On July 22, leaders of the settlers’ movement in Israel convened in a meeting room in the Knesset building to plan Gaza’s future without Gazans. The basis for the discussion was the notion that the U.S. had given them the “green light” to transform the besieged Gaza Strip into a “resort town” once they had completed the ethnic cleansing of more than two million Palestinians, reported Middle East Eye. Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich claimed that Israel had received a “green light from the president of the United States to turn Gaza into a prosperous strip, a resort town with employment.”
“We will occupy Gaza and make it an inseparable part of Israel,” Smotrich told a few dozen attendees at the event titled “The Gaza Riviera—From Vision to Reality.” Smotrich, who also serves as a minister in the defense ministry, said that “a proposed plan to relocate Gazans [Palestinians] to other countries will serve as a means of facilitating the settlement of the Strip.”
He also said that he backed the idea of a “security annexation” of northern Gaza, claiming that the Israeli military’s chief of staff Eyal Zamir supported the idea. “I truly believe there is a tremendous opportunity here,” he said, suggesting that Israel begin “with the northern border [area of the Strip] and establish three communities there. We are already talking about it. Some call it a ‘security annexation.’”
