Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan for Gaza has leaked. What’s in it?

The world is watching the Israel-Hamas war. As Jerusalem has responded to the 7 October attack by carpet-bombing Gaza in order to destroy Hamas, one question is on everyone’s mind – what is Benjamin Netanyahu’s endgame for the strip? Now, an internal document outlining Netanyahu’s plan has leaked. But what does it say? Let’s take a closer look: As per The Times of Israel, the 10-page document suggests shifting the population of Gaza to the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. Gaza is home to more than two million people.

The document, dated 13 October, was first published by local news site Sicha Mekomit.

It was also put out last week by Israeli culture magazine Mekomit, as per The Cradle. It was put together by Israel’s intelligence ministry – which conducts research but does not set policy, as per The Cradle. The junior ministry independently puts together studies and policy papers – which are then sent to government and security agencies. As per NDTV, the plan states that Israel will instruct the people of north Gaza to go south prior to the offensive. This has already happened. Now, Israel will kick off its operations in north Gaza and move south. Meanwhile, the Rafah crossing in Egypt will be kept open. “It is important to leave the traffic lanes towards the south usable, to allow the evacuation of the civilian population towards Rafah,” the document states as per The Cradle. Gazan should be told “Allah made sure that you lost this land because of the leadership of Hamas - there is no choice but to move to another place with the help of Your Muslim brothers," the document further states. The plan calls for Gazans to initially be kept in tent cities in northern Sinai. Ultimately, permanent cities would be constructed and a humanitarian corridor opened. [caption id=“attachment_13331432” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] At least 8,525 Palestinians, including 3,542 children, have been killed in bombardments in Gaza, according to Hamas health ministry figures issued before the strikes on Jabalia Image Courtesy AP[/caption] The document also calls for a “buffer zone” within Egypt of several kilometres so that civilians cannot set up on the border with Israel. The plan lays out two more options – either bringing the Palestinian Authority control into the Gaza strip or supporting a local regime. However, the document ultimately dismisses both options as unfeasible for a variety of reasons including a lack of deterrent from further attacks. The reinstatement of the Palestinian Authority, which was ejected from Gaza after a weeklong 2007 war that put Hamas in power, would be “an unprecedented victory of the Palestinian national movement, a victory that will claim the lives of thousands of Israeli civilians and soldiers, and does not safeguard Israel’s security,” the document says. The plan calls for the construction of a security zone within Israel to stop the displaced Palestinians from reentering. The report did not state what would become of Gaza once its population is cleared out. As per Vice, the report suggests that this should be framed as a ‘humanitarian approach’ to the problem of civilian casualties. At first glance, this proposal “is liable to be complicated in terms of international legitimacy,” the document acknowledges. “In our assessment, fighting after the population is evacuated would lead to fewer civilian casualties compared to what could be expected if the population were to remain.” Israel should also simultaneously urge Arab and Western nations to allow refugees to enter, the plan states. The document speaks about Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates supporting the plan either financially, or by taking in uprooted residents of Gaza as refugees and in the long term as citizens. Canada’s “lenient” immigration practices also make it a potential resettlement target, the document further adds. As per The Cradle, an intelligence ministry official confirmed the veracity of the document but added that it wasn’t meant to be seen by the media. However, it quoted a right wing activist as saying the document was leaked in order to determine the level of public support for such a plan. The Times of Israel reported that such a transfer of civilians would also be caution Hezbollah that Jerusalem could do the same to southern Lebanon. Israel downplays document, Egypt unmoved An Israeli official familiar with the document said it isn’t binding and that there was no substantive discussion of it with security officials. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office played down the report compiled by the Intelligence Ministry as a hypothetical exercise — a “concept paper.” “The issue of the ‘day after’ has not been discussed in any official forum in Israel, which is focused at this time on destroying the governing and military capabilities of Hamas,” the prime minister’s office said. However, Israel’s deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon, speaking to Al Jazeera earlier floated the idea of temporary tent cities. The plan has once again awakened in Palestinians memories of their greatest trauma — the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of people who fled or were forced from their homes during the fighting surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948. [caption id=“attachment_13328792” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Palestinians with dual citizenship wait outside the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, in the hope of getting permission to leave Gaza. Reuters[/caption] “We are against transfer to any place, in any form, and we consider it a red line that we will not allow to be crossed,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said of the report. “What happened in 1948 will not be allowed to happen again.”

A mass displacement, Abu Rudeineh said, would be “tantamount to declaring a new war.”

It has also confirmed Egypt’s long-suspected belief that Israel wants to turn Gaza into a problem for its neighbour. Egypt’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report. But Egypt has made clear throughout this latest war that it does not want to take in a wave of Palestinian refugees. Egypt has long feared that Israel wants to force a permanent expulsion of Palestinians into its territory, as happened during the war surrounding Israel’s independence. Egypt ruled Gaza between 1948 and 1967, when Israel captured the territory, along with the West Bank and east Jerusalem. The vast majority of Gaza’s population are the descendants of Palestinian refugees uprooted from what is now Israel. Its President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has repeatedly rejected such an idea – even temporarily. On Sunday, El-Sisis said Egypt “has not and will not allow the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza to Egyptian territories.” El-Sissi earlier said a mass influx of refugees from Gaza would eliminate the Palestinian nationalist cause. It would also risk bringing militants into Sinai, where they might launch attacks on Israel, he said. That would endanger the countries’ 1979 peace treaty. He proposed that Israel instead house Palestinians in its Negev Desert, which neighbours the Gaza Strip, until it ends its military operations. Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said the paper threatened to damage relations with a key partner. “If this paper is true, this is a grave mistake. It might cause a strategic rift between Israel and Egypt,” said Guzansky, who said he has consulted for the ministry in the past. “I see it either as ignorance or someone who wants to negatively affect Israel-Egypt relations, which are very important at this stage.” Egypt is a valuable partner that cooperates behind the scenes with Israel, he said. If it is seen as overtly assisting an Israeli plan like this, especially involving the Palestinians, it could be “devastating to its stability.” With inputs from agencies