Israel's right-wing settlers plan for Gaza occupation after the war
Some Israelis are already plotting to move into the land that’s currently being evacuated, as ITV News Correspondent Peter Smith reports
Officially, Israel is not besieging north Gaza and it is not implementing the infamous 'general's plan' to push people out.
But there is now a mass exodus from north Gaza - and the IDF is telling people to go south for safety.
ITV News has heard multiple accounts that give a different version of this, with Palestinians saying the IDF has forced them out, and that it is separating men from their families at checkpoints before detaining them.
Israel's stated aim is to find Hamas.
The fear of facing this has convinced some to stay at home in northern Gaza, despite the risk of being killed under the daily bombardment.
Some also say they do not want to leave because they simply don’t trust Israel will ever let them go back to their homes.
And there may be a good reason for that concern.
Just on the other side of the border, some Israelis are already plotting to move into the land that’s currently being evacuated.
The war in Gaza has become a twisted kind of tourist attraction for families of Israel's right-wing settlers.
They pose for pictures - family smiles, with Gaza smouldering in the background.
We asked one woman what her message to the people of Gaza would be.
“To the Arabs?” she asks in response, as if surprised at the idea she would say anything to them. “Just go away!”
Her children are standing beside us, smiling.
A group takes to a makeshift stage, addressing the assembled crowd.
A man on the stage is wearing a t-shirt that says ‘Gaza Delende Est,’ meaning ‘Gaza must be destroyed.’
Children are given bubbles to watch the bombings.
Books are also being handed out teaching Israel’s right to take more land, even from Lebanon.
But first, they want Gaza.
The group are from the Nahala settler movement - a minority group in Israel, but vocal.
It is clear many in the group are driven by a sense of religious duty to settle the land in Gaza.
One woman who tells us she has a son currently serving with the IDF in Gaza, says, “God will protect us, God wants us to be there.”
From where we are standing we can see the smoke all across northern Gaza. I ask this lady what she is thinking about when she is watching that.
“They brought it on themselves,” she says. “I think they’re all Hamas."
I asked what would happen to the people of Gaza if she got her wish to settle on the land.
“They can live in Egypt - they have a lot of places."
This is a common response.
“If all the world loves them they can bring ships [here] and bring them to their country,” a woman tells me after giving a speech on the stage.
When asked why she doesn’t want Palestinians on the land if she settles there, she gives a cold look, screws up her face, and walks away.
It leaves an impression that she is biting her tongue - she knows we are filming and the group probably know how this looks to the watching world.
But they believe not only that they are in the right; they believe they are the wronged.
Politically and legally, they want the entirety of what was once the land called the ‘British Mandate for Palestine,’ which they see as the territory that was promised to the Jewish people by the UK government in the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
Without Gaza, they believe they’re being short-changed.
The group can be - and often is - dismissed as a noisy, extremist fringe movement.
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But the fact is they now have friends and representatives in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government.
Netanyahu has publicly declared his opposition to settling Gaza after this war, but he is propped up by people who think it is a moral obligation to take the land for Israel.
And the idea of putting Israeli settlements in Gaza is even supported by Knesset members from Netanyahu’s own Likud party.
IDF sources say there will likely be a prolonged period of military occupation of Gaza even if some kind of peace deal can be agreed to end the war.
Three to five years is commonly mentioned, to ensure Israel’s security and to make sure Hamas does not simply regroup and rearm.
During that time, Gaza settlements will be high on the agenda again in Israel.
These are concerns for the future, though.
And inside Gaza, that future holds little fear for Palestinians when the present is still so terrifying.
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