OUTSIDE KIBBUTZ BE'ERI, Israel — In a dusty field next to Gaza, at a rally with a popcorn stand and merchandise on sale, prominent members of the Israeli government laid out their future vision for Gaza: permanent Israeli military occupation and establishing new Jewish settlements there.
Settling Gaza is not Israel’s official policy. But two senior far-right Cabinet ministers, six lawmakers from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party and several of his party’s chapter leaders from across Israel took part in Monday’s pro-settlement rally.
“I think it is not realistic,” Netanyahu said in an Israeli TV interview in June about the prospect of establishing Jewish settlements in Gaza. He used the word “realistic” four times.
Israeli commentators say the growing political support of Netanyahu’s allies, and the military’s latest moves in Gaza, could make possible what only months ago appeared to be a far-fetched proposition.
“Now he says it’s not realistic. But maybe in another two years it will be realistic,” said Zvi Sukkot, a far-right lawmaker in Israel’s governing coalition, at the rally. “If he would come and say, ‘I have a fundamental objection to Jews settling in Gaza,’ okay. When I hear ‘It's not realistic,’ it's a matter of conditions. If the conditions change, he could change his mind.”
A colorful stunt
Monday’s gathering, the third rally this year calling to settle Gaza, drew a couple hundred Israeli settlers from the West Bank, their supporters and many international journalists.
It had the trappings of a public relations stunt.
Participants camped out in huts for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. One was decorated with a sign: “The Benvenisti family is getting ready for a permanent home in Gaza!” On sale were a 48-piece Gaza settlement jigsaw puzzle for kids and “Gaza is ours. Forever!” flags. Maps of Gaza were dotted with the names of future settlement neighborhoods where Gaza City stands today: King David, Gates of Gaza, Return to Zion, Gaza Heroes.
“Jews, Revenge!” stickers were hawked at a small card table manned by Ben Zion Gopstein, whom the U.S. sanctioned this year for his activist group’s threats and violence against Palestinians.
Nearby, Israeli artillery fire punctuated a speech by settler activist Daniella Weiss, whose settlement group Nahala sponsored the rally, and who was similarly sanctioned by Canada this year.
"Boom, boom, boom," Weiss said after the loud artillery fire. "The enemy needs to be destroyed, to be taken out of this country.”
In English, she said: “The Gaza Arabs lost their right to be here.”
Laying out the rationale for settlement
A year into Israel’s Gaza assault that has killed tens of thousands and devastated the territory, lawmakers from Netanyahu’s party discussed what would be the appropriate response to the deadly Hamas attack that killed nearly 1,200 people in Israel and launched the war last year.
At the rally podium, government minister May Golan said permanently claiming land in Gaza was appropriate punishment.
“What in the end will we do that will really hurt them? Only taking territory will really hurt them…those who got territory and took advantage of it to plan a holocaust will, God willing, receive another Nakba,” she said, using the Arabic term for the mass displacement of Palestinians in Israel's founding war.
Likud lawmaker Avichai Buaron said Gaza should follow the West Bank model: first, a long-term army presence after the war to prevent further attacks. “We need to have boots on the ground, to be deep, deep, in the territory,” he said.
Settlements could come later, he said. What keeps the army on the ground long term is the presence of hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers, he argued.
“That's crazy. We should not be there at all,” Meir Sheetrit, a former Likud party member and lawmaker, told NPR. “The Likud of today…is bringing us to a conflict which I don't see its end.”
Israel’s military assault in north Gaza
Israel had settlements in Gaza until 2005. Until recently, most analysts and commentators in Israel thought resettling Gaza was far-fetched.
What makes many of them now believe Israel is clearing out an area for possible future settlement is the military's intensified assault in a besieged area of north Gaza.
Israel’s military says there have been recent mass evacuations of some 20,000 Palestinians there, amid intense Israeli firepower killing civilians, evacuation orders of shelters and dire shortages of food.
Eran Etzion, a former deputy head of Israel’s national security council, believes expulsion is Israel's unstated goal. He opposes it, and has called on Israeli officers and soldiers to refuse to follow orders that encourage it.
“One of the major lessons since the massacre of October 7 is that nothing is beyond the realm of the possible, unfortunately. We're in this period of turmoil, chaos, breaking of norms, crossing red lines that no Israeli would have predicted, even a few months ago,” Etzion said.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Netanyahu assured him Israel was not carrying out the “Generals’ Plan,” a proposal by a retired general, which the U.S. rejects, to starve and isolate north Gaza. A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to divulge details of a private meeting, said Blinken urged Israel to publicly deny it. The U.S. has also threatened to cut some weapons deliveries if Israel does not ensure the flow of aid into northern Gaza, after aid agencies said it had been shut off completely earlier this month.
“Is there a possibility of changing the borders of the Gaza Strip as punishment for what happened on October 7th? And my answer is, if Trump is elected, in my opinion the answer is affirmative,” said Amit Segal, a senior right-wing Israeli commentator perceived as close to Netanyahu, said on Israeli Channel 12.
“What is happening in north Gaza is an event that is different than everything that we have seen until today,” Segal said. “You can until tomorrow deny that the story is not the implementation of the Generals' Plan — emptying the strip, starving the terrorists, assassinating and arresting them, that is what I think is happening there and that in my opinion is just the pilot or promo.”
Israelis protest settling Gaza
Outside the rally, a group of Israelis protested the idea of settling Gaza.
“It won't bring our hostages back, and it won't bring peace. It will be just ... a war, and I don't want more war and more war and more war,” said Ayala Metzger, whose father-in-law was taken hostage and killed in Gaza.
An Israeli who lives in a West Bank settlement, Chanan Blankenstein, walked by on his way to the rally. He said the first priority was for soldiers to remain in Gaza for Israel’s security, and that Jewish civilian settlers would eventually join them to support their presence there.
“Settlement comes naturally,” he said. “Let's wait and see what will happen in another 10 years."
Yanal Jabarin contributed to this story in southern Israel.
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