Israel has long wanted Palestinians out of Gaza - my father saw it firsthand (Guardian) [View all]
Fifty-six years ago, after Israel’s victory in the six-day war in 1967, an intensive debate took place in the country regarding the future of the newly occupied West Bank and Gaza. The options ranged from outright annexation of the land by Israel, returning the West Bank to Jordan or the establishment of a Palestinian state.
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In 1967, Israeli policymakers were adamant about keeping the occupied Gaza Strip. As early as 8 June 1967, Golda Meir, the then secretary general of ruling party Mapai, stated in a meeting of the party’s political committee that she was for “getting rid of its Arabs”. The Israeli cabinet resolution 563, of 19 June 1967, determined that “according to the international border, the Gaza Strip is located within the territory of the state of Israel”. Yet because of the large Palestinian population in Gaza, annexation of the territory, as had happened in East Jerusalem, was not a viable option.
Mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza was also not feasible while the world was watching. So other strategies were employed. The first of these was to make life unbearable, by ruling with an iron fist and keeping the standard of living very low. The second was by encouraging emigration. Personally supervised by the prime minister, Levi Eshkol, this strategy relied on financial incentives. By mid-1968, tens of thousands had left the Strip, mostly for Jordan. But Jordan decided to stop admitting them, so Israel increased its attempts to boost emigration of Palestinians to non-Arab countries such as Brazil and other South American states, as well as Canada and Australia, but with little success. In the end, none of these strategies brought about significant results, leading Eshkol to lament, “I still don’t know how to get rid of them.”
After the passage of more than five decades, and even with the imposition of a 16-year siege of the Strip, it is clear that none of these strategies have worked and most of the Palestinian population of Gaza, composed mainly of refugees from 1948 when Israel was established, remained there and increased from 400,000 to 2.2 million. Now, with the war on Gaza, Israel seems to be seizing the opportunity to carry out what has not been possible in all the previous years.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/20/1967-israel-gaza-palestinians-father
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