The plan to transfer Palestinians to the Sinai desert, which came to light during Israel's war on the Gaza Strip, is not new to the Zionist movement's agenda. In fact, it was part of the plans that accompanied the movement from the very beginning. As early as 1901, the English writer Israel Zangwill, who was close to Theodore Herzl and who, at the time of the first World Zionist Congress, had visited Palestine and could not therefore be unaware of its demographic reality, wrote the following sentence in the pages of the New Liberal review: "Palestine is a land without a people, the Jews are a people without a land". A phrase he himself had borrowed from some of the proponents of what was known in the 19th century as "Christian Zionism", and from British politicians such as Lord Shaftesbury. The idea of an "empty land" in Zangwill's eyes meant that its inhabitants were "semi-Bedouins", with no cultural or national ties to the land that would make their exodus or expulsion easy. After the Balfour Declaration, he returned to this point emphatically in a book entitled The Voice of Jerusalem: "We must convince them peacefully to leave for the desert. Don't they have the whole of the Arabian Peninsula, a million square miles of it, to themselves? The Arabs have no reason to hold on to these few kilometers. It's in their customs and proverbs to "pack up", to go on "excursions". Let them demonstrate this now.
The plan to deport the Palestinians (1947-1949): the various stages
Ever since the Peel Commission, sent by Great Britain to investigate the events of the 1936 revolt, made its first proposal for the partition of Palestine on July 8, 1937, the leaders of the Zionist movement began to envisage the deportation of the Palestinians, at least in their great majority, from their native land, as an indispensable solution to the "Arab question". With the adoption of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947, on the partition of Palestine into two states, Jewish and Arab, the transfer project moved from a mere idea for debate to concrete action on the ground, as Zionist leaders realized that the Jewish state created by the resolution included a sizeable Arab minority of over 42% of the inhabitants.
The Zionist narrative claims that thousands of Palestinians left their lands of their own free will, or in response to the calls of the Arab armies that entered Palestine on May 15, 1948, or those of their radios. Research by historians Nur Masalha and Ilan Pappé, and several years before them by historian Walid Khalidi, has proved the opposite: if Palestinians left their lands, which had been invaded by Zionist forces, it was by force of arms and terror. This was perfectly in line with the methodical plan drawn up by the Zionist command at Haganah headquarters in Tel Aviv on March 10, 1948, with the personal participation of David Ben-Gurion. Known as Plan D or Plan Daleth, it was executed in around six months, resulting in the uprooting of 800,000 Palestinians from their homeland, the destruction of 531 villages, and the evacuation of 11 urban districts of all their inhabitants.
To expel such a large number of Palestinians, the operation had to be carried out in four stages: the first immediately after the Palestine partition resolution was adopted in December 1947, the fourth and last between October 1948 and early 1949. According to some estimates, some 280,000 of them took refuge in Transjordan, 190,000 in the Gaza Strip, 100,000 in Lebanon, 75,000 in Syria, 7,000 in Egypt, 4,000 in Iraq, and the rest in several other countries.
Old plans to settle Gazans in the Sinai desert
On October 13, 2023, Israel's Ministry of Military Intelligence published a report on the treatment of the Gaza Strip's civilian population, with various options for a radical solution. Among the three options recommended by the report was the transfer of the civilian population to Sinai.
In fact, this choice is nothing new. The Egyptian government itself raised it in 1953. After months of negotiations with UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), it finally accepted a project to settle some 12,000 refugee families from the Gaza Strip in the north-western Sinai desert region. For this to happen, the land in the area had to be made arable. This was to be achieved by diverting part of the Nile's water. A budget of 30 million dollars was allocated to the project, which was supported by the American administration. In the face of the popular uprising that ignited the Gaza Strip in March 1955, the Egyptian government was forced to abandon the project.
When Israel occupied the Gaza Strip in June 1967, the Israeli deputy prime minister proposed another transfer project, with Israeli funding, to settle Palestinian refugees on three sites in the Egyptian region of Al Arish, with an initial contingent of 50,000. The project was categorically refused by Egypt. After 1967, talks were again held with the same aim in mind: to evacuate the Gaza Strip, as the Israeli authorities were determined to reduce the number of Palestinians under its control. Numerous projects were then drawn up, coupled with financial incentives awarded to candidates for transfer to Transjordan. U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy supported a plan to distribute 200,000 refugees from the Gaza Strip among several countries around the world. In 1971, the Israeli commander of the southern region, Ariel Sharon, who was leading a military offensive aimed at liquidating the armed Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip, proposed a plan to uproot 12,000 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip refugee camps and relocate them to the Sinai desert. Egypt again rejected this project. The refusal to settle refugees in the Sinai has since become a pillar of Egypt's security and political doctrine.
