JERUSALEM: An Israeli minister on Monday called for the return of Jewish settlers to Gaza and said Palestinians should be encouraged to emigrate, a day after similar remarks by another far-right politician.

“We must promote a solution to encourage the emigration of Gaza’s residents,” Israel’s firebrand National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said.

Israel unilaterally withdrew the last of its troops and settlers in 2005, ending a presence inside Gaza that began in 1967 but maintaining near complete control over the territory’s borders.

The government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not officially suggested it has any plans to evict Gazans or to send Jewish settlers back to the territory. But Ben Gvir argued that the departure of Palestinians and re-establishment of Israeli settlements “is a correct, just, moral and humane solution”.

“This is an opportunity to develop a project to encourage Gaza’s residents to emigrate to countries around the world,” he told a meeting of his ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit, or “Jewish Power”, party. Hamas dismissed Ben Gvir’s proposal as a “daydream”.

“You will not find a way to implement it in the face of our resilient, steadfast Palestinian people and their heroic resistance,” the group said in a statement.

Ben Gvir’s comment came the day after far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also called for the return of settlers to Gaza, equally saying Israel should “encourage” the territory’s approximately 2.4 million Palestinians to leave.

Smotrich said that for Israel to “control the territory militarily for a long time, we need a civilian presence”.

Both Ben Gvir and Smotrich live in settlements in the occupied West Bank, considered illegal under international law.

Hamas on Sunday had also condemned Smotrich’s comments as a “vile mockery and a war crime”.

Published in Dawn, January 2nd, 2024