US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on Thursday that the US President's administration has warned Israel that it does not want to see Palestinian citizens forcibly displaced in northern Gaza.

“I think you’re talking about the so-called General’s plan,” Miller said in response to a question from the Jerusalem correspondent about reports that Israel is ethnically cleansing Palestinians from northern Gaza in order to create a buffer zone or reoccupy the area for settlement purposes. “Let me say that Secretary Blinken raised this issue directly with the prime minister when we were there two weeks ago. The prime minister said that this is not our plan, this is not what we are doing: they (the Israelis) can speak for themselves; I am just reporting what they told us.”

“The Secretary has made clear both privately and publicly that we would strongly reject any such plan,” Miller said. “And you’ve seen us push for expanded humanitarian access to areas where there’s fighting, including these restricted areas. As I just noted, today we saw for the first time in several weeks a humanitarian convoy actually enter Beit Hanoun. It’s important that humanitarian assistance continues to be delivered to those civilians who are in — even in an area where there’s fighting.”

“What we make clear to the government of Israel is that we do not want to see people displaced from their homes,” Miller added. “Now, look, if there is fighting in an area, and evacuation is appropriate, it has been the policy of the U.S. government, and the policy of other governments for a long time, if the government is operating militarily in an area where civilians are taking refuge, and you want to see civilians be able to evacuate their homes so they can move to a safe place, we understand that, but at the end of the fighting, we want to see them return to their homes, we want to see them return to their neighborhoods, and be able to rebuild their homes — knowing that, of course, in many of these areas, their homes have been destroyed, their neighborhoods have been completely destroyed.”

In a report published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Wednesday, the situation in Beit Lahia, a city in northern Gaza near the Israeli border where Israeli forces are carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign, according to observers.

In early October, Israel ordered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in northern Gaza to head south. Many ignored the order because there was nowhere safe for them to go, and the Israeli military focused its renewed offensive northward on the nearby towns of Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia, imposing a complete blockade to starve civilians out.

The Israeli occupation army said it forcibly expelled 55,000 Palestinians from the Jabalia refugee camp, and does not intend to allow them to return. According to the Haaretz newspaper, only a few thousand civilians remain in Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun.

"There is no intention to allow residents of northern Gaza to return to their homes," Israeli military spokesman Brigadier General Itzik Cohen told reporters on Tuesday.

The Israeli military distanced itself from comments made by Brigadier General Itzik Cohen that ground forces were approaching a "complete evacuation" of the northern Gaza Strip and residents would not be allowed to return to their homes.

Such actions amount to the war crimes of forcible transfer and use of food as a weapon, international humanitarian law experts said.

Israel has repeatedly denied trying to force the remaining residents of northern Gaza to flee to relative safety in the south during the offensive, now in its second month. Israel says the pressure is necessary to combat reorganized Hamas cells.