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A FUTURE GAZA WITHOUT GAZANS
Israel’s religious right unveils its fantasy plan for the zone after ethnic cleansing
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On Tuesday a formal plan for the future of Gaza—as seen by the religious right—was presented to a diverse group of Israeli legislators, rabbis, grieving family members of IDF soldiers lost in combat or in Hamas captivity, and security officials from Gaza. The plan—in English its title is “The Riviera in Gaza—From Vision to Reality”—is a blueprint for a future in Gaza without the Palestinians who now are living and dying there. The meeting was held in the unpretentious second floor Negev Hall in the Knesset in Jerusalem.
At least two journalists from online news organizations that cover the religious right in Israel were invited to attend and publish what they wished. The meeting was headlined by two of Israel’s most outspoken and controversial advocates for the settlement of Israeli citizens in Gaza: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a West Bank settler who has a long history of violent anti-Arab agitation and at least eight convictions for violent anti-Arab activities.
Smotrich told the conference that Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, the new Israeli military chief of staff, assured him in a recent conversation that the northern border of Gaza should be annexed “for security purposes.” Early in his career Zamir served as the military aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is considered by many on the religious right to be an opportunist, although an increasingly welcome one.
I don’t follow the hard-line media in Israel, but I’ve been told by a highly decorated former IDF officer that he was stunned to learn that the religious far right in Israel would discuss the future of Gaza in specific detail with reporters present in the Knesset. One of the reporters wrote the following summary of what is to come Bahadrei Hadarim, a daily online news site serving the ultra-Orthodox, as translated from the Hebrew:
“The plan presented an unprecedented transformation [that would] return . . . Gaza to full Israeli sovereignty and transform it into a developed and innovative area, including housing for hundreds of thousands of residents, alongside advanced agriculture, a port, airports, industrial zones, universities, health funds and tourist complexes along the coast.
“The plans are based, among other things, on the destruction of the current Gaza Strip following the [ongoing war] with the Israel Defense Forces and present it as a starting point for rebuilding the entire area, on the model of a ‘political restart.’ The plan describes a redivision of the Strip into civilian governorates (such as the Rafah Governorate, the Khan Younis Governorate, and the Gaza Coast Governorate), with the establishment of infrastructural and regional anchors that will change the face of the entire southern Strip.
“The main features of the plan are the construction of approximately 850,000 housing units, an international airport, subways, metro lines, solar roads, autonomous drones, and a new seaport that will connect the Gaza Strip to the mainland axis of India and Europe and turn it into a global trade gateway.
“In addition, there will be few trade zones in the stock exchange, cryptocurrency, fintech, as well as the establishment of conference centers and high tech complexes. There also will be advanced agriculture in the south of the Strip with research parks, water purification, and energy storage, and an artificial island will be built off the coast of Gaza constructed from . . . war debris which will be used for trade and tourism.
“The plan will be implemented over fifteen years, in collaboration with Israel and international bodies. In the short term, the rubble [now throughout Gaza] will be cleared and infrastructure work will begin. In the following four years, transportation, neighborhoods and central complexes will be built, and in the long term, the trade zones, the artificial island, and the new settlements will be completed.”
According to the report, Smotrich added: “We have great support from the president of the United States to turn Gaza into a prosperous region, into a coastal city where there is settlement and employment. This is how peace is made.”
There were many similar speeches at the event, according to the report, with no discussion of what to do with the surviving Gazans, many of them suffering from malnutrition, ill health, and wounds from the bombs and guns of Israel.
The fantasy talk at the Knesset renewed concern Israelis I know about the rationality of the religious right in Israel, who are an essential part of Netanyahu’s political coalition. He is continuing to bomb Gaza and Israel’s neighbors—Iran last month and now Syria—and is being kept in office by US military aid and a religious right indifferent to the immense suffering in Gaza. Throughout the conference there was no talk of the horrid plight of the Gazans, many of whom are suffering from what can only called imminent starvation. It is an indifference to an ancient culture shared by many supporters of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir.
The online reports about the religious right’s vision of a glittering Gaza to come reminded one of my Israeli contacts, a secular Jew, of a failed 1939 Nazi plan to deport Jews, as war spread in occupied Poland. The goal of the Nisko Plan, as it was called, was to rid Western Europe of Jews and put them to work in German defense plants near Lublin, an area that was believed by some Nazis as a center of Jewish worldwide power and Jewish genetic potential. The area, close to the Ukraine border, was known to be “swampy.” The suffering of those in the overcrowded camps led to negative reporting and the fear that the Nazis would suffer from the adverse press.
There also were many many more Jews being deported from Poland than initially anticipated. Inevitably, as the Nazi offensive spread, the problem of overcrowding at Lublin and similar workcamps became unmanageable. The solution the Nazis enacted was the Holocaust and the mass murder of Jews.
For some Israelis, the casual talk at the Knesset meeting of expelling hundreds of thousands of Gazans and building a magical new city-state is, as I was told, “a monstrosity” that evokes the worst of World War II.