Claim: Israel set to reverse course, encourage mass migration of Gazans

Eliyahu Tulshinski

December 6, 2023

A report by Israel Hayom this week claimed that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has instructed his top advisor, Strategic Affairs Minister Ambassador Ron Dermer, to draw up plans to relocate the population of Gaza. This would represent a 180 degree turn away from Israel's unambiguous policy since its inception of opposing relocation of the Arab population.

Please stay

In Haifa, for example, thousands of Arab residents evacuated the city in order to avoid being bombed by attacking Arab armies in the nation's 1948 War of Independence. Even more fled when the Jewish army took control of the area. All the while, however, Jewish leaders pleaded with the Arab population to stay, even offering guarantees of safety:

In early April [1948], an estimated 25,000 Arabs left the Haifa area following an offensive by the irregular forces led by Fawzi al-Qawukji, and rumors that Arab air forces would soon bomb the Jewish areas around Mt. Carmel.

On April 23, the Haganah captured Haifa. A British police report from Haifa, dated April 26, explained that “every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe.”

The orders to prevent Arab migration came straight from the prime minister.

In fact, David Ben-Gurion had sent Golda Meir to Haifa to try to persuade the Arabs to stay, but she was unable to convince them because of their fear of being judged traitors to the Arab cause. By the end of the battle, more than 50,000 Palestinians had left. [Emphases added].

A similar story played out in 1967, when Israel seized Judea and Samaria from Jordan in a defensive war and thousands of Arab residents fled eastward to continue living under Jordanian rule. Israel repatriated more than 60,000 Arabs. The Israelis even used taxpayer funds to rebuild homes damaged during Jordan's assault to ease their return.

An additional 130,000 Arabs were granted Israeli citizenship after 1993 on the basis of marrying an Israeli, curiously choosing Israel for their newly formed family over Egypt, Jordan and the other Arab nations in which the other spouse was raised.

About 20,000 East Jerusalem Arabs have been awarded Israeli citizenship since Jordan revoked their Jordanian citizenship. And Israeli taxpayers have funded hundreds of millions of dollars worth of affirmative action programs to provide East Jerusalem Arabs with language training to help them take jobs that would otherwise go to Israelis. Both the language skills and the employment help pave their path toward citizenship and increase the chance they will apply for citizenship.

Israel, in fact, would have been more successful in increasing the percentage of Arabs who are citizens had PLO leaders not created a stigma for Arabs seeking that status. Adnan Husseini, the official in charge of Jerusalem affairs in the Palestinian Authority, for example, publicly discouraged Arabs from applying saying, “The city will be liberated one day and these citizenships will mean nothing.”

Still, in total, Israel has overseen growth in the number of Arabs with Israeli citizenship from approximately 156,000 in 1948 to about 2,065,000 today, an increase of over 1,300%.

New policy

After decades of working to increase the Arab population of Israel, one of Netanyahu's closest confidants is now tasked, by the prime minister himself, with dramatically decreasing the population of Gaza. The plan being developed by Dermer would provide those who wish to leave, which translates to almost all Gazans, with the opportunity to do so:

[A] plan drawn up by Ron Dermer at Netanyahu's request . . . examines ways to thin the population in Gaza to a minimum . . . It is not about a transfer, but about releasing the stranglehold on the Gaza borders. [Emphases added].

Practically speaking, the plan is to facilitate the relocation by land or sea:

Although the crossings to Israel will remain sealed, there are other options. Rafah is one of them, despite Egypt's strong opposition. This passage, at certain times, was breached and completely open.

Even today, there is an underground passage between Rafah in Gaza and the Egyptian one in the dimensions of a freeway. The sea is also open to the Gazans. At its will, Israel opens the sea crossing and enables a mass escape to European and African countries. [Emphases added].

All American advocate

Dermer spent his childhood in Miami, graduated magna cum laude from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and served as Israel's ambassador to the United States for seven years. The minister is thus well suited to present Netanyahu's plan to American officials.

Check back for our coverage of past population transfers that led to peace and see our previous Middle East coverage: