Netanyahu's Likud Party Backs 'Preparing to Settle Gaza' Event as Genocide Continues

"This is what the war in Gaza is about," said one critic. "This is what the U.S. is tacitly backing."

Bolstering fears that Israel plans to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to make way for Jewish colonization, the ruling Likud party of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week sent out invitations to an event near the border of the embattled coastal enclave titled "𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐆𝐚𝐳𝐚."

Haaretz reported that the event—which is set to take place next week—is part of an initiative launched by Nachala, a Jewish supremacist movement whose members build illegal settler outposts in the occupied West Bank and whose ultimate objective is Israeli annexation of all of Palestine. The larger initiative's sponsors include the far-right Religious Zionist and Jewish Power parties.

"The event is not just a theoretical conference, but a practical exercise and preparation for renewed settlement in Gaza," Nachala said. "The return to settlement in Gaza is no longer just an idea but a process that is already in advanced stages, with government and public support."

A poster advertising the event declared: "Gaza is ours. Forever."

According to The Times of Israel, 10 of the 32 Likud members of the Knesset and one Cabinet member, Social Equality Minister May Golan—a self-described "proud racist"—said they would attend the event. Haaretz said far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, and Periphery Development Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf are also expected to attend.

Other Knesset lawmakers who say they'll go to the conference include Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi—who once called for Gaza to be "wiped off the face of the Earth"—and Tally Gotliv, who said Israel should use nuclear weapons for "crushing and flattening Gaza without mercy."

Nachala said the event will include a tour of Kibbutz Nirim, which was attacked by Hamas-led fighters on October 7, 2023. However, the kibbutz published a statement saying no such tour will take place.

"We are still waiting for the government and coalition members to take responsibility for the catastrophic failures of October 7 and for the deep wound still in our hearts," the community said. "Instead of holding political events aimed at establishing settlements, the government should focus on bringing home the 101 hostages and supporting the reconstruction of Gaza border communities."

Ben-Gvir and Smotrich attended and spoke at a similar event sponsored by Nachala in January. Both ministers called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza.

Netanyahu has repeatedly claimed that he has no intention of resettling Gaza, which Israel conquered in 1967 and from which Jewish settlers and Israeli forces withdrew in 2005, while maintaining a physical and economic stranglehold on the strip.

The prime minister's claim stands in stark contrast with plans by others in his party and government to recolonize Gaza, as well as Likud's founding charter, which states that "between the [Mediterranean] Sea and the Jordan [River] there will only be Israeli sovereignty."

Last year, Amir Weitmann, who chairs Likud's Libertarian faction, published a plan examining the economics of forcibly transferring Gazans to Egypt's Sinai Desert. A separate 2023 proposal by then-Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel, who is also a Likud member, would ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, forcing them into the Sinai.

Former MK Moshe Feiglin, who quit Likud to found the right-wing Zehut Party, earlier this year invoked Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as he called for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip and create a "Hebrew Gaza."

"This is our country, all of it," Feiglin said, adding, "As Hitler said, 'I cannot live if one Jew is left.' We can't live here if one 'Islamo-Nazi' remains in Gaza."

Israeli forces earlier this month launched a major assault on northern Gaza that, in practice, resembles a plan pushed by a group of retired generals, which argued for forcibly displacing people in the north and starving those who remain.

Some Israeli opposition lawmakers condemned the upcoming settlement conference.

"A year later, and it's like we haven't learned a thing," MK Gadi Eisenkot of the National Unity party said Wednesday. "Today, we were informed of the intention to set up settlement projects in the Gaza Strip, a controversial issue in Israeli society."

"This is not what our sons and daughters sacrificed their lives for," added Eisenkot, whose son and nephew were killed in Gaza last year.

The resettlement conference comes amid Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza, for which the U.S.-backed country is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice. More than 150,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded—including at least 10,000 people who are missing and feared buried beneath rubble—by Israel's 377-day onslaught, which has also forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened millions of Palestinians.