Israel’s Gaza Options: Extermination, Concentration Camps or “Voluntary Migration”
The horrors of renewed genocide, and, from Gaza, calls for help escaping certain death for resettlement abroad.
Three weeks into Israel’s renewed genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip, and five weeks since all supplies of food, water, medicines and fuel were cut off, as I explain my new article on my website, Israel’s Sickening and Depraved Options for Gaza: Extermination, Concentration Camps or the Illusion of “Voluntary Migration”, Israel’s primary objective is now nothing less than the extermination of the Palestinian people, with the only other option being a plan to military occupy the whole of Gaza, and to herd the remaining population into concentration camps.
A third option being pushed by Israel, encouraged by Donald Trump, is for the “voluntary migration” of the entire population of two million people. I repeat my previous beliefs that this is a fantasy, because it would be politically suicidal for Egypt and Jordan, and because anti-refugee sentiment is so dominant in the west.
However, I also pay close attention to a recent post on X by Dr. Ezzideen, who runs a clinic in Gaza, and who recently posted an important appeal for help, on behalf of the thousands of Palestinians in Gaza who responded enthusiastically to the rumor that other countries might take them in.
As he stated in his post, “Please understand, we didn’t want to leave. We loved our land more than our lungs. But we love our children more. We love the ones we still have”, and “we are asking … for a way out.”
As he also stated, “If you hear us, if you read our comments, if you hold power or voice or kindness, answer us. Not tomorrow. Not in theory. Now.”
I raise Dr. Ezzideen’s request because those whose voices he is amplifying — those suffering unprecedented levels of deprivation and fear in Gaza — can truly see no end to the slaughter and destruction, and nor can I. Those countries that are not actively supporting Israel’s genocide have, like the UN, found themselves powerless to do anything to bring it to an end.
Faced with only two options — death or imprisonment in a concentration camp — we are being asked to mobilize in support of an alternative that, although legally abhorrent, may also be the only guarantor of life: coming together, throughout the countries of the world, to push our governments to offer new homes to those who, otherwise, see nothing but death.
I’ll be interested to hear what you think.
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The photo at the top of this post is a screenshot from a video of the Israeli bombing of a desalination plant in Gaza on April 4, 2015. The two specks by the plume of smoke on the left are, unforgivably, people, hurled into the air by the force of the blast.