GAZA: Israel has plans ready to remove Palestinians from the Gaza Strip but is waiting for the United States to figure out where to take them, the defence minister said. "There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration," Defence Minister Israel Katz told a conference hosted by Israeli news site Ynet and newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. The Israeli government "is organised and prepared to get them out — by sea, by air, by every way possible", he said.
The proposal was condemned by Palestinians, for whom any effort to force them off their land would recall the "Nakba", or catastrophe - their mass displacement during Israel's creation in 1948. Announcing a Gaza war ceasefire in October, US President Trump laid out 20 points for the territory that included no forced displacement.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Katz's predecessor Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes, which both Israel and the United States deny. Israeli attacks have already internally displaced the vast majority of Gaza's people. — AFP
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