An Israeli settler leader has told a conference on Israel’s frontier with Gaza that Palestinians will “disappear” from the territory and said that thousands of people stand ready to move there "from north to south”.
Addressing a conference on Monday also attended by Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Knesset members from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, Daniella Weiss called for Palestinians living in Gaza to be relocated to other countries.
“We came here with one clear purpose: the purpose is to settle the entire Gaza Strip, not just part of it, not just a few settlements, the entire Gaza Strip from north to south,” said Weiss.
Weiss, the leader of Nachala, an orthodox settler movement which organised the conference, said there were six settler groups and more than 700 families looking to settle in Gaza, where more than 42,600 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its war against Hamas in October last year following the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel.
Weiss’s comments were echoed by Ben Gvir, who later told the crowd: “We are the owners of the land”. Ben Gvir also called for Palestinians in Gaza to “voluntarily” transfer to other countries.
Monday’s conference, which was billed by organisers as “a celebration for the preparation of settling Gaza", took place near Reim kibbutz, with the sound of Israel’s ongoing bombardment of northern Gaza audible in the background and with smoke rising over the horizon a few kilometres to the west.
They settle right next to existing Palestinian towns. Then surround them by expanding. Create better infrastructure. Then exclude the Palestinians and ensure they are treat as other or not equal.
