A member of the Israeli parliament has said the Tel Aviv regime’s ongoing military onslaught against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip will come to an end once Jews settle north of the besieged territory.
“Israel must end the war when Jews settle in the entire northern Gaza Strip,” Head of the Knesset’s so-called National Security Committee, Zvika Fogel, told the Israeli public broadcaster KAN on Sunday.
Fogel went on to call for encouraging the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“Whoever wants to voluntarily migrate will receive a grant from me,” he said.
Israel began a vicious bombing campaign against Gaza on October 7, 2023, and has taken a gruesome toll on Palestinians killing over 32,200 people and displacing more than 85 percent of the Strip’s 2.3 million population.
While Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza continue, Zionist authorities keep calling for what they refer to as the “voluntary relocation” of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
In late January, hundreds of Israeli settlers gathered for a conference in the occupied city of al-Quds, calling for the reconstruction of settlements in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli Keshet 12 television channel reported at the time that a dozen ministers from prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud political party, along with so-called security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich took part in the conference.
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas strongly condemned the event, saying it reflects the Tel Aviv regime’s ulterior motives to press ahead with its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
“The conference, sponsored by the incumbent fascist administration of the Zionist entity and attended by dozens of ministers as well as members of the Knesset (Israeli parliament), signifies the regime’s ulterior motives to continue with the strategies of displacement and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian nation,” Hamas said in a statement.
It added that the “Return to Gaza” conference, which promoted building illegal settlements in Gaza, also “attests to the rogue regime’s blatant disregard for international principles and resolutions, as well as the recent International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that ordered it to take steps to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza.”
In 2005, Israel ended its 38-year occupation of Gaza and withdrew both its military forces and settlers from the region.
The international community views Israeli settlements – numerous ones of which have been erected throughout the West Bank since Tel Aviv’s occupation of the region in 1967 – as unlawful under international law and the Geneva Conventions because they have been constructed on occupied lands.
Several resolutions by the UN Security Council have denounced Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories. The Palestinians have historically called for the inclusion of the West Bank, along with East al-Quds as its capital, in their envisioned future state.
