UN human rights chief, Volker Turk has today Thursday described the call by Israeli officials “very disturbed” after an advocacy by senior Israeli officials calling for Palestinians to leave Gaza and resettle Israelites. Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir had on Monday called for promoting “a solution to encourage the emigration of Gaza’s residents” and the re-establishment of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip.
This is coming a day after a far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich made a similar call for the return of Israeli settlers to Gaza, adding that Israel should “encourage” the territory’s approximately 2.4 million Palestinians to leave and the land become a land of Israel according to him.
Turks on his X page said, “Very disturbed by high-level Israeli officials’ to utter such plans of transferring civilians from Gaza to third countries,” this is confirming ethnic cleansing that has been in speculation by most public commentators.
According to the UN official, “international law prohibits forcible transfer of protected persons within or deportation from occupied territory.”
The Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not officially suggested plans to evict Gazans or to send Jewish settlers back to the territory since the war broke out in October, however, his body language and some utterances from his official suggest such.
The current face-off was triggered after some Palestinian resistance forces, Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, leaving about 1,140 soldiers and civilian populace dead most.
Consequently, Israel vowed to destroy the group, and lead to the onslaught of all Gazan’s through carpet-bombing by the Israeli forces which has left Gaza in rubble with statistics claiming that at least 22,313 lives of Palestinian out of which 8000 were children below the ages of 5 were massacred, according to the territory’s health ministry.
Meanwhile, vast majority of Gaza’s residents have been forced out of their homes by nearly three months of fighting between Hamas militants and Israel.