The new project of the Israeli Ministry of Military Intelligence
The new project contained in the report by Israel's Ministry of Military Intelligence includes a formal implementation scenario and budget. The creation of tent cities in the Sinai region is envisaged as a first step, followed by the construction of cities in the north of Sinai for the resettlement of refugees, on condition that an empty buffer zone of several kilometers inside Egyptian territory and a secure buffer zone on the Israeli side of the border with Egypt are provided for. The report considers that this choice would strengthen Egyptian control over North Sinai and limit the introduction of weapons. It calls on the United States and European states to exert pressure on Egypt to assume its responsibilities and open the Rafah border crossing, allowing the passage of the civilian population into Sinai, in exchange for timely financial aid in view of the country's current economic crisis. According to the report, Saudi Arabia should provide a financial package, with a specific budget earmarked for the transfer of those who do not wish to settle in Sinai, but emigrate to countries able to welcome them and encourage their settlement.
The reaction of the countries concerned to the expulsion plans
On the day the report was released by the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence, UN staff in the Gaza Strip reported that the Israeli army had informed them on the evening of October 12 that almost 1.1 million Palestinians living in northern Gaza would have to head south within 24 hours. In an Arabic-language tweet on a social network, Lieutenant-Colonel Avichai Adraee, one of the Israeli army's spokesmen, invited Gaza Strip residents to move south of the Wadi Gaza river, urging them to "move away from the Hamas terrorists who were using them as human shields", adding that they would "not be allowed to return to Gaza City unless clearly authorized to do so, and are forbidden to approach the border fence with Israel. "
This statement, which came at a time when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were fleeing from the north of the Strip to the south, raised serious fears within the Egyptian leadership. As early as October 12, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sissi had urged Gazans to stay at home. Then, when he received German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on a visit to Cairo on October 18, he declared that "pushing the Palestinians to leave their territory was a way of liquidating the Palestinian question at the expense of neighboring countries". He added:" The idea of forcing Gazans to move to Egypt would inevitably lead to a similar displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank, from territories occupied by Israel, which would make the creation of a Palestinian state impossible, and would be likely to drag Egypt into war with Israel." Not to mention that "by transferring the Palestinians to Sinai, we are transferring the resistance and the struggle to Egypt. In the event of operations launched from this territory, Israel would have the right to defend itself...with strikes on Egyptian territory". The Egyptian president concluded: "We would see the peace agreement signed between the two countries in 1979 disintegrate in our hands", and finally that "if the idea is forced displacement, then there's the Negev desert. Let Israel take the inhabitants back (to Gaza) if it wants to."
The West Bank is currently experiencing forced internal displacement. Settler militias, often with the direct support of the army, are forcing large numbers of Palestinian farmers and shepherds to abandon their farms and lands in Area C, particularly in the villages and settlements on the eastern flank of the Ramallah heights and in the Al-Khalil (Hebron) governorate. According to Dror Sadot, spokesman for the Israeli human rights NGO B'Tselem: "Since October 7, more than 13 communities have been forced to flee" as a result of settler attacks.
Faced with the risks posed by all these expulsion plans, King Abdullah II of Jordan warned on October 13 that "the evacuation of the inhabitants of Gaza is unacceptable and is likely to precipitate the region towards a new catastrophe and a new cycle of violence and destruction". The King asserted that there would be "no refugees in Jordan and no refugees in Egypt" and that it was "necessary to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the West Bank". On November 6, Jordan's Prime Minister, Bisher Al Khasawneh, declared that "any attempt or creation of conditions for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank constitutes a red line and will be considered by Jordan as a declaration of war".
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas himself had alerted US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, during their October 17 meeting in Amman, to the risk of "a second Nakba" if more Palestinians were expelled from Gaza or the West Bank. While the US position, as expressed by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and the National Security Council spokesman, may at first sight have appeared ambiguous on this transfer project, the White House announced on October 13 that it rejected the Israeli plan to transfer Gaza's inhabitants to the south, describing it as "difficult" to implement.
What follows from the various positions?
For Israel, the decision to relocate the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip may be seen as the ideal choice, since it definitively cuts through the historical Gordian knot represented by this territory. However, the implementation of such a scenario faces a number of obstacles. On the one hand, the Egyptian presidency, despite the promise of a possible cancellation of its foreign debt in exchange for taking in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, does not accept this choice at all, as it sees it as a threat to national security. On the other hand, Jordan's leaders, who fear above all the "alternative homeland" option (making Jordan the homeland of the Palestinians), absolutely cannot accept letting this scenario pass, nor welcoming new Palestinian refugees onto their territory. Given that these two traditional allies of the United States take the same firm stance against the project, it will be difficult for the Biden administration to give the green light, especially as the project poses a serious threat to the respective peace agreements between these two countries and Israel.
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"ورقة وزارة الاستخبارات العسكرية الإسرائيلية: الحل الأمثل هو إجلاء سكان غزة إلى سيناء".