Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said: “The United States is our good friend, but, above all, we will do what is good for the State of Israel,” wrote Ben Gvir on social media, in response to criticism from Washington, cited by the French agency AFP.
According to him, “encouraging the emigration of hundreds of thousands of people from Gaza will allow residents [israelitas] return to your homes [nos limites de Gaza] and live in safety”, protecting the Israeli soldiers.
Ben Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Force party, called on Monday (01.01) for the return of Jewish settlers to Gaza after Israel’s current war against Hamas, which has been ongoing for around three months.
A day earlier, another far-right leader, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, made similar calls.
Gaza is a small Palestinian enclave of 365 square kilometers with 2.3 million inhabitants, which has around 370 km2 and 52 thousand inhabitants.
The territory, with the Mediterranean on one side, Israel on the other and connected at the southern tip to the Egyptian Sinai peninsula, has been controlled by the Islamist group Hamas since 2007.
Crime against humanity
Israelis have been at war with Hamas since October 7, when commandos from the extremist group attacked Israel from Gaza, killing 1,200 people and taking more than two hundred hostages, according to authorities.
Since then, an Israeli offensive has caused 22,200 deaths, according to a report updated today by the Hamas Government’s health structures, as well as the concentration of a large part of the population in southern Gaza.
The expulsion of a population from its territory is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions, which constitute the core of international humanitarian law.
The statutes of the International Criminal Court designate “deportation or forced transfer of population” as a crime against humanity.
“The United States rejects the recent statements by Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar
Ben Gvir, who advocate the displacement of Palestinians out of Gaza,” said the State Department spokesperson in a statement on Tuesday.
Matthew Miller described the two Israeli ministers’ comments as irresponsible.
The United States is Israel’s greatest political and military ally.
“There are no Palestinians because there is no Palestinian people”
Smotrich, who heads the Religious Zionism party, returned to the charge today, telling local media that “70% of the Israeli public supports the voluntary emigration of Arabs from Gaza” to other countries.
“A small country like ours cannot allow itself a reality in which, just four minutes from our cities, there is a focus of hatred and terror, where two million people wake up every morning with the desire to destroy the State of Israel,” he said.
During a private visit to Paris in March, Smotrich denied the existence of a Palestinian people.
“There are no Palestinians because there is no Palestinian people,” he said at the time.
The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which brings together right-wing, extreme-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties, has already been accused of having strongly strengthened the influence of settlers in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.