Israel may facilitate Gazan immigration to either Congo or Saudi Arabia once its war against Hamas ends as part of a “voluntary” migration scheme.
According to The Times of Israel, a senior official has said Jerusalem is working on a post-war resettlement plan for Palestinians, with some ministers pointing to Saudi Arabia as the destination for Gazans looking for work in the construction industry.
Gazan Immigration Plans Allegedly Being Worked on by Israel
The newspaper reported that the “voluntary” resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza is slowly becoming a key official policy of the Israeli government, with a senior official saying that the country has held talks with several nations for their potential absorption.
Zman Israel, The Times of Israel‘s Hebrew sister site, says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition is allegedly holding secret talks with Congo, among other nations, about accepting thousands of immigrants from Gaza.
“Congo will be willing to take in migrants, and we’re in talks with others,” a senior source in the security cabinet told The Times of Israel.
According to the World Food program, Congo has high levels of inequality, and 52.5 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Meanwhile, Gazans are up against a growing humanitarian crisis as a result of the Israel-Hamas war, which began after thousands of Hamas terrorists conducted a cross-border attack on October 7th.
Palestinian health authorities say that more than 22,000 people have been killed in Israeli air and artillery strikes since October 7th, most of them children and women.
Last Monday, Netanyahu told a Likud faction meeting that he is working on facilitating voluntary Gazan immigration to other countries, according to The Times of Israel. Likud is Netanyahu’s nationalist party, currently in power.
“Our problem is finding countries that are willing to absorb Gazans, and we are working on it,” he said.
The Prime Minister was reportedly responding to Likud MK (Member of Knesset) Danny Danon, who claimed that “the world is already discussing the possibilities of voluntary immigration,” though the idea has been roundly rejected by the international community.
As reported by The Times of Israel, the far-right Religious Zionist and Otzma Yehudit parties, led by Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, and Itamar Ben Gvir, the national security minister, have backed the plans for migration.
On Tuesday, January 2nd, the US State Department called out Smotrich and Ben Gvir for supporting the plans to resettle Palestinians outside of Gaza, calling their rhetoric “inflammatory and irresponsible.”
The Times of Israel reported that Smotrich dismissed the allegations, claiming that over seventy percent of Israelis support the idea of encouraging voluntary migration, because “two million people in Gaza wake up every morning with the desire to destroy the State of Israel.”
Netanyahu’s office has previously said that Smotrich’s and Ben Gvir’s views do not represent government policy on the matter, despite his own comments last week in support of a population transfer.
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