Extremists in Israel Have a Plan for the Post-Holocaust Day

Image by Diana Khwaelid.

Under the slogan ‘Gaza is Ours Forever’, many Israeli extremists and right-wing politicians gathered in the Be’eri settlement near the Gaza border area on 20-21 October.

The group represented a who’s who of the Israeli right, far-right, and ultra-nationalists. Them including As well as Israeli Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir, May Golan and Bezalel Smotrich ten MK Likud party of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The event, titled “Preparing to Resettle Gaza,” was organized by Nachala, one of Israel’s most extreme settler movements and led by the infamous Daniella Weiss.

To understand just how extremist this 79-year-old settler is, consider this: On June 27, the Canadian government, despite being one of the staunchest supporters of Netanyahu and his wars, imposed Sanctions were imposed on him for his “role (…) in facilitating acts of violence by Israeli extremist settlers against Palestinian civilians”.

But the hateful conference was but the culmination of a year-long effort to make an example of why Israel must ethnically cleanse the Strip of Palestinians and rebuild illegal settlements.

But the story doesn’t start on October 7. Israel in 2005 decided to redeploy its forces outside the small coastal area. This was the beginning of Israel’s hermetic siege of the Strip. multiple wars and finally the events of October 7 and the ongoing genocide.

Although the number of Jewish settlers was evacuated The number of 15 illegal settlements destroyed was quite small (8,500). The sense of betrayal felt by the settlers created deep divisions in Israeli society.

Chaotic scenes of settler extortion removed arrivals from the Gush Katif settlement bloc in Gaza created a national crisis in Israel and evacuation Israel dismantled the illegal settlement of Yamit in the Sinai in April 1982 as part of an earlier agreement with Egypt. But why the crisis?

Israel is a settler-colonial society that attributes its colonial expansion to religious commandments and prophecies. Therefore, forced departure from Gaza must have seemed to many of these settlers both treason and disrespect.

This is why resettling Gaza has become an urgent call for Israeli settlers. Compared to the limited share of political power they had during the 2005 redistribution, current extremists are now the de facto decision-makers.

While the military’s strategic objectives in Gaza remained unclear, the settlers were always aware of the nature of their mission: the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians in Gaza and the reconstruction of the settlements.

Thus, Weiss and many of his supporters quickly began calling on Israelis to join the recolonization campaign. “Sign up, sign up, you’ll be in Gaza,” Weiss told an audience of supporters last March, happily declaring that 500 families had already signed up, according to CNN. report.

Weiss and Nachala do not act independently of the overall goal of the country’s leading politicians. For example, on October 7, 2023, the first day of the war, Netanyahu made His intention is clear: “I say this to the people of Gaza: Leave now, because we will operate strongly everywhere.”

One on October 17th position paper The proposal, submitted by Israel’s Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, called for “the relocation and eventual settlement of the entire Gaza population.”

The report viewed the war as “a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip into the Sinai desert.” Later that month, the Israeli intelligence ministry also stepped in, along with the Israeli news outlet Calcalist. publishing A document “recommending the transfer of Gazans to Sinai.”

Far-right Minister Smotrich on November 14 spoke ‘voluntary migration’. According to media reports in December in question He said Netanyahu himself told Likud party members that Israel’s real problem was finding “countries willing to absorb them,” namely the people of Gaza.

Conferences began to be held to gather support around the idea of ​​ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The first major conference was organized by a coalition of settler movements last December. “A house on the beach is not a dream” advertising was announced for the meeting. ‘Beach’ here is a reference to the Gaza coast.

Even Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, seized the opportunity. in March it spoke Gaza’s “very valuable… coastal property” that required Israel to remove civilians and “clear the Strip.”

The ongoing so-called General Plan, aimed at the destruction and ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, is nothing more than the military component of the settlers’ vision that ‘Gaza is ours forever’.

So if Israel has failed to maintain its settlements in the rebellious Strip under more manageable conditions in the past, will it succeed now?

The settlers are already aware of the challenge they face. Therefore, they constantly associate their colonization of Gaza with the ethnic cleansing of the Strip’s Palestinian residents.

But Israel’s success and failure will ultimately be determined by this maxim: As long as the Palestinian people resist, Weiss and his extremist friends will not find safety in Gaza.

As a matter of fact, the indigenous people of Gaza have existed in this historical land for thousands of years. If genocide didn’t force them off their land, nothing else will.