• UN agency chief says Gaza will not be a ‘land for Palestinians anymore’ if Israeli aggression continues • Israel terms claim ‘outrageous and false’

AMMAN: Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, on Sunday said that Israel was implementing a policy of pushing Palestinians out of Gaza through an aggression that he said meets the “legal definition of genocide”, allegations that Israel rejected as “outrageous”.

Safadi, whose country borders the West Bank and absorbed the bulk of Palestinians after the creation of Israel in 1948, also said that Israel had created hatred that would haunt the region and define generations to come.

“What we are seeing in Gaza is not just simply the killing of innocent people and the destruction of their livelihoods (by Israel) but a systematic effort to empty Gaza of its people,” Safadi said at a conference in Doha.

“We have not seen the world yet come to the place where it should come,” adding that an unequivocal demand for ending this unrest; a crisis that is within the “realm of legal definition of genocide.”

Asked to respond, Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy said: “These are, of course, outrageous and false accusations.”

Israel has been urging Gaza civilians to relocate from battlegrounds for their “own safety” and would like to see others echo that call, he said.

Safadi argued that Israel’s avowed goal of destroying Hamas was belied by the extent of destruction among Gaza civilians, which he described as indiscriminate, accusing Israel of committing atrocities he said amounted to war crimes.

Safadi also said that major differences had surfaced in talks between a delegation of Arab ministers and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington last Friday over the US administration’s military support for Israel and its refusal to call for a ceasefire.

‘Second Nakba’

In an opinion piece published on Saturday in the Los Angeles Times, Unrwa chief Philippe Lazzarini pointed to the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the increasing concentration near the border of displaced civilians who fled the fighting, first in the north and then further south.

“The United Nations and several member states, including the US, have firmly rejected forcibly displacing Gazans out of the Gaza Strip,” Lazzarini said.

“But the developments we are witnessing point to attempts to move Palestinians into Egypt, regardless of whether they stay there or are resettled elsewhere.” The widespread destruction in the Palestinian territory’s north and the resulting displacements were “the first stage of such a scenario”, he added, while forcing civilians from the southern city of Khan Yunis closer to the Egyptian border was the next.

“If this path continues, leading to what many are already calling a second Nakba, Gaza will not be a land for Palestinians anymore,” Lazzarini said, using the Arabic term for the exodus or forced displacement of 760,000 Palestinians during the war that coincided with Israel’s creation in 1948.

Israeli Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel said last month that one “option” after the unrest would be “to promote the voluntary resettlement of Palestinians in Gaza, for humanitarian reasons, outside of the Strip”.

And former Israeli officials have suggested in TV interviews that Egypt could build vast tent cities in its Sinai desert, with international funding. A small number of Gazans have been allowed to cross into Egypt for medical treatment, and some foreign nationals trapped in the territory at the outset of the crisis were also allowed to evacuate by way of the Rafah crossing — Gaza’s only border post not under Israeli control.

But other Palestinians are currently blocked from leaving, with the territory’s estimated 1.9 million displaced people — out of a total population of 2.4 million — turning the border town of Rafah into a vast camp.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2023