Israel Katz says Palestinians will leave Gaza

Israel's defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Wednesday that Palestinians will leave Gaza.

"There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without migration," Katz told journalist Moran Azoulay at a conference hosted by Israeli outlet Ynet in cooperation with the Israel Democracy Institute.

"The moment will come. When will it come? When it becomes clear that Hamas is not meeting its commitment. Then we will get a green light to move forward militarily, territorially, and in other areas, and this thing will gain momentum," Katz said, referring to moving the Palestinian population out of Gaza.

"By the way, 80 percent want to migrate, it's checked constantly in surveys," Katz claimed.

In May, Israeli media reported on a survey conducted by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (Cogat), which found that "nearly 80 percent" of Gazans surveyed "said they were interested in receiving information about mechanisms for relocating to a third country through the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings". Cogat is a unit of Katz's own defence ministry.

Katz told the Ynet conference that Gaza's Palestinian population had not left the enclave because "Hamas doesn't allow them, and there are no countries in the world that will take them".

"We are fully prepared to move them out if it becomes possible - by sea, by air, by every way possible. Egypt is not willing, so it won’t be through them," the Israeli minister said.

'There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without migration'

- Israel Katz, Israeli defence minister

"What’s delaying it is that the accepting countries want US support. Every country that is willing wants American backing. Currently, President Trump didn’t cancel this; he froze it. All the Arab countries came to him due to their pressure on this matter."

At the end of June, Israel reportedly renamed its plan to encourage Palestinians to leave Gaza, dropping the term "voluntary migration" in favour of "Freedom of Movement Plan".

Israel's Channel 13 said that Israeli security officials and the Mossad had been instructed to stop using the term “voluntary migration”, which had drawn sharp international criticism. 

Haaretz reported at the time that the head of Israel's National Security Council, Shmuel Ben Ezra, had held an urgent meeting on encouraging Palestinians to leave Gaza. According to the newspaper, Mossad officials admitted they had so far failed to find any country willing to accept displaced Palestinians.

In his conference interview, Katz also said that Israel was preparing for the possibility of an Iranian attack during the Jewish holiday period - Rosh Hashanah takes place between 11 September and 13 September this year - and was ready to respond with significant force if targeted.