Israel exploited the Tufan al-Aqsa operation launched by HAMAS on October 7, 2023, to wage a genocidal war on the Palestinian people in Gaza, by resorting to murder, deportation,suffocating restrictions, siege and famine, and by targeting and destroying public and private property, including UN institutions, and economic, industrial, agricultural, and other establishments. These actions resulted in massive internal transfers of the great majority of Gaza’s population by moving south or north, as Israel began to issue orders to empty northern Gaza, beginning on October 13, 2023.
These Israeli orders resulted in a population shift from northern Gaza and Gaza city to the center and south of the Gaza Strip, which now witnessed a massive population exodus beginning with the first week of Israel’s onslaught. As Israel’s land operations penetrated further into the cities of the southern Strip, orders intensified commanding the inhabitants to clear out of the Khan Yunis province to the Rafah province and the region of Mawasi, west of these two provinces, followed by ordering the inhabitants of Rafah to abandon the parts near Khan Yunis and the central regions. This took place after the closing of the Rafah crossing and the total occupation of the city in early May 2024. Concurrently, the eastern regions of central Gaza witnessed a wide population exodus towards Khan Yunis in particular.
Acts of genocide in the towns of besieged northern Gaza were renewed when the Israeli army, for the fourth time, assaulted it on October 6, 2024, now using more deadly and concentrated force. The most prominent feature of that assault, which happened concurrently with a widescale campaign of operations directed at the towns of Bayt Lahiya, Bayt Hanun and Jabaliya, was a series of deliberate deportations carried out by multiplying military orders to evacuate these towns, whose populations as a result shrank to less than 20% of their normal inhabitants.[1]
These Israeli methods of pressure, applied to empty the northern sector and declare it a closed military zone, together with treating the inhabitants as “terrorists”, causing famine by blocking all humanitarian aid to them, and widespread destruction of infrastructure and civil institutions, were all a prelude to carrying out Israel’s vision for northern Gaza on the ground itself. Thus, military roadways and infrastructures were expanded along with other similar measures, concurrently with revealing the so-called “Generals’ Plan”, later approved by the Israeli government.
Entrenching Israeli military control by the building of permanent military roads and infrastructures, now known as the “Mefalsim” and “Netzarim” corridors, designed to cut off northern Gaza from south, and dividing the towns of the north from one another--- all this raises some fundamental questions about the future of the Gaza Strip and the north in particular.
Israeli schemes of deportation
Ever since Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip in 1967, the idea of deporting the inhabitants of Gaza has been mooted in Israeli government circles. Across the many years of occupation, successive Israeli governments have entertained broad schemes of deportation as part of the policy of colonialist settlement, turning these ideas and visions into schemes of forced or voluntary deportation, internal and external. A series of measures were envisaged such as deporting the Palestinians beyond the frontier, applying a policy of siege, restrictions and collective punishment, intense and repeated military assaults, famine and genocide, all of which would lead to a “voluntary” exodus of the Palestinians.
Ever since the end of the Forties of last century, Israeli leaders have drawn up plans to expel the inhabitants of Gaza and move them to Sinai or other countries in the region and the world. When Israel occupied the Gaza Strip, consensus was reached in the Israeli government that Israel would not withdraw from the Strip in any settlement with the Arab states, and that it would annex the Strip officially after having deported all or most of its inhabitants. Israeli documents, especially the minutes of government meetings on June 18 and 19, 1967, recently made public, reveal that deporting the Palestinians from Gaza was a top priority. All members of government agreed that it was necessary to deport them to Sinai or Jordan. The government formed several committees and allotted them budgets to accomplish that objective.[2]
Since that time, successive Israeli governments have exerted additional pressures to deport the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip to certain countries in South America by reaching agreement with several of these countries to receive the deportees. In May 1969, the Mossad reached an agreement with the government of Paraguay for the latter to receive sixty thousand Gazan deportees over four years, and to grant them labor permits., enabling them to become citizens in five years. Through the carrot and the stick, the Israeli occupation authorities then forced a few hundred Gazans to emigrate to Paraguay, presenting each family with a one-way ticket, a sum of money, and lavish promises.[3] Among the schemes of deportation was one proposed by General Giora Eiland to resettle more than a million Gazans in Sinai as part of a land exchange deal between Egypt, Israel, and Palestine. This is merely one among a number of ceaseless Israeli visions of deporting the Palestinians of Gaza.
