From settlements to blocked recovery: Israeli strategy taking shape in Gaza

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The minister said, in his view, establishing these settlements would enhance security – but execution would have to be “in the right way, at the right timing, while coordinating”. It was not the first time the member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party has made such remarks. In December, Katz said the Israeli military would “never leave all of Gaza” but “in due course” would establish Nahal posts despite a United States-brokered plan stipulating a full Israeli military withdrawal and barring the re-establishment of Israeli settlements. His comments also echoed a recent statement by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that “the groundwork to establish three settlements in the North Gaza area” had been completed. Smotrich, who also holds the portfolio of “settlement administration” in the Ministry of Defence, has repeatedly called for the full occupation of the Gaza Strip. Such a push has been central to the goals of Israel’s settler movement, which in January 2024 organised a conference attended by government ministers to advocate for the re-establishment of settlements in the Strip. “This is their ideology. They want the Gazans out of Gaza and they want to settle there like they settle in the West Bank,” former Israeli diplomat Alon Liel told Al Jazeera. All settlements on Palestinian land are illegal under international law, but settlement expansion and annexation have been a core objective of Netanyahu’s hard-right government. In recent years, it has carried out unprecedented settlement expansion, resulting in the forced displacement of dozens of Palestinian communities and the de facto annexation of land in the occupied West Bank. Issam Younis, a prominent Palestinian human rights defender and director of the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, said he was not surprised by Katz’s latest comments. “It was very clear from day one in the genocide that the main goal was to make life impossible in Gaza by destroying everything,” he told Al Jazeera. “It’s a race for time – take over land, starve Gaza and deny it any chance at life, then expel the population and build settlements.” Younis said Israel’s conduct during its genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza and the “ceasefire” agreed in October under the US plan clearly showed that expelling the population is the main objective of the Israeli government. “Dehumanising statements by senior Israeli officials reaffirmed this: calling Palestinians in Gaza ‘human animals’, saying that there are no civilians in Gaza, then saying clearly that the objective was to expel the population and create settlements in the Gaza Strip,” Younis added. Israel made no secret of that objective. In early 2025, the government announced it was setting up an agency to oversee the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from Gaza as part of a plan proposed by Katz. The announcement drew widespread international condemnation. Experts warned that such a move would amount to a war crime. Last month, the Israeli government decided to rebrand the agency and replace talk of “voluntary migration” with the “free movement plan” while using “language deemed more acceptable internationally”, according to Israeli media. The policy enjoys widespread support in Israel. A 2025 poll commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania found that 82 percent of Jewish Israelis support the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. Meanwhile, nine months into a “ceasefire”, during which Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,127 Palestinians, conditions in Gaza remain unbearable. The United Nations says at least 265 children have been killed during the period while hunger persists and the debilitated healthcare system continues to suffer acute medicine shortages. “Only 20 percent of what Gaza needs has been allowed to enter – things related to water and health and to life in general,” Younis said, referring to Israeli restrictions on aid entering the Strip. “Gaza is being starved and parched for water.” For him, the aim is clear: expulsion, “even if they call it voluntary migration”. Liel said Israel is doing the minimum on the humanitarian track to avoid upsetting US President Donald Trump, who has set up what he has named the Board of Peace to oversee the administration and reconstruction of the Strip. “I don’t think that Israel wants Gaza to be reconstructed like Trump is dreaming,” he said. Palestinians have been increasingly frustrated with the Board of Peace’s failure to pressure Israel or implement the recovery and construction plans outlined in Trump’s “ceasefire” plan, including the entry of critically needed assistance. “The Board of Peace is complicit until it moves to rebuild Gaza immediately,” Younis said. “Otherwise, it would not be allowing Israel to create the conditions that make life impossible for Palestinians in Gaza, which will result in expulsion.” Israeli forces have also expanded the “Yellow Line”, demarcating Israeli-controlled areas within Gaza, to encompass 70 percent of the Strip. “We are not retreating from the ‘Yellow Line’, unequivocally, as long as Hamas does not truly disarm, and even after that, we remain inside Gaza,” Katz told Channel 14 during his tour of northern Gaza, saying the destruction of the territory was “the result of a deliberate policy”. The settlement push comes as Israel is gearing up for elections, which will be held on October 27. According to Liel, Katz and other ministers are openly talking about building settlements in Gaza because their calculation is that it would boost their electoral chances amid a shift to the right by the electorate. Many observers expected the weeks leading up to the polls to be accompanied by a serious escalation in Gaza, the West Bank and other Israeli “war fronts” without changing the political situation in Israel. “The wish of this Israeli government was that as many [Palestinians from Gaza] will leave. Hopefully voluntarily. If not, Israel will help, and this is the reason you don’t want to rebuild Gaza,” Liel said. 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