The office will provide “extensive assistance” in an attempt to implement U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan for reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
Defense Minister Israel Katz decided on Monday to establish a new directorate within his ministry to aid Palestinians who would like to leave Gaza, in line with U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal last week to resettle them elsewhere so that the Strip could be rebuilt without Hamas involvement.
The ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) outlined a plan for the directorate to implement, which, the ministry said, “includes extensive assistance that will allow any Gaza resident who wants to emigrate to a third state, to receive support that includes special departure arrangements through the sea, air, and land, among other things.”
The new body is expected to include representatives from several government ministries and defense establishment bodies, with the aim of providing a comprehensive framework for the process.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he is “committed to U.S. President Trump’s plan to create a different Gaza.”
He told a conference of the American umbrella group, Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, on Monday night that Trump’s “bold new vision” was “the only plan that I think can work to enable a different future for the people of Gaza, for the people of Israel, for the surrounding areas.”
“Why not give the people of Gaza a choice? Everyone said it was the largest open-air prison in the world? It’s not because of us,” he continued. “We allow people to leave. In fact, over the last two years, I think, 150,000 Gazans have left.”
“They left because they bribed their way out,” he noted. “It wasn’t via us…. The rich could leave. But if other people want to leave, give them the choice. Not forced deportation, not ethnic cleansing. In wars, people leave.”
MK Ofer Cassif, the only Jewish member of the communist Hadash party, created a political storm when he reacted on X by comparing the ministry’s initiative to Nazi Germany’s establishment of an office to encourage the voluntary emigration of German Jews before World War II began.
Israel Beiteinu MK Oded Forer said Cassif’s “comparison between the voluntary departure of Gaza residents, fleeing the terror of Hamas, which condemned them to a life under a reign of terror, blood, and fire, and the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, is not only a vicious lie, it is a despicable blood libel.”
“Cassif cannot be confused with facts,” he continued. “His fondness for using the symbols of the Third Reich is rivaled only by his insane obsession with harming the State of Israel and serving the enemy’s propaganda. I ask for the millionth time: is this an MK or an official Hamas spokesman? One thing is certain: he should not sit in the Israeli parliament.”
After Cassif announced last January that he would join South Africa’s petition against Israel in the International Criminal Court, Forer tried to get the requisite 90 MKs to vote on removing Cassif, but the effort was stymied by several parliamentarians in the opposition Yesh Atid and National Unity parties who joined Arab MKs in blocking the move.
MK Almog Cohen (Otzma Yehudit) said that he would complain to the Ethics Committee and restart the process to expel Cassif from the Knesset.
His party simultaneously announced that it will submit a bill to lower the majority required to remove a Knesset member to only 80 supporters, which is still “a significant majority that expresses the support of two thirds of the Knesset members, but is not too high to be feasible.”