Deportation, “voluntary” or by force, following October 7, 2023
With the genocidal assault on Gaza, calls were renewed to deport the Palestinians by parties of the current Israeli government coalition as well as by leading opposition leaders, the media, public opinion leaders, and research centers, becoming a general policy objective in Israel. The earliest signs of deportation schemes appeared in the very first week of the assault when the Israeli army ordered the inhabitants of northern Gaza to move southward in the direction of the Egyptian frontier. This is found in a document issued by the Ministry of Military Intelligence. Among the three options proposed to deal with the inhabitants of the Strip was the option to deport them to the Sinai desert.[4]
Northern Gaza’s share of these Israeli schemes of deportation was the so-called “Generals’ Plan”, a military plan presented to Prime Minister Netanyahu by a former Israeli general, Giora Eiland, and approved by several army generals. The idea was to deport by force the inhabitants of northern Gaza by using all means of terror including the imposition of a complete siege of the northern towns, preventing all humanitarian aid from reaching them, and treating any civilian remaining behind as a combatant.[5] In point of fact, the Israeli army on the ground proceeded to execute that plan and refine it by means of even more deadly methods against Palestinian civilians, but without openly declaring that it had adopted and was executing that plan officially.
As of October 6, 2024, and as a result of intense Israeli pressures, restrictions and assaults, some 100,000 to 130,000 inhabitants of the north moved to various regions in western or northern Gaza, among whom some 700 ended up in the south. UN figures[6] indicate that, by October 7, 2024, only some 65,000 to 75,000 inhabitants remained in northern Gaza, i.e. less than 20% of its population. There is no doubt that the number of those remaining in the north is constantly decreasing as a result of increasing deportation orders which grew more intensive in December 2024, causing further waves of deportation.
The various schemes to deport the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip elicited a number of Arab and international reactions having to do with the consequences of a forcible expulsion. Most notable was the reaction of the Egyptian government to the plan to deport the Palestinians to Egyptian territory in Sinai, the objection of the US administration to deportation schemes and the refusal of European states to receive Palestinian emigrants. As a result of these Arab and international reactions, Israel switched to advocating a policy of “voluntary” emigration, but without abandoning the idea of clearing the Gaza Strip and drastically reducing its population by forced deportation in a manner that serves Israel’s expansionist military and security plans, and ridding itself in general from the dilemma of Gaza.
Northern Gaza to be split up into separation zones and military roadways
As a region, northern Gaza holds particular security and military importance for Israel, which began its military assault from that region. The Israeli army exerted its utmost power to rid the region of its population but failed to do so. Some inhabitants of the three northern towns, Bayt Lahiya, Bayt Hanun and Jabaliya, still live there and have not left despite the most intense Israeli restrictions, among which were confining the population to certain quarters and preventing them from accessing closed military zones. However, this did not prevent Israel from implementing its scheme to redraw the military and security map of that northern region and turn it into closed zones, concurrently with acts of genocide and the expulsion of the northern population towards central and southern Gaza.
It is evident that the changes introduced by the Israeli army into the northern region were aimed at turning them into closed military zones, bolstering the presence of the military in them, and setting up separation zones designed to expand Israeli occupation of areas adjacent to the northern region from its northern and eastern sides. These changes were designed to split northern Gaza through the building of the Mefalsim corridor and in accordance with a plan to separate the towns of the north, center and south from one another, where three other corridors were built: Netzarim, Kissufim and Philadelphia. The new maps that were drawn up showed that the Mefalsim corridor, named after an Israeli settlement near the Gaza Strip, was built as a military corridor stretching from that settlement, lying east of Jabaliya, all the way to the Mediterranean coast near Bayt Lahiya.[7]
The Israeli army of occupation introduced novel changes in northern Gaza in general such as building new roads and barricades to the east, north and west of the Jabaliya refugee camp; expanding the area of the Netzarim corridor all the way to the outskirts of the Zaytun quarter in Gaza city, embracing some 47 square kilometers of land; setting up military outposts; building what resembles a touristic vacation spot to distribute hot meals to the military and provide residence and sleeping quarters; bringing in caravans designed as sleeping quarters for the soldiers and building watchtowers of cement and wood.[8] A report with photos published in the Times of Israel showed roads being paved; communication towers being raised; observation posts being set up; temporary sleeping quarters set in place; trucks reinforced against contact with shrapnel; aerials erected on concrete blocks for mobile phone communications and water and electricity conduits from Israel to army bases, plus other similar installations which clearly indicate Israel’s intention to remain for a long period in the Strip.[9]
Furthermore, the signs that indicate Israel’s continued military presence in northern Gaza for a more lengthy period may not be part of the ceasefire agreement currently being worked out by Egyptian and Qatari mediators and appear to be congruent with statements recently made by Israeli Security Minister Yisrael Katz: “Security control over the Gaza Strip will remain in the hands of the Israeli army which will be able to operate in all modes to ward off threats…we shall set up security zones in Gaza, separation zones and points of control to ensure the security of Israeli towns surrounding the Gaza Strip.”[10]
Settlement, reoccupation, and realistic calculations
The new military arrangements introduced into northern Gaza clearly reveal Israeli intentions wider and deeper than the mere reassurance of Israeli settlers in the “Gaza Envelope” as to their future security and individual safety, or securing their return to places they had been forced to abandon in the wake of the Tufan al-Aqsa operation. Despite the importance of these Israeli measures, what the army is doing on the ground in the north is founded upon political, military and security arrangement linked to Gaza’s future in the days following the Israeli assault.
