How Israel’s ‘plan’ for Gaza could turbocharge ethnic cleansing

May 7, 2025

Mat Nashed and Maram Humaid

Israel has launched a new plan for Gaza which could induce ethnic cleansing and advance a genocide, say experts.

 

 A Palestinian man embraces the body of his five-year-old son, Adam Namrouti, who Israel killed in an overnight air raid on a UN school used as a shelter, at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on May 7, 2025 [Abdel Kareem Hana/AP]

Israel’s far-right government has approved a “plan” to carve up and ethnically cleanse Gaza, analysts told Al Jazeera.

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.”

Here’s what you need to know:

What is this ‘plan’?

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.

Some 5,000 to 6,000 families will be pushed into each camp, according to The Washington Post. Each household will send someone to trek miles to pick up a weekly food parcel from what the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Jan Egeland called “concentration hubs”.

It is unclear how the rest of the population – possibly some 1.5 million people – will eat.

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.

What does this mean for the people of Gaza?

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.

“If you are viewing this plan through aid distribution, it makes no sense,” Diana Buttu, legal scholar and former adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, told Al Jazeera.

“If you view it through a political project, which is ethnic cleansing and cantonisation by using food as a weapon of war, then this plan does make sense,” she said, adding that the “plan” is consistent with Israel’s aim of carrying out a genocide in Gaza.

What did the people of Gaza say?

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.

“What more does Netanyahu want? We’re dying in every way.”

Mahmoud al-Nabahin, 77, who has been displaced for the past 18 months, says Netanyahu’s threats are meaningless.

He has lost everything; Israel killed his wife and daughter in a raid months ago, and their home and farm are gone.

“[This] means nothing but our annihilation. We’ve lost all hope. Let him do whatever he wants,” he says from his tent in Deir el-Balah.

“We don’t have weapons. We’re civilians left in the wind. People will refuse displacement, but will be forced What does Israel want?

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.”

Can Israel even manage this?

Not clear.

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.

She added that Israel will also call up thousands of reservists to maintain a physical occupation over northern Gaza, despite many soldiers being fatigued by war and financial troubles.

“There is definitely a lower … turnout among reservists than at the start of the war. But that doesn’t mean there is actually a manpower shortage,” Zonszein told Al Jazeera.

In addition, she noted, despite Israeli society opposing expanding the war on Gaza without first retrieving the captives, Netanyahu is more concerned with appeasing far-right ministers in his coalition by fighting on.

Netanyahu risks losing power and standing trial for corruption charges if the coalition collapses.

Are aid agencies on board?

Not UN agencies.

A UN spokesman said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “alarmed” by Israel’s plan and that it will “inevitably lead to countless more civilians killed and the further destruction of Gaza”.

“Gaza is, and must remain, an integral part of a future Palestinian state,” said spokesman Farhan Haq.

The UN also issued a statement saying Israel’s plan for Gaza would “contravene fundamental humanitarian principles” and deepen suffering for civilians.

But the UN may conclude that it must participate in Israel’s scheme out of fear that even more Palestinians in Gaza will starve if it doesn’t, said Buttu, putting the onus on Western states, who primarily fund UN agencies, to support the UN’s position by sanctioning Israel.