plan described in brief here is not President Donald Trump’s Gaza plan, proposing a United States takeover of Gaza and mass relocation of its Palestinian population. It is the so-called “Madagascar Plan,” devised by Nazi Germany in 1940 to “resettle” European Jews.
Kurlander added:
That plan was the Third Reich’s final major proposal for removing the Jews from the Greater Germanic Reich Adolf Hitler envisioned in Mein Kampf prior to the “Final Solution”—the indiscriminate shootings of Jewish men, women, and children on the Eastern Front, leading to mass killings in death camps and gas chambers in late 1941. In that history lies a warning: Plans for the mass relocation of a population seen as troublesome or dangerous can rapidly devolve into the loss of sovereignty, human and civil rights, and eventually ethnic cleansing.
To date, 60,000 people have been killed in the Gaza genocide, and the implementation of any such plan would require a level of genocidal violence on a scale even greater than what has been carried out to date. These warnings of the historical precedent are a stark warning of what Israeli officials may be planning in the future.
Israel has, meanwhile, continued its daily rampage throughout Gaza despite a nominal “ceasefire.” Israeli troops killed two people in the southern city of Rafah, claiming that the victims had approached them.
On Tuesday, Israeli troops carried out a raid on UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) schools in East Jerusalem.
In a statement, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the raids. “The secretary-general condemns the breach of inviolability of United Nations premises in occupied East Jerusalem, including the UNRWA training center and the attempt to forcibly enter three UNRWA schools and seek their closure,” Guterres said in a statement.
Israeli troops used tear gas and sound bombs, said UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini. Guterres’s office said, “The use of tear gas and sound bombs in educational environments while students are learning is both unnecessary and unacceptable,” adding that the attacks are “a clear violation of Israel’s obligation under international law. … The inviolability of United Nations premises must be respected at all times.”
The Israeli military continued its systematic demolition of homes and infrastructure in the West Bank on Tuesday. US bombers also conducted a demonstration of force projection capabilities in the Middle East.
19 February 2025
Source: countercurrents.org