By Scott Lucas, University College Dublin; The Conversation
Since March, Netanyahu has been clear that his government’s ultimate plan for Gaza is the “voluntary” emigration of its population. (File photo: Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו/Facebook)
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has announced that the Israeli military will launch a new “intensified” offensive in Gaza. In a video posted on X, he said Israel’s security cabinet had approved a plan for “conquering” the Gaza Strip and establishing a “sustained presence” there.
This announcement was well-received by far-right ministers in the Netanyahu government. Finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has since declared that an Israeli victory in Gaza would see the territory “entirely destroyed” and its residents “concentrated” in the south. From there, they would “start to leave in great numbers to third countries”.
The plan, which Palestinian militant group Hamas says represents “an explicit decision to sacrifice” Israeli hostages, far exceeds the aims Israel has been pursuing in the war so far. It has drawn widespread criticism, including from the UK, France, EU and UN, as well as from within Israel.
Middle East expert Scott Lucas answered our questions as to what the plan involves and what it means for neighbouring Egypt and Jordan.
What is Netanyahu’s ultimate plan for Gaza?
Since March, Netanyahu has been clear that his government’s ultimate plan for Gaza is the “voluntary” emigration of its population.
It looks like he is using US president Donald Trump’s narcissist thought bubble of Gaza, ethnically cleansed of Gazans in a “Riviera of the Middle East”, as political cover for his ambition and those of his hard-right ministers.
In January 2024, three months into the military response to Hamas’s cross-border attack on southern Israel, Netanyahu said: “Israel has no intention of permanently occupying Gaza or displacing its civilian population.”
But by September, unable to “destroy” Hamas despite the killing of almost 35,000 Gazans and the displacement of 1.9 million of the territory’s 2.1 million inhabitants, the government was considering occupation with the removal of all those in northern Gaza.
Political pressure from inside Israel, as well as from the Biden administration in the US, forced Netanyahu to back away. And in January 2025, pushed hard by Trump, he accepted a six-week phase one ceasefire. This involved Hamas returning some of the hostages in return for Israel releasing many Palestinians detained in its jails.
However, Netanyahu had no intention of moving to phase two, which would have paved the way for a more permanent end to the war. The hard-right ministers in his government made clear they would leave and withdraw support in the Knesset (parliament) if the war ended before Hamas had been completely destroyed.
Netanyahu could face early elections and his trial on bribery charges should his government collapse. This left only one possible resolution to the “open-ended” war on Gaza: occupation.
So at the start of March, Israel renewed its airstrikes and cut off humanitarian aid. It began expanding ground operations, initially with the declaration of a “buffer strip” and then claiming northern Gaza.
Netanyahu has now announced a “forceful operation” in which Gaza’s population “will be moved, to protect it”. Israeli ground forces will be in the Strip indefinitely. “They will not enter and come out,” he said.
Will Egypt and Jordan accept displaced Palestinians from the Gaza Strip?
When Trump first proposed displacing Palestinians from Gaza, the leaders of Egypt and Jordan said they would refuse to allow an exodus of refugees on their territory. Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, said at the end of January: “The deportation and displacement of the Palestinian people from their land is an injustice that we cannot take part in.”
That position has not changed. Egypt and Qatar reiterated on May 7 that they will persist with mediation to alleviate suffering and promote de-escalation within Gaza. Egypt affirmed that it will not be drawn into any agendas that “do not serve the interests of the Palestinian people”.
Any Arab government that takes in Gazans, even amid a humanitarian crisis, would be tacitly burying the idea of a Palestinian state. That would break a 77-year-old principle and resurrect the Nakba, the forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948.
It would also risk unrest from disaffected populations. The Gazans are added to the 5.9 million Palestinians who are refugees in countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
How might Egypt and Jordan respond to increased pressure to house Gazan refugees?
Trump has previously looked to coerce Egypt and Jordan into accepting Palestinians from Gaza, even threatening to withhold US aid to the two countries.
But such pressure does not look likely at present. The Trump administration is a chaotic mess. Bent on destroying US agencies, it has gutted the State Department, threatened the military, and undermined intelligence services.
Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, the real estate developer Steve Witkoff, is now preoccupied with photo opportunities in the Kremlin and informal talks over Iran’s nuclear programme.
The US government has walked away, leaving Israel to resume the mass killing but abjuring any role beyond that. The UN is not going to back ethnic cleansing. Nor will the EU, China, Russia or the Gulf States.
Does the depopulation of Gaza now look inevitable?
Far from it, at least in the sense of Palestinians being relocated from Gaza. In recent weeks, Israel has finally eased its near-total block on exiting Gaza and has allowed hundreds of people to leave.
But this is not forced removal. It was the Israeli government relenting on urgent cases of those who were trapped in the Strip – dual nationals or their dependents, Gazas needing medical treatment, students, and some people with visas for third countries.
The depopulation is instead occurring within Gaza. Depopulation through killing, starvation, destruction of healthcare, displacement from housing, and lack of clean water.
It is depopulation through the reduction of Gazans to nothing more than irritants in the way of Hamas’s quest for survival and the Netanyahu government’s quest for perpetual dominance.
Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, Clinton Institute, University College Dublin
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
