Israel Tells Palestinians to Get Out of Gaza

When Gaza-ruling Hamas brutally attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people in about one day, Israel launched a devastating military assault of the Gaza Strip that included artillery and dropping over 200 bombs weighing 2,000 pounds each. Reports are that 22,000 Palestinian have been killed. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war will continue for “months.” But neither he nor his administration has been saying what Israel’s plan is for Gaza after the war.

Then both foreign ministers and Jordan and Egypt started saying Israel’s plan is to so destroy the landscape of Gaza that Palestinians won’t want to return, or Israel won’t allow them to return, and Israel will resettle the Gaza Strip with only Israeli Jews. I then thought that looks like what Israeli leaders have in mind. If so, that would be a huge violation of UN principles and international law.

Now, that appears to be exactly what Netanyahu’s administration is planning. In the past few days, both Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir are calling for a complete and permanent evacuation of all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, suggesting they live elsewhere. Netanyahu reportedly has been in phone conversations with leaders in the Congo in Africa about Palestinians emigrating there.

Netanyahu’s coalition government necessarily includes radical, religious Zionists like Itamar Ben Gvir, who is anti-Arab, a West Bank settler, member of the Knesset, and member of the Religious Zionists Party. Both Jewish and Christians Zionists are alike in that they claim Israel is now entitled to all of the so-called promised land according to the Bible, which stretches from the Euphrates River in present Iraq and Syria southward to the Wadi el Arish several miles south of Gaza. I strongly disagree with this position. In my book, Palestine Is Coming: The Revival of Ancient Philistia, I show from the Bible, especially Judges 3.1-5, that it has never been God’s will to give Israel all of the promised land because Israel does not repent and seek to keep the Torah.

When this Israel-Hamas War in Gaza began, US President Joe Biden flew to Israel to embrace Netanyahu, his longtime friend, and speak about the US strongly supporting Israel in its route of Hamas from the Gaza Strip. But Biden is now irate with Israel’s latest revelation about wanting complete expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. Biden has been repeatedly stating that there must be two states, thus a Palestinian state in both Gaza and the West Bank. Thus, a rupture seems to have occurred in the relations between Israel and its #1 ally the US, which furnishes Israel with most of its military hardware. The US is being highly criticized the world over because of this due to the extremely high casualty count of this war.

If Israel runs all the Palestinians out of Gaza and resettles it with Jews, “Katy bar the door!? Israel will have hell to pay. Therefore, I don’t think that’s going to happen. If it began to happen, the US would take drastic measures against Israel. And Israel would suffer even worse, at least relationally, from the rest of the world.

However, if the Israel-loving Donald Trump returns to the White House in just over a year from now, I bet he would approve of what Israel wants. But he may be granting his approval while dressed in an orange jump suit and standing behind bars!

[To learn more about Kermit’s alternate two-state solution for solving the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, visit his kermitzarley.com and click on Theologian and On Palestine.]