In 2019, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Ukraine, and on the way, one of his people told reporters on board the plane about an initiative of consensual transfer to residents of the Gaza Strip. The initiative, whose existence is being published here for the first time, was born after Netanyahu was presented with a particularly surprising opinion by the Shin Bet, which recommended encouraging the emigration of young Gazans from the Gaza Strip to Qatar.
A senior security source told Israel Hayom this week that Netanyahu had instructed the National Security Council (NSC) to prepare staff work on the issue and turn to target countries to which Gazans could move. According to the source, the Mossad approached three countries – Egypt, Jordan and Qatar – and the proposal for them was: allowing immigration for a period of no less than three years, with an Israeli promise that Gazans would retain the right to return to the Gaza Strip, so that in effect the move would not be considered emigration but a stay.
NSC staff work preferred that the target countries be Jordan and Egypt, because transit to them is overland. Since the Shin Bet preferred Qatar, a plan was developed to build a small airport near Gaza, which would be served by "shuttles" from the Gaza Strip. Alternatively, flights were proposed to depart from Ramon Airport, which opened that year, since Ben Gurion Airport was not on the agenda for security reasons.
Documentation: Gazans make their way south | IDF Spokesperson
The Jordanians rejected the proposal out of hand, and the dialogue with them did not progress. The Egyptians initially showed willingness, but when the plan took shape, they imposed transit fees with a particularly high tariff, and it was clear that this was intended to torpedo the matter. According to the source, they feared that the emigration of Gazans to Egypt might strengthen the Muslim Brotherhood in their country.
The talks with Qatar reached the most advanced stage, but in the end they withdrew. In several cabinet discussions on the subject, former minister Ayelet Shaked demanded that an immigration plan continue to be advanced. This was the last initiative to encourage immigration that Israel tried to promote in Gaza, and has not tried again since.
Europe as a model
Last month, in order to protect their safety, the IDF ordered and allowed hundreds of thousands of residents of the northern Gaza Strip to move to the south. But even when an iron sword war ends one way or another, many of them will have nowhere to return because their homes were destroyed. They themselves are liable to be harmed when the fighting moves to the area, and even before that, those who fled south, like the tens of thousands left behind, are effectively imprisoned in Hamas territory, which does not care for their welfare.
Musa Abu Marzouq, a member of Hamas' political bureau and a senior member of the terrorist organization, admitted in an interview on Russia Today TV a few weeks ago that Hamas does not consider itself responsible for the residents of the Gaza Strip: "Everyone knows that 75 percent of the residents of the Gaza Strip are refugees – and that it is the UN's responsibility to protect them."
, Photo: AP
Last week, former deputy Mossad chief and current Yesh Atid MK Ram Ben-Barak published an article in The Wall Street Journal, an internationally influential New York newspaper, in which he proposed, together with Likud MK Danny Danon, an initiative for consensual immigration of Gazans from the Gaza Strip to other countries. The article made waves in Israel and around the world. "Countries around the world should offer asylum to Gaza residents seeking relocation," they wrote, "Members of the international community can cooperate to provide one-off economic support packages to Gazans who wish to relocate, to help with relocation costs and to facilitate the acclimatization of refugees to their new communities."
Ben-Barak writes in the article that Austria, Sweden and Germany absorbed masses of refugees from Bosnia during the Yugoslav War, as well as hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees (in Germany). Not only did the article spark the debate, but also the declaration by Scotland's First Minister, Youssef Hamza, that he would take in refugees from Gaza in his country. Hamza said this when his wife's family, who was born in Gaza, was stuck in Gaza and he worked to rescue her. The Netherlands, where elections will be held this week, also announced that it had begun accelerating permits for Gazans who wished to immigrate to its territory as part of family reunification.
