In an internal document, the ministry says it is the most desirable solution for Israel's security. But the government says it “is only a proposal”. Meanwhile, Egypt deploys tanks.
Gila Gamliel, head of the Israeli intelligence ministry, has drawn up a shocking proposal recommending to the government the forced and permanent transfer of 2.3 million people from the Gaza Strip to the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. The document runs to 10 pages, was published on 13 October 2023, six days after the Hamas attack, and bears the ministry's logo. The Israeli website Calcalist was the first to report it, while the Palestinian news site +972 Magazine was the first to publish it translated into English. The news site Mekomit also reported the ministry document, in Hebrew. The report was subsequently picked up by the Israeli outlet Hareetz, by the international agency Associated Press and was flagged by WikiLeaks.
The Ministry of Intelligence is a recently established government body. It produces independent policy research and shares its proposals with intelligence agencies, the military and other ministries. Its proposals are not binding, which is why – newspapers write – it has rather little influence on government activities. But it is nonetheless a ministry that, at this stage of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, has been called upon to assess three proposals concerning the relationship between the future of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Israel's security.
The final recommendation is therefore to transfer the entire population of the Strip: a full-blown "forced migration" to be carried out with the help of the international community, the document reads. A community that has not reacted to the news. Because, even though the idea has remained on paper with no action plan, the mere fact that it was conceived amounts to a display of Israel's unwillingness to resolve the conflict by recognising the right of Palestinians to live on their land. Moreover, forced migration would further worsen the living conditions of millions of people.
The document – in which the mass transfer is considered the most desirable alternative for Israel's security but which has not been implemented for the time being – proposes relocating Gaza's civilian population to tent cities in northern Sinai, then building permanent cities and a humanitarian corridor, without explaining in detail how all of this would be achieved. It also proposes establishing a security zone inside Israel to prevent displaced Palestinians from entering, and doing everything possible to prevent any potential return. Finally, the report does not say what will become of Gaza once its entire current population has been removed.
The document rejects two other options: restoring the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority as the sovereign power in Gaza, or supporting another local regime other than Hamas. Restoring the Palestinian Authority, which was expelled from Gaza after a week of fighting in 2007 that brought Hamas to power, is considered by the report's authors to be "an unprecedented victory for the Palestinian national movement, a victory that will cost the lives of thousands of Israeli civilians and soldiers, and does not safeguard Israel's security", the document states.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office has for now played down the report compiled by the Ministry of Intelligence, reducing it to a "hypothetical exercise", a "concept paper". In doing so, however, it has nonetheless legitimised its authenticity. Meanwhile, the report's conclusions confirm long-standing Egyptian fears that Israel wants to make Gaza Egypt's problem, and have revived among Palestinians the memory of their greatest trauma, the nakba — the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of people who fled or were forced to abandon their homes during the fighting of 1948.
"We are opposed to transfer to any place, in any form, and we consider it a red line that we will not allow to be crossed," said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for the president of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Mahmoud Abbas, better known as Abū Māzen, commenting on the report. "We will not allow what happened in 1948 to happen again." A mass displacement, Abu Rudeineh said, would amount to "declaring a new war".
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry led by Sameh Shoukry did not respond to requests for comment. But Egypt has made clear during this war that it does not want to take in a wave of Palestinian refugees.
Egypt has long feared that Israel intends to impose the permanent expulsion of Palestinians from its territory, as happened during Israel's war of independence. Egypt governed Gaza between 1948 and 1967, when Israel captured the territory, along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has stated that a mass influx of refugees from Gaza would risk bringing militants into Sinai, who could launch attacks against Israel and endanger the 1979 peace treaty between the two countries. Al-Sisi has instead proposed to Israel that it host Palestinians in the Negev desert, remaining within Israeli territory, until it brings its military operations to an end. In the meantime, Egypt has begun deploying tanks to the border with the Gaza Strip.
But Egypt would not necessarily be the final destination for Palestinian refugees. The document also mentions Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which could support the forced transfer plan both financially and by receiving uprooted Gaza residents as refugees and, in the long term, as citizens. Canada too is designated, given its — the report says — "lenient" policies towards immigrants, as a potential resettlement destination. In short, for the Ministry of Intelligence, Palestinians can go anywhere, as long as it is not Palestine.