Developments on the ground in the north, including the building of roads and military corridors linking it to Israeli settlements, the building of military infrastructures and the creation of isolation zones, point to the fact that Israel, in addition to ending the rule of HAMAS and bringing home its prisoners, the declared war objectives for Israel’s assault on Gaza---appears to be moving in the direction of renewed settlement activity and of entrenching it in that region. Israel is also planning to retain part of its forces as an “occupying military rule” in the north and for a lengthy period of time even after reaching a ceasefire agreement with HAMAS. Thus, the persistent demands of the settlers evacuated from the Strip settlements in accordance with the “disengagement” and unilateral withdrawal of 2005, will now be met by allowing them to return and further entrench settlement activity.
These plans gain credibility in both government and popular expressions of opinion, opinion polls, and activities carried out by the settler movement calling for renewal of settlement inside the Gaza Strip. In November 2023, several right-wing groups came together to form a coalition aimed at returning to the settlements broken up by the “disengagement” plan. Yossi Dagan, head of a settlement council on the West Bank, gathered these groups together and directed their activities so as to embrace, at a later period, settlement outposts, with settlement in northern Gaza as a first step. The Israeli army also proposed two schemes designed to “remain” a long time in the Strip. The first scheme involved setting up a security zone adjacent to the frontier fence, a kilometer wide, and across 16% of the territory of the Strip. The second scheme would be to create a corridor of control splitting the north from the south, which allows the Israeli army to control movement along “strategic roads.”[11]
On January 28, 2024, a conference assembled in Jerusalem entitled “Settlement guarantees security and victory”, bringing together some five thousand Israelis, men and women, and joined by 11 ministers of the Netanyahu cabinet, who represented four religious Zionist parties: the Religious Zionist Party, Jewish Power, the Likud and Yehudit Torah, plus 15 Knesset members and rabbis who support settlement. The speeches made emphasized the fact that “transfer” was what brings “peace” to Israel and that the rebuilding of settlements in the Gaza Strip, broken up in 2005, is what will guarantee its “security.”[12] On November 21, 2024, Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir called on the Israeli government to renew settlement in the Gaza Strip after the war’s end, while Finance Minister Betsalel Smotrich stated: “It is necessary to reoccupy the Gaza Strip…without settlements in Gaza there can be no security.”[13] This view was echoed by Tzvika Fogel, Knesset member and chair of the National Security Committee, who affirmed that the war on Gaza must end by reviving “Jewish settlements” throughout the Gaza Strip.[14]
All these views are in accord with opinion polls of the Israeli public, conducted by the well-known pollster Mano Geva during the first weeks of war. That poll indicated that the majority of Israel’s public was in favor of settlement in Gaza and believed in the necessity of returning and settling in Gaza. Measured according to political party alignments, between 60 and 70% of right-wing voters and supporters of the current government were in favor of settling the Strip as opposed to between 16% and 22% of leftist or centrist voters who support that settlement.[15]
Envisioning the future of northern Gaza is based upon careful calculations on the political and military levels in Israel. Hence, the ultimate decision will depend upon finding the least costly option in security and economic terms. Partial military control through keeping the army for a specific period, plus returning to partial settlement of the north would represent the least harm to Israel, which is not expected to renew its total occupation of the Strip, and this for the following reasons: the possibility of direct confrontation with the Palestinian factions in future, and the international scene which opposes the total occupation of the Strip. These matters lie at the very heart of the challenges to be faced by Israel in the Strip on the “next day” following its genocidal assault, and irrespective of which side is to rule Gaza.