Providing economic opportunities
The idea of transfer and encouragement of emigration was perceived as acceptable to the Zionist movement at the outset. Beginning with Herzl, who wrote in his diary in 1895 that "the private lands in the parts of the country that are handed over to us, we must slowly take out of the hands of their owners. We try to move the poor population (Arabs, N.B.) without noise across the border. The removal of the poor from our country must be done gently and carefully."
The idea was accepted mainly by the Israeli left and the labor movement. Regarding the Peel Commission's transfer proposal in 1937, Ben-Gurion wrote: "It is difficult to find any political or moral argument against transferring those Arabs from territory under Jewish rule to territory that would stand under Arab rule," and Berl Katzenelson chimed in: "My conscience is completely silent on this." So did Chaim Weizmann and Moshe Sharett, who wrote: "Even when it is coerced, it will be out of compensation for the assets they leave here and out of concern for their situation in the new place."
Photo: Tel Aviv University Spokesperson's Office
Dr. Omri Sheffer Raviv of Ben-Gurion University researched the minutes of cabinet discussions after the Six-Day War and the occupation of the Gaza Strip, and exposed initiatives to encourage immigration carried out by Israel. Immediately after the war, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Tzur appointed a General Staff Committee to propose to the Cabinet plans to reduce Gaza's population. Israel abandoned the idea of forced immigration, while the guideline proposed to the cabinet was to exploit Gaza's difficult economic situation for emigration through benefits and economic opportunities abroad. Thus, for example, the cabinet approved the removal of buses carrying Gazan workers from the Gaza Strip to Judea and Samaria. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol established an independent body that coordinated with the Mossad and the Shin Bet to encourage immigration, which offered Gazans across Jordan 50 liras per person and 250 per family, and the mechanism operated until Jordan closed these crossings.
The target country dilemma
In 1970, Israel allowed schools in Gaza to teach according to the Egyptian curriculum. Moshe Dayan, who led this, explained that after school, the young people would emigrate to Egypt to study at universities. If Israel allows it, Dayan told the cabinet, "then 6,000-5,000 of these youth are going, hoping we won't see them back. This is a very important migration. Get rid of them, because the Gaza Strip is a place from which people have to be removed."
It worked until Sadat stopped it in 1978. Mossad chief Zvi Zamir reached a secret agreement with Paraguay to absorb 60,<> Gazans in exchange for Israel's payment to migrants and the receiving country. However, two Gazans carried out a shooting attack at the Israeli embassy in Paraguay, and in testimony they gave at their trial, they exposed the hitherto secret immigration plan, thereby ending the agreement.
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In all these initiatives, Israel succeeded in bringing about the emigration of tens of thousands of Gazans within a few years. Prime Minister Golda Meir, who was elected after Eshkol, said that "those who think that the refugees will immediately start packing their belongings and leave in a convoy are living in illusions," and Israel has since taken its foot off the gas. Over the years, the idea became extremist and belonged only to extreme right-wingers such as Meir Kahane or Rehoboam Ze'evi, who used to mention that in the Treaty of Lausanne – the peace treaty between Greece and Turkey in 1923 – it was decided to transfer one million and 800 hundred people.
The renewed discourse on the possibility of encouraging immigration of Gazans by Israel has presented a new argument. To date, Israel has presented the encouragement of emigration from Gaza as an Israeli interest. Now, against the backdrop of the murderousness of Hamas and Gaza's dire situation, it has become clear that such immigration would benefit the Gazans themselves no less than in their interest for a good life of freedom and prosperity, if they so choose.
Last week, the European Court of Human Rights struck down Britain's migration plan, in which it reached an agreement with Rwanda that refugees in the kingdom would be transferred to the African country. The reason for disqualifying the plan was that Rwanda was not safe for the refugees. The European Court of Justice allowed the transfer of refugees to another country on condition that they be deprived of their danger and guaranteed their rights there. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak responded by announcing that he would pass a law declaring Rwanda safe. "I will not allow a foreign court like the European Court of Human Rights to block these flights," he said.
