Several hundred demonstrators attended an ultranationalist rally on Thursday night to hear a government minister and several MKs urge the removal of millions of Palestinians from Gaza, championing a proposal from US President Donald Trump to “clean out” the enclave and redevelop it as a glitzy coastal destination.
Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman of the ruling Likud party declared that the only solution for Gaza was “to empty Gaza of Gazans,” and said Israel must “inherit” Jenin and Nablus in the West Bank as well.
Silman couched her policy proposal as “encouraging emigration,” similar to some speakers at the Jerusalem rally who stopped short of Trump’s call for Palestinians to be forced out of the enclave and never allowed to return.
Others went further. Likud MK Nissim Vaturi proclaimed that Israel should remove “all Arabs from Gaza,” adding that Arabs should also be removed from the West Bank.
MK Itamar Ben Gvir, head of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party and, until recently, the national security minister, told the crowd he backed a policy of “encouraging emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza and called on the government to halt all humanitarian aid currently being transferred through Israel into the Gaza Strip.
The rally was organized by the Nachala settlement organization, which has strongly promoted the construction of Jewish settlements in Gaza since the early months of the war and was also an early proponent of expelling the Palestinian population from the territory.
Posters, banners, and fliers calling for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza abounded at the demonstration. One banner declared, “Only transfer will bring peace,” while fliers being handed out said, “Gaza is ours forever.
The rally was entitled “This time we must triumph — Occupy, expel, settle.” Bumper stickers with the slogan were available at stands around the protest area.
“Encouraging emigration is the solution… The only solution for Gaza is to empty Gaza of Gazans,” said Silman.
“God sent us Trump,” she added, saying that the White House had said “explicitly to us that the time has come to inherit the land.”
Silman said, “There is no other solution to terrorism… [We must] inherit in Gaza, in [West Bank Palestinian cities] Jenin, Nablus, the answer to terrorism is sovereignty and inhering the land.”
In a short but fervid speech, Vaturi said that Israel should “remove all the Arabs from Gaza,” adding they should not be in “Judea and Samaria either,” using the Biblical terms for the West Bank.
“Transfer is not an illegitimate word,” he said, using a term that has become largely taboo and is mainly associated with outlawed extremists. “First of all, we need to transfer the Arabs of Gaza and also begin in Judea and Samaria, begin in Area C.”
Israel has full security and civilian control of Area C of the West Bank, which comprises some 60 percent of the territory and includes all the Israeli settlements, but is also home to at least 180,000 Palestinians, according to the left-wing B’Tselem organization.
“We need to wake up. We need to expel the Arabs from here. We need to expel everyone now. Send them to countries who want them so badly. We should not be afraid because God is with us,” concluded Vaturi.
Greeting the crowd like a rockstar with an ebullient “Good evening Jerusalem,” Ben Gvir railed against the government’s policy enabling humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.
“Right now, the government is sending in hundreds of tons of aid to Hamas. These are the trucks which enable Hamas’s rule,” averred the ultranationalist leader.
“I was the only one in the cabinet who opposed it. They said to me, ‘Biden, Biden, Biden.’ Now there is no Biden, so why are there trucks?” he demanded.
The former minister also repeated his policy, which was first stated last January in another Nachala rally, of “encouraging voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza, although he did not state how such voluntary emigration could be incentivized and what should happen if it was unsuccessful.
“We were right when we talked about encouraging emigration. Now the president of the most powerful nation in the world is telling us to make the transfer,” he said, referring to Trump, who has actively endorsed the resettlement of Gazans from Gaza.
Ben Gvir’s ultranationalist party colleague MK Limor Son Har-Melech reinforced the calls for the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from the region. “The Land of Israel is for the People of Israel. Gaza is for Jews, Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] is for Jews. They are ours in the merit of our fathers and the merit of our deeds,” she said.
“The expulsion of our enemies needs to be forever. We are here not only to expel but to inherit, to establish flourishing settlements which are full of life. Victory will be when all of Gaza returns to our hands, where Jews [will] establish new generations of courageous settlers.”
The rally was held hours after Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a speech that he was accelerating the creation of a new authority that will facilitate the voluntary emigration of Gazans out of the Strip, either via the Ashdod port or the Ramon airport near Eilat.
And in a fiery speech, the chair of the Nachala organization and veteran settler activist Daniella Weiss called for the “destruction of the Gazan enemy” and the reestablishment of Jewish settlements in the territory.
“We must return to fighting and destroy the enemy in Gaza. We must destroy and expel all the enemy from Gaza outside the borders of the Promised Land,” she declared.
“Only the complete elimination of the enemy will bring all the hostages home,” she continued, referring to the Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza.
“We must not give the enemy even a crumb of food—how can they live a normal life while our soldiers are being killed,” she demanded.
“In the Land of Israel, where there are no Jews, there are scorpions and snakes,” she continued in describing what she said was the necessity of Israel taking control of Gaza.