How Israel’s plan for Gaza could turbocharge ethnic cleansing

By Faith Barbara N Ruhinda updated at 1707 EAT on Wednesday 7 May 2025

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the plan, couching it in claims that its goal is to dismantle Hamas and retrieve the 24 or so living captives taken from Israel on October 7, 2023.

Asserting that the powerful operation in Gaza was necessary, he went on to emphasise that there will be a movement of the population to protect it.

Israel will expel hundreds of thousands of hungry Palestinians from the north of Gaza and confine them in six encampments.

It says food will be provided to the Palestinians in these encampments, and that it will allow aid groups and private security contractors to distribute it. Palestinians will be forced to move – or starve.

Israel says it will use facial recognition to identify people picking up food parcels, to deny aid to “Hamas” yet Israel treats every fighting-age male as a Hamas operative.

The private security companies from the United States would also guard within the designated areas.

Experts and UN agencies are decrying the plan as impractical and inhumane.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza continues, and Palestinians will continue to suffer.

Since Israel began its war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, it has cloaked its mass expulsions in what it claims are humane advance warnings in which families have mere hours to pack their belongings and flee to a zone Israel determines. Israel often bombs those safe zones anyway.

That they are afraid, and starving, after two months of Israel blocking all aid and regular shipments of food.

If there is a plan to expand the war and reoccupy Gaza and repeat the displacement, why were we allowed to return to the north again?” Noor Ayash, 31, asks.

They want to finish their genocide under the guise of facilitating food aid and rescuing Israeli captives, Omar Rahman, an expert on Israel-Palestine for the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, said.

Israel has been telegraphing its real intentions from the start of this campaign: Destroy Gaza and eliminate its population both by starvation and mass killing,” he said.

Israel’s plan signals its intent to starve Palestinians who resist being expelled from north Gaza, said Heidi Matthews, a legal scholar at York University, Canada.

It is inconceivable that the population can be adequately provided for whilst being crowded into southern Gaza,” she said.

This indicates the genocidal intent to inflict on the Palestinian population of Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

Israel plans to hire two US private security firms, Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions, to provide security and possibly help with food distribution.

The first is headed by Phil Riley, a former CIA intelligence officer. The second is run by Jameson Govoni, a former member of the US Army Special Forces.

These companies could give Israel plausible deniability if abuses or atrocities occur, said Mairav Zonszein, an expert on Israel-Palestine for the International Crisis Group.

Invest or Donate towards HICGI New Agency Global Media Establishment – Watch video here