Netanyahu's Plan to "Thin Out" the Palestinian Population of Gaza

To Make Way for Israeli Occupation then Annexation

On December 1st, the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom leaked a stunning private communication between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a high minister.

The message between the two explicated a plan that crystallized the genuine aim of the unfolding genocidal violence in Gaza. The story was broken by Ryan Grim, journalist for The Intercept, who wrote:

Netanyahu, according to the Israeli press, has instructed Ron Dermer, his Minister of Strategic Planning and a very close aide, to explore ways to "thin out" the Gaza population. Along with the renewed proposal to push them through the Rafah crossing into Egypt, the English translation of the report adds: "The Sea is also open to Gazans. At its will, Israel opens the sea crossing and enables a mass escape to European and African countries."

“Thinning out” is practically synonymous with a more familiar phrase associated with forced mass displacement: ethnic cleaning, which speaks to the a principal objective of Israel’s aim in Gaza. But the manner in which Netanyahu pushed Dermer to “explore it,” is utterly vile and smacks against every letter of international human rights law.

The conspicuous drive to push Palestinians in Gaza further and further south toward the Egyptian border, which we have witnessed for nearly two months, is only one arm of Netanyahu’s “thinning out” plan.

The second more sinister objective looks westward instead of south, toward the Mediterranean Sea, as the site where homeless Palestinians will be forced.

The Sea, where either the harrowing waters will subsume their bodies or foreign ships will carry them for a “mass escape” into distant countries. Whether dead or carried far from Gaza forever, Netanyahu and his chief ministers are unconcerned with the status of Palestinian life - as events of the past 60 days make crystal clear. The goal of his “thinning out” charge is one in the same, removing Palestinians en masse through a motley strategy of unhinged military violence that slays innocents at an alarming rate, destroys medical infrastructure, decimates homes and places of dwelling, creates conditions for famine and disease, and makes life in Gaza utterly insufferable and uninhabitable.

You have no choice but to leave Gaza. Either by death, pushed across the Rafah Crossing into Egypt in the south, or pushed into the sea and shipped out toward Europe, Africa, North America or further and forever made a refugee.

Netanyahu’s “thinning out” plan is already unfolding before our eyes. More than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in less than 60 days, northern Gaza is flattened and ripe for full-fledged Israeli occupation, and the south of the Strip has faced horrific bombing in the days after last week’s conflict pause.

But the nuances of this leaked aim are shocking.

The Middle East Eye observes that:

“The plan will aim to bypass expected US and Egyptian opposition. Unless Egypt starts shooting Palestinians crossing into the country, Cairo's "determined resistance" can be overcome, it added. The report also foresees global outrage without outlining the repercussions for Israel.”

Global outrage, whether by way of political condemnation or mass protests, have not slowed Israeli militarism in Gaza.

Netanyahu is fully entrenched, invested in a campaign to eliminate the Palestinian people of Gaza by any and all means. "Thinning out” their population and every marker of their existence, against every human rights accord and even beyond the limits of his closest allies, manifests a subsequent stage of violence that we may not be ready to absorb:

That the horrors unfolding in Gaza may be dwarfed by those still yet to come.

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Khaled A. Beydoun is a law professor and author. He publishes his insights on his socials at @khaledbeydoun.