Israel ‘seeking Trump’s support for plan to expel Palestinians from Gaza’
Israel Pushes Washington to Back Forced Resettlement of Gaza's Palestinian Population
Wanderstayfinder.com – Amid a fiercely contested Israeli election campaign, the country's defence minister has revealed that Jerusalem is actively courting Donald Trump's endorsement of a plan to remove Palestinians from the Gaza Strip — a move that international legal scholars and human-rights bodies have broadly characterised as amounting to ethnic cleansing. Israel Katz made the disclosure at a public forum co-hosted by the Israeli digital outlet Ynet and the daily Yedioth Ahronoth, where he framed the proposal not as a contingency but as the only viable endpoint to two years of war.
"No Real Solution Without This Migration"
"No real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration."
Katz insisted the government had already mapped out logistics for a mass departure, describing preparations to move people "by sea, by air, by every way possible." The language of organised evacuation, applied to a population of roughly two million in a territory of 41 square kilometres, underscores how far the proposal reaches beyond the temporary displacements that have already defined the conflict since October 2023.
Trump's Evolving Role
The American president first floated the notion of a full US takeover of Gaza in early 2025, a scheme that would have entailed stripping the territory of its Palestinian inhabitants and rebuilding it under American stewardship. He subsequently walked back that grander vision. The 20-point peace framework the White House assembled the following year made no provision for compulsory deportation, leaving the question of who ultimately governs Gaza's population unresolved.
Yet Katz argued on Wednesday that Trump's personal imprimatur could shift the calculus across the region. In his view, neighbouring states will not absorb Palestinian refugees without explicit American sponsorship.
"Every country that is willing to take them in wants American backing."
He stressed that the idea had not been formally shelved. "Trump has not cancelled this at the moment. He has frozen it," Katz said, suggesting the proposal remains in a state of suspended animation rather than abandonment. The White House had not responded to a request for comment on whether the president was still entertaining discussions about Israel's depopulation proposals.
Egypt and the Regional Calculus
Katz singled out Cairo as a key obstacle. Egypt, which borders Gaza along its Sinai frontier and has historically absorbed Palestinian refugees in earlier waves of displacement, has lobbied Washington to oppose any forced removal. Katz nonetheless maintained the conversation was ongoing.
"It has not been cancelled. It is being discussed all the time, including now, and I think there is no other solution in the end that is in everyone's interest."
The diplomatic stakes are considerable. A forced transfer of two million people would upend decades of Arab-state positions on Palestinian rights, complicate any future statehood negotiations, and likely trigger litigation before the International Court of Justice under the Convention on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic Minorities and the Fourth Geneva Convention's prohibition on deportations from occupied territory.
Election Politics and Hardline Rhetoric
The remarks land during a competitive electoral season in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rightwing coalition have courted voters by advocating ever more aggressive measures against Palestinians. The campaign tone has at times crossed into what commentators describe as openly inflammatory territory.
Far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, for instance, posted video on the social platform X from a women's prison, declaring himself personally accountable for the facility's harsh conditions. When an inmate told him she was being denied medical care, hot showers, and clean clothing, Ben-Gvir responded:
"The good conditions in the prisons are over. This is the current situation, and I am directly responsible for everything. I am pleased with these conditions."
The episode illustrates the rhetorical register now common in coalition politics — one in which suffering is reframed as purposeful discipline rather than administrative failure.
Netanyahu at the Yellow Line
On the same Wednesday, Netanyahu visited an Israeli military post situated along what the army calls the "yellow line," a demarcation running through central Gaza that marks the boundary of the zone Israel still controls. Despite repeated calls from mediators and from Hamas itself for a phased pullback to consolidate the recent ceasefire, the prime minister reaffirmed that no withdrawal would occur until the militant group is fully disarmed.
"We control the territory and are staying on this line. We are doing everything to achieve our goal – disarming Hamas and demilitarising Gaza. Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel."
The insistence on holding the line while simultaneously planning for mass expulsion creates a logical tension: a population cannot be both contained within a shrinking military perimeter and prepared for orderly departure by sea and air. Observers note that the two tracks — continued military occupation of a corridor and diplomatic preparation for wholesale removal — may be mutually incompatible in practice, even if the government presents them as complementary phases of a single strategy.
What the Proposal Would Mean in Practice
Forced resettlement of Gaza's population would constitute the largest single displacement operation in the region since the 1948 war and the Nakba. It would require host countries to absorb hundreds of thousands of refugees, rebuild infrastructure for transit, and negotiate the legal status of displaced persons under international refugee law. The absence of any such framework in the current ceasefire architecture makes Katz's claim of readiness a political assertion rather than a logistical one. Whether Trump's office will ultimately provide the diplomatic cover Katz describes — or whether the proposal will remain, as he puts it, "frozen" — will likely become a defining question of the coming months.
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