Telling people they can leave or starve to death is equivalent to forcing them out at gunpoint, writes Caitlin Johnstone

ISRAELI prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to insist that Israel will carry out Trump’s ethnic cleansing plans for Gaza, saying the following on Sunday about ‘the final stage’ of his agenda:

‘Hamas will lay down its weapons. Its leaders will be allowed to leave. We will see to the general security in the Gaza Strip and will allow the realisation of the Trump plan for voluntary migration. This is the plan. We are not hiding this and are ready to discuss it at any time.’

Netanyahu’s suggestion that Trump’s plan for the migration of Palestinians out of Gaza would be ‘voluntary’ is misleading in two separate ways.

Firstly, it is nonsensical to deliberately and systematically make a place uninhabitable and then claim that anyone who leaves that place would be leaving voluntarily.

Israeli spinmeisters have been pushing this narrative since the early days of the onslaught, and it is transparently bogus; telling people they can leave or starve to death is equivalent to forcing them out at gunpoint.

Secondly, Trump’s plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza is not ‘voluntary’ on its face. Trump has explicitly said ‘all’ Palestinians are to be removed from the enclave and would not be allowed to return, which of course necessarily means that anyone who wants to stay will not be permitted to.

Netanyahu says he wants to realise Trump’s plan, and Trump’s plan is forcible ethnic cleansing.

A Knesset member from Netanyahu’s Likud party named Amit Halevi was just on Israeli radio saying that the plan is ‘to occupy the territory to cleanse it of the enemy,’ adding that Israel needs ‘to return to Gaza permanently and control this space, because it is part of our homeland.’

I mean, how much more explicit do they need to be?

When Israel apologists respond to chants of ‘Free Gaza’ with ‘Free Gaza from Hamas,’ what they really mean is ‘Free Gaza from all Palestinians.’

The agenda they are cheerleading has ultimately nothing to do with Hamas — it is about purging a Palestinian territory of Palestinians and replacing them with Israeli Jews. It is yet another Israeli land grab and yet another drive to eliminate Palestinians from their historic homeland.

If this was really about freeing Palestinians from Hamas, then why is Israel also seizing on this political moment to advance ethnic cleansing agendas in the West Bank, where Hamas does not govern?

Defence minister Israel Katz is on record saying of the occupied West Bank that ‘We must deal with the threat just as we deal with the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza,’ and the Gaza playbook is being increasingly utilised there.

Tens of thousands have been displaced as the Jenin refugee camp has been made uninhabitable under an aggressive Israeli bombing campaign, with hundreds of homes actively destroyed — not to combat Hamas, but to get rid of the Palestinians.

Because that is all this has ever been about.

The western press have been obsessively covering the fact that some demonstrators in Gaza have been voicing discontent with Hamas, after those same press outlets just spent a year and a half ignoring millions of anti-genocide protesters around the world and running cover for Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza.

‘Look!’ we are told. ‘Those demonstrations prove that the people of Gaza want to be free from Hamas! This vindicates everything Israel and its allies have been doing!’

But, again, Israel’s actions have nothing to do with Hamas. Hamas is not the reason, it is the excuse. The excuse to advance an agenda that Israel has been trying to advance for as long as it has existed as a modern state.

This is what Israel’s supporters and defenders are really advocating. Not the elimination of Hamas, and certainly not Palestinian freedom. They are advocating the end of the existence of Palestinians on Palestinian territory.

No matter how much they try to sugarcoat it, that is their position. That’s what Israel wants, so supporting Israel’s actions in Gaza is necessarily supporting the ends toward which Israel is pushing.

Consortiumnews.com, March 31. Caitlin Johnstone is a journalist, poet, and utopia prepper.