Netanyahu Revives Call for Gazans to Voluntarily Migrate to Other Countries
Written by admin on August 13, 2025
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Israeli calls for Gaza’s population to move elsewhere, Europe’s strategy to end the Russia-Ukraine war, and missing details in the U.S. State Department’s human rights report.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel would allow Gazans to voluntary leave the besieged territory as Israel prepares to expand its military operations in Gaza City.
Netanyahu told local media late Tuesday that Palestinians would not be “pushed out” but rather “allowed to exit” Gaza as Israel seeks to reassert its control over the territory and destroy Hamas.
“All those who are concerned for the Palestinians and say they want to help the Palestinians should open their gates and stop lecturing us,” the Israeli leader said.
Where these civilians might go, though, remains unclear. Sources familiar with ongoing negotiations told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Israel is in talks with South Sudan about potentially resettling Palestinians there. Similar proposals have been floated with other governments, including those of Indonesia, Libya, Somalia, Somaliland, Sudan, and Uganda.
In February, U.S. President Donald Trump posted a video to Truth Social supporting such a displacement scheme, which he framed as a real estate opportunity to transform Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Relocating Palestinians to South Sudan, though, would just move civilians from one war-ravaged place to another. Last month, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global initiative considered to be the world’s leading authority on hunger, warned that the “worst-case scenario of Famine” is now occurring in Gaza. That same authority concluded in 2017 and 2020 that South Sudan was facing famine—two of the four instances of IPC-recognized famine this century. Notably, the other two countries on that list are also potential Gaza relocation sites: Somalia and Sudan.
However, foreign leaders and rights experts warn that a Gaza-wide displacement scheme could violate international law and have vast humanitarian consequences that Palestinians fear would be akin to a repeat of the Nakba (or “catastrophe”), when around 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from the region in 1948 to make way for the creation of an Israeli state. Egypt, in particular, has stressed that any effort to transfer Palestinians out of Gaza could spark a surge of refugees fleeing into its own territory.
On Wednesday, Hamas negotiators met with Egyptian officials in Cairo to discuss how best to stop the war and deliver aid to Gaza. While there, they explored the possibility of a comprehensive cease-fire deal that would see Hamas relinquish governing power and concede its weapons—something that a United Nations conference on the two-state solution pushed for last month as conditions of a peace deal.
Hamas is open to all ideas if Israel ends its offensive and pulls out of Gaza, a Hamas official told Reuters. However, “laying down arms before the occupation is dismissed is impossible,” the official added.
Israeli authorities have suggested that Israel plans to begin taking total control of Gaza City in October, though expanded operations in the city have already begun. On Wednesday, Israeli bombardments in Gaza City killed at least 123 people in just 24 hours.
