Gazans have the right to leave
Israel has now been fighting Hamas in Gaza for three months and many politicians, in Israel and abroad, are considering what should be done to ensure that the violence on Israel’s southern border will not continue. It is clear that Hamas, with its explicit genocidal agenda, must be removed, and the Palestinian Authority has revealed itself to be no better. Many are considering allowing the Gazans to leave. While fleeing a combat zone is a basic and universal human right, many foreign leaders have come out strongly against this.
On Tuesday, Minister of Intelligence Gila Gamliel presented the main points of her plan for the voluntary resettlement of residents of the Gaza Strip, which she is presenting to the government.
“The mobilization of the international community is required to create a pool of countries that will take in refugees while receiving an aid package for them,” Minister Gamliel said. “With proper diplomatic work, the international system can be harnessed for this. The implementation of an outline of voluntary humanitarian resettlement will allow Gaza refugees who wish to have the opportunity to rebuild their lives, without the tyranny and oppression of Hamas-ISIS, to be able to do so.”
Transfer of Jews from contested areas has always been a left wing agenda as part of the disastrous “land for peace” Oslo Process. Any calls for transfer of Arab populations to facilitate peace between Jews and Arabs has always been treated as an extremist agenda and its proponents have been demonized and even targeted by the Israeli security forces as “extremists”.
So it is shocking that this has been presented by Likud MKs as a possible solution for Gaza.
The US State Department responded by condemning this suggestion. “This rhetoric is inflammatory and irresponsible,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement on Tuesday. “We have been told repeatedly and consistently by the Government of Israel, including by the Prime Minister, that such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government. They should stop immediately.”
“We have been clear, consistent, and unequivocal that Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land,” Miller said. “That is the future we seek, in the interests of Israelis and Palestinians, the surrounding region, and the world.”
The proposal was explained succinctly by Alex Traiman, the CEO and Jerusalem Bureau Chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate).
“I say in interviews that the ability to flee a war zone should be a basic human right that is being denied to Gazans,” Traiman told Israel365 News. “And if the international community is unwilling to accept even one Gazan who wants to flee, the question is whether they actually care about the lives of Gazans at all, or if they are just using them as a lever against Israel.”
“I have heard that Houthis are escorting commercial ships in the Red Sea to the shores of Yemen,” Traiman added. “If Gazans were permitted to board commercial vessels that then sailed into the Red Sea, perhaps the Houthis would send a welcome committee to bring them to the shores of Yemen. Since Yemen has been willing to fight for the Gazans, they should win them.”
A report in Israel Hayom published on Wednesday cited a memo submitted to Israel’s political leadership by legal experts claimed that Israel has no legal obligation to allow displaced Gaza residents to return to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip. The memo, signed by Dr. Raphael (Rafi) Bitton from Sapir College, Prof. Eugene Kontorovich from George Mason University, and Prof. Avi Bell from the law schools of Bar Ilan University and the University of San Diego, analyzed the state of war from a legal perspective.
The legal experts explored whether there is an obligation to allow residents to return northwards if it would thwart a key military objective in war. In this case, allowing the Gazan civiliasns to return would deter finding and returning Israeli hostages. The experts based their opinion on reports that the Israeli captives were transferred to the southern Gaza Strip under the cover of humanitarian corridors created by Israel, while being forced to disguise themselves as locals. Allowing Gazans to return to northern Gaza would further exacerbate the IDF’s search for hostages.
The three jurists emphasized that returning the population to the north bears no relevance so long as the fighting continues. It was also emphasized that Israelis were not able to return to their communities adjacent to the Gaza border because of ongoing rocket attacks from Hamas.
“The IDF has no legal obligation to enable the return of the population to the northern Gaza Strip, and such a duty is unlikely to emerge in the coming months,” the legal experts concluded. “The IDF has a vital military need justifying non-return of the population as long as fighting continues and as long as the goal of freeing the captives remains.”
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