Last week, interior ministers from Britain and Austria signed a cooperation agreement on a plan to transfer refugees to a third country, and a similar initiative began to be formulated by the German government. Italy unveiled an agreement it signed with Albania to absorb 3,000 refugees from its territory.
Two legal experts in international law – Prof. Avi Bell and Prof. Eliav Lieblich – agree that the state is forbidden to carry out forced transfers, but disagree on whether it is permissible to encourage consensual immigration. Lieblich believes that this is a problematic action: "Of course, people are allowed to immigrate voluntarily to third countries if they agree to do so, and if they are refugees, they also have an obligation not to deport them back to a place where they are in danger. However, there is a fundamental problem in a situation in which another country "encourages" such immigration, because by doing so it betrays a desire to reduce the proportion of a particular population solely on the basis of its group affiliation.
"This is even more problematic when it comes to territory that does not belong to the country in question. If this 'encouragement' was created against the background of severe distress on the ground, then the element of consent in the matter cannot be taken seriously, and therefore here too the problem of expulsion may arise. Ben-Barak and Danon's proposal arouses opposition around the world because it comes against the background of a broader context of harsh statements by Israeli ministers and MKs regarding the Gaza Strip, as well as in light of the campaign currently being formulated to reestablish settlements in the region."
Bell believes that international law does not prohibit a state from encouraging immigration: "Consensual migration certainly does not constitute expulsion or forcible transfer, and this can be clearly seen in the official interpretation of the Geneva Convention, whose provisions do not apply to the Gaza Strip anyway. Israel can encourage Gazans to emigrate or not return without restriction, as long as it allows them to decide, thereby not violating the "right of movement" under international law.
"Mass migration in the context of war characterizes many modern wars, including migration on the basis of ethnicity. There are examples from Europe, such as the former Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, Armenia-Azerbaijan and others. In Nagorno-Karabakh this year it was different. The Azeris expelled the Armenian population, and it was claimed that the expulsion was not voluntary. It is clear that there will be strong opposition in many places around the world to any Israeli attempt to encourage the emigration of Gazans, just as there is strong opposition to every step taken by the State of Israel regarding the Gaza Strip. The opposition will be expressed in legal rhetoric, even though the issue is not legal but in the field of international relations."
Fighting for everywhere
Either way, the situation in Gaza seems to be doing its job. While there are no official reliable figures, according to Palestinian reports, between 15,250 and 300,18 people have migrated from Gaza over the past 2 years, about 3,11 a year, most of them young. If there are <>.<> million in Gaza, that's a significant <> percent of immigrants.
The migrants' way out of Gaza passes through branches of the "passport" company in the Gaza Strip, which issues visas to Turkey. Last September, the queues were so overcrowded that a violent brawl broke out between those waiting.
Photo: Dudi Vaknin
Two Palestinian media reports said that tens of thousands have applied for Turkish visas and are awaiting approval. After receiving the visa, the migrants cross the Rafah crossing into Egypt, and according to UNRWA, 2022,145 Gazans exited through this point in 6 – the highest rate in the past decade. Not everyone is an immigrant, of course, and many leave to return. Those who come to Turkey settle there, while others try to get visas to the European Union. Many others try to make their way in rubber boats to the coast of Greece, sometimes dying along the way. Their preferred countries are Canada, Germany and Belgium, because they find their immigration policies lenient. Financing the journey will cost Gaza about $000,<>, with some taking out loans to do so.
And there is another type of immigration from Gaza – the phenomenon of residents marrying citizens of Western countries. When they wish to carry out a family reunification procedure in those countries and immigrate to them, they are required to come to their consulates in Israel. The left-wing NGO Gisha reported in April that Israel is making it difficult for these residents, so for example, an immigrant who wishes to reunite with his family in the United States has to wait four years for the process to be completed. Today, then, not only does the State of Israel not support or encourage immigration from Gaza (on Tuesday of this week, the Israeli Embassy in the United States officially announced that consensual immigration is not part of government policy), but in some cases it actually delays it.
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