The IDF is engaged in an operation to completely expel as many as 400,000 people from northern Gaza. Conceived by retired Major-General Giora Eiland, the plan aims to empty northern Gaza of its 400,000 residents to make way for a “closed military zone,” reported Middle East Eye. “The “general’s plan,” as it is called, which was launched in an Israeli TV campaign in September, called for the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, warning that those who remain will face starvation. “The right thing to do is to inform the approximately 300,000 residents who remained in the northern Gaza Strip … we are ordering you to leave,” Eiland said at the time. “In a week, the entire territory of the northern Gaza Strip will become military territory.”
MEE cited a report published on Friday, Oct. 11, in the major Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, which says that the Israeli military is now implementing a “scaled-down” version of the plan in the Jabalia refugee camp, north of Gaza.
MEE also cites Haaretz journalist Amos Harel reporting that there were two aims in Israeli military actions in northern Gaza. “The declared goal of the operation there by the 162nd Division is to degrade Hamas’ military networks, which regrouped during the months that the IDF withdrew from the northern part of the [Gaza] Strip,” Harel reported.
He added that the other aim of the operation, “which was noted publicly only in passing,” was to clear the area of Palestinian civilians. He noted that those attempts have “major significance in terms of Israel’s future plans in the Gaza Strip, and in particular for the moves being concocted by the far right to ensure a lengthy occupation and the renewal of the settlement project.”
