An Israeli settler leader has told a conference on Israel’s frontier with Gaza that Palestinians will “disappear” from the territory and said that thousands of people stand ready to move there “from north to south”.
Addressing a conference on Monday also attended by Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Knesset members from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, Daniella Weiss called for Palestinians living in Gaza to be relocated to other countries.
“We came here with one clear purpose: the purpose is to settle the entire Gaza Strip, not just part of it, not just a few settlements, the entire Gaza Strip from north to south,” said Weiss.
Weiss, the leader of Nachala, an orthodox settler movement which organised the conference, said there were six settler groups and more than 700 families looking to settle in Gaza, where more than 42,600 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its war against Hamas in October last year following the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel.
“Thousands of people are ready to move to Gaza now,” said Weiss.
“As a result of the brutal massacre of the 7th October, the Gaza Arabs lost the right to be here ever, so they will go to the different countries of the world. They will not stay here.”
Weiss said that settlers who moved to Gaza would “witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs disappear from Gaza”.
‘Owners of the land’
Weiss’s comments were echoed by Ben Gvir, who later told the crowd: “We are the owners of the land”. Ben Gvir also called for Palestinians in Gaza to “voluntarily” transfer to other countries.
Monday’s conference, which was billed by organisers as “a celebration for the preparation of settling Gaza”, took place near Reim kibbutz, with the sound of Israel’s ongoing bombardment of northern Gaza audible in the background and with smoke rising over the horizon a few kilometres to the west.
It was attended by more than a thousand people, many of them armed, including settlers from both religious and secular organisations, with events organised alongside the main speakers for families and children.
Some wore T-shirts and stickers openly expressing support for Meir Kahane, the late founder of a far-right Jewish supremacist movement banned in Israel.
One sticker showed an image of Kahane, a rabbi who was killed in New York in 1990, and the words “Kahane was right”. Another read: “Jews, revenge!” Others wore stickers which said, “Our Gaza forever”.
In addition to Ben Gvir, whose Jewish Power party is part of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition government, the conference was attended by May Golan, Israel’s equality minister, and a number of Likud MPs.
Middle East Eye asked Golan what Israel’s plans were for the two million people still living in Gaza. Golan refused to answer the question.
Tally Gotliv, a Likud MP, told: “We need to occupy the complete land of Israel. There are no innocent people in Gaza. Everybody who has refused to leave the north is a collaborator.”
Monday’s event took place against the backdrop of an escalating military assault on northern Gaza where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remained trapped and subjected to daily air strikes.
The assault came amid reports from Israel that the military has started to implement a strategy known as “the Generals’ Plan” which called for the ethnic cleansing of the north of the territory, and condemnation by aid groups who warned last week that northern Gaza is being “erased”.
Weiss’s Nachala movement has been building illegal settlements on land in the occupied West Bank for decades. Earlier this year, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967 is unlawful and should end as soon as possible.
Speaking on Monday, Weiss said the settler movement planned to use the experience it had gained building settlements in the West Bank and the Golan Heights, internationally recognised Syrian territory annexed by Israel, to send “pioneers” to Gaza.
About 9,000 settlers previously lived in 21 Israeli settlements in Gaza but these were dismantled following Israel’s withdrawal from the territory in 2005.
Weiss said: “We have political support, we have public support, and we have the experience that we have accumulated in 55 years of settling Judea [and] Samaria [the occupied West Bank], the Golan Heights.
“We plan to take what we have acquired in the years of settling Judea and Samaria and to do the same thing here in Gaza.”
