Image by Diana Khwaelid.

Under the slogan “Gaza is ours, forever,” a large number of Israeli extremists and right-wing politicians gathered in the Beeri settlement near the Gaza border region on October 20 and 21.

The group represented the elite of the Israeli right, far right and ultranationalists. They Understood Israeli Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir, May Golan and Bezalel Smotrich, as well as ten deputies of the Likud party of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The event, titled “Preparing for Gaza Resettlement,” was organized by one of Israel’s most extremist settlement movements, Nachala, led by the notorious Daniella Weiss.

To understand how extremist this 79-year-old settler is, consider this: On June 27, the Canadian government, despite being one of the strongest supporters of Netanyahu and his wars, imposed sanctions against her, because of her “role in facilitating (…) acts of violence committed by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians”.

This hate-filled conference, however, was only the culmination of a year-long effort to demonstrate why Israel should ethnically cleanse Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and reestablish illegal settlements.

But the story does not begin on October 7. In 2005, Israel decided to redeploy its forces outside the small coastal region. This was the beginning of the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip, which led to several wars and, finally, the events of October 7 and the ongoing genocide.

Although the number of Jewish settlers evacuated Of the 15 illegal settlements dismantled, the number was relatively small – 8,500 – the sense of betrayal felt by the settlers created deep divisions within Israeli society.

Chaotic scenes of settlers being forced deleted of the Gush Katif settlement bloc in Gaza has created a national crisis in Israel and has been compared to force evacuation of the illegal settlement of Yamit in the Sinai, which Israel dismantled in April 1982 as part of a previous agreement with Egypt. But why this crisis?

Israel is a colonial society that has linked its colonial expansion to religious dictates and prophecies. Thus, the forced departure from Gaza, for most of these settlers, must have seemed both a national betrayal and an act of sacrilege.

This is why the resettlement of Gaza became the immediate rallying cry of Israeli settlers. Compared to their limited share of political power during the 2005 redeployment, today’s extremists are now effectively the decision-makers.

Although the army remains unclear about its strategic objectives in Gaza, the settlers have always been aware of the nature of their mission: the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians in Gaza and the reconstruction of the settlements.

So, quickly, figures like Weiss and many of his supporters began calling on Israelis to join the recolonization campaign. “Sign up, sign up, you’ll be in Gaza,” Weiss told an audience of supporters last March, happily declaring that 500 families had already signed up, according to CNN. report.

Weiss and Nachala do not act independently of the general goals of the country’s leading politicians. For example, on the first day of the war, October 7, 2023, Netanyahu do his intentions are clear: “I say to the people of Gaza: leave now, because we will operate with force everywhere. »

On October 17, a position paper presented by the Israeli Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, called for “the relocation and permanent colonization of the entire population of Gaza.”

The report sees the war as “a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip” to the Sinai desert. Later that month, the Israeli Intelligence Ministry itself became involved, along with Israeli media outlet Calcalist. edition a document “recommending the transfer of Gaza residents to Sinai.”

On November 14, far-right minister Smotrich radius of “voluntary migration”. In December, media reported said that Netanyahu himself had told Likud members that Israel’s real challenge was to find “countries willing to absorb them”, meaning the population of Gaza.

Conferences began to be organized to rally support for the idea of ​​ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The first major conference was organized by a coalition of settler movements last December. “A house on the beach is not a dream”, advertisement for the proclaimed gathering. The “beach” here refers to Gaza Beach.

Even Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, jumped at the chance. In March, he radius of Gaza’s “very valuable riverfront properties”, which required Israel to expel civilians and “cleanse the Strip”.

The current so-called General’s Plan, aimed at the extermination and ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, is only the military component of the settlers’ vision of “Gaza is ours, forever.”

But if Israel failed to maintain its settlements in rebel-held Gaza under more manageable circumstances in the past, will it succeed now?

The settlers are already aware of the challenge ahead. This is why they constantly associate their colonization of Gaza with the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian inhabitants of the strip.

However, Israel’s success and failure will ultimately be determined by this maxim: as long as the Palestinian people fight back, Weiss and his fellow extremists will not find safety in Gaza.

Indeed, the indigenous population of Gaza has existed on this historic land for thousands of years. If the genocide did not force them from their lands, nothing else will.