Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assigned his chief advisor Ron Dermer, who holds the position of Minister of Strategic Affairs, to develop plans to reduce the number of Palestinian residents in the Gaza Strip to a minimum, according to the Hebrew newspaper “Israel Today”.

It added that the plan consists of two main elements. The first element is to use the pressures of war and the humanitarian crisis to persuade Egypt to allow refugees to flow to other Arab countries, and the second will open sea routes, allowing Israel to allow refugees to flow to Arab countries, and then to flee en masse to European and African countries as well.

Ron Dermer, one of Netanyahu's close associates, was previously Israel's ambassador to the United States, and enjoys close relations with many members of Congress.

The newspaper pointed out that the plan to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians in Gaza is facing some internal resistance, from less extremist members of Netanyahu's government.

The Hebrew "Israel Today" and other Hebrew media are also talking about a plan being pushed to Congress that would make aid provided to Arab countries conditional on their willingness to accept Palestinian refugees.

The plan also proposes transferring specific numbers of refugees to each country, with Egypt receiving a million Palestinians, half a million going to Turkey, and a quarter of a million to Yemen and Iraq.

The reports refuse to mention who put together the proposal, and the newspaper added, “The proposal was presented to key figures in the House and Senate from both parties, and Representative Joe Wilson expressed his public support for it, while others, who were familiar with the details, have remained out of sight until now.” 

A new initiative submitted to the US Congress calls for making US aid to Arab countries conditional on their willingness to receive refugees from Gaza.

The proposal was presented to key figures in the House and Senate from both parties. Even the longtime lawmaker, Rep. Joe Wilson, has expressed public support for it while others who were privy to the details of the text have so far kept a low profile, saying publicly coming out in favor of the program could derail it.

“Israel is trying to keep civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip as low as possible, but Hamas does not allow refugees to leave and Egypt is unwilling to open its borders,” the plan’s authors wrote in the opening paragraph.

They later go on to explain that “the only moral solution is to ensure that Egypt opens its borders and allows refugees to escape the tyrannical control of Hamas.” The US government provides Egypt with approximately $1.3 billion in foreign aid, and this money can be allocated to refugees from Gaza who will be allowed to enter Egypt.

They continue: “The neighboring borders have been closed for too long, but it is now clear that in order to liberate the people of Gaza from the tyrannical oppression of Hamas and allow them to live without war and bloodshed, Israel must encourage the international community to find the right, moral and humane ways to transfer Residents of Gaza.

The plan indicates that Egypt should not bear the entire burden, but rather that other countries in the region should share this burden. Iraq and Yemen receive nearly $1 billion in US foreign aid, and Turkey receives more than $150 million. The plan's authors stress that each of these countries receives enough foreign aid and has a large enough population to be able to accept refugees who make up less than 1% of its population.

The plan also calls for the United States to make foreign aid to Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, and Turkey conditional on those countries accepting a certain number of refugees.

The plan even goes so far as to envision the number of Gazans that each of these countries will receive: one million in Egypt (representing 0.9% of the population there), half a million in Turkey (0.6% of the population in Turkey), and 250,000. For Iraq (0.6% of the population of Iraq), and another 250,000 for Yemen (0.75% of the total population there currently).

Each of these countries receives generous financial aid from the United States, and under the plan, this aid should continue to be provided only on the condition that the residents of Gaza accept it. 

It should be noted that the Biden administration opposes the forced displacement of Gazans from the Strip, but it has not ruled out voluntary migration for those who choose to do so. The text of the plan says: “This will not be the first time that other countries accept refugees.” “According to the UNHCR database, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, for example, more than 6 million Ukrainians have fled the country. Poland received nearly 1.2 million Ukrainian refugees, Germany received nearly a million refugees, and the Czech Republic nearly half a million.

He continues: “Similarly, since 2011 and the ongoing Syrian civil war, 6.7 million Syrians have fled Syria to spread throughout the surrounding countries. 3.2 million Syrian refugees were transferred to Turkey, 789,000 to Lebanon, 653,000 to Jordan, and 150,000 to Egypt, while other Middle Eastern and European countries took in hundreds of thousands.

The document's authors point out that UNRWA is a problematic factor in perpetuating the conflict, in contrast to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which works to resettle refugees around the world. “UNRWA is renewed under a UN mandate every three years and receives funding mostly from the United States, Canada, Britain and the European Union, all of whom are strong supporters of Israel.”

They blame the agency for “spreading the refugee narrative” and “preventing the rehabilitation of Palestinian refugees for more than 70 years, in effect deepening the refugee crisis.” Therefore, they say: "It must be closed."

Both Egypt and Jordan warned that they would not open their borders to a mass exodus of Palestinians, after the outbreak of the events of last October 7.

Two weeks ago, the White House stated that President Joe Biden and his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, confirmed during a phone call that “the Palestinians will not be displaced to Egypt or any other country.”

The White House added in a statement at the time that Biden and Sisi also discussed the necessity of protecting civilian lives, and not displacing Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt, or any other country.

Al-Sisi said, during a phone call with his counterpart Biden, that Egypt “did not and will not allow the displacement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Egyptian territory.”

Al-Sisi also affirmed “Egypt’s firm position of rejecting the policies of collective punishment and displacement, and that Egypt has not and will not allow the displacement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Egyptian territory.”

Source: Sama News