Conclusion
Using the pretext of the Tufan al-Aqsa operation on October 7, 2023, Israel was presented with the opportunity to revive its schemes of total control of the Gaza Strip and deporting its population, by force or voluntarily. Its failure to implement its plan to drive out the Palestinian population towards the Egyptian Sinai desert was due to steadfast Palestinian resistance as well as Arab and international opposition. So Israel activated its policy of total control over northern Gaza after carrying out a campaign of collective demolitions, genocide and famine, causing immense human hardship in the northern towns by depriving their inhabitants of all humanitarian aid, be it food or medicines, and across some fifteen months of relentless bombardment of the Strip.
Due to ceaseless acts of Israeli genocide, the future of the Strip appears to be in doubt whereas an Israeli plan to change the character of northern Gaza appears to be in place where military operations are focused, including widespread destruction, expansion and annexation of separation zones to the north and east, and creating military roads and military infrastructures as a prelude to settlement and to a long term presence of some army units in the north of the Strip.
Finally, it might be argued that foiling Israel’s plans of deportation of the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and its effective control over the north, of settlement therein, and of expanding the area of the separation zone and annexing it to the “Gaza Envelope” settlements, all require, to begin with, a steadfast Palestinian stance from FATH, HAMAS, the PLO and the Palestinian Authority. This stance should be based upon prioritizing the national interest above any other party od factional consideration by reaching agreement as to how the Strip is to be run, and by allowing the PA to extend its legal, administrative and executive role to Gaza. This would be the prelude to holding Palestinian presidential and legislative elections, and to reaching agreement between all Palestinian factions under the umbrella of the PLO upon a national program to oppose Israel’s occupation and its expanding settlements and arriving at freedom, national independence, and the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
[1] "آخر مستجدات الحالة الإنسانية رقم 249- قطاع غزة"، مكتب الأمم المتحدة للشؤون الإنسانية في الأرض الفلسطينية المحتلة، 24/12/2024.
[2] محمود محارب، "الحرب وتهجير الفلسطينيين من قطاع غزة، تقييم حالة"، الدوحة: المركز العربي للأبحاث ودراسة السياسات، 19/3/2024.
[3] المصدر نفسه.
[4] "ورقة وزارة الاستخبارات العسكرية الإسرائيلية: الحل الأمثل هو إجلاء سكان غزة إلى سيناء"، بيروت: مؤسسة الدراسات الفلسطينية، 31/10/2023.
[5] يوآف زيتون، "فرض حصار على جباليا وتقسيمها: نظرة على العملية البرية الطويلة في جباليا"، "يديعوت أحرونوت"، 3/11/2024 (بالعبرية).
[6] "آخر مستجدات الحالة الإنسانية رقم 249- قطاع غزة"، مصدر سبق ذكره.
[7] ماهر الشريف، "هل تنوي إسرائيل إدامة احتلالها لقطاع غزة؟"، بيروت: مؤسسة الدراسات الفلسطينية، 9/12/2024.
[8] "إسرائيل ثبتت مواقع عسكرية شبه دائمة"، جريدة "الشرق الأوسط"، 1/1/2025.
[9] إيمانويل فابيان، "الجيش الإسرائيلي ينشئ قواعد عسكرية للبقاء لأجل غير مسمى في محور نتساريم في غزة"، "تايمز أوف إسرائيل"، 1/1/2025.
[10] "كاتس: إسرائيل ستضمن وجود ʾمناطق عازلةʿ والاحتفاظ بـ ʾمواقع عسكرية في القطاعʿ"، "عرب 48"، 25/12/2024.
[11] أنطوان شلحت، "عن ʾغزة الجديدةʿ إسرائيلياً"، "عرب "48، 16/11/2024.
[12] ماهر الشريف، "هل يمكن أن تضع النكبة الغزية الشعب الفلسطيني على سكة التحرر؟"، أوراق سياسات، بيروت: مؤسسة الدراسات الفلسطينية، 2024.
[13] "سنستوطن غزة بعد الحرب"، قناة "العربية"، 21/10/2024.
[14] "استيطان غزة الفكرة التي ستكلف إسرائيل ثمناً باهظاً"، "الجزيرة نت"، 25/3/2024.
[15] المصدر نفسه.