Arab News | Palestine’s UN envoy slams ‘most organized, methodic, broadcasted ethnic cleansing campaign in modern history’

NEW YORK: Israel’s “decades-long ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinian people “has reached its height through the commission of genocide,” Palestine’s permanent observer to the UN told the Security Council on Tuesday.

Riyad Mansour cited a string of statements by senior Israeli officials that amount to open declarations of a plan to forcibly remove Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.

In a five-page letter to Security Council President Jerome Bonnafont, Mansour said Israeli officials “are proudly declaring their ethnic cleansing plan, enunciating their decades-long policy to remove the Palestinian people from their land, and rapidly and actively implementing their crimes on the ground.”

The letter, seen by Arab News, quotes Defense Minister Israel Katz telling an interviewer on Sept. 2 that “there’s no real solution for Gaza in the end without migration,” and that Israel is “organized and prepared to get them out — by sea, by air, by every way possible.”

Katz said “the plan hasn’t been cancelled; it’s being discussed all the time, even now, and I think there’s no other solution for everyone’s good.”

He added that “today, 70 percent of Gaza’s territory is a desert thanks to what the Israeli army has done; there are no longer any inhabitants or houses there,” and that Israeli forces have “reoccupied the refugee camps in the West Bank and expelled 40,000 Palestinians.”

Katz denied the existence of Jewish settler violence, saying: “There is no Jewish terror. I have cancelled that term. Terrorism is committed by those who act against the State of Israel.”

On Sept. 7, he said he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had instructed the military “to prepare for the opening of a full-scale war” in the West Bank, including “the evacuation of residents from cities and villages … exactly as we did in the security zones in Gaza,” and announced plans for “targeted eliminations” of senior Palestinian Authority officials.

The letter cites Netanyahu filming himself at a military post in Gaza on Sept. 2 saying: “We are not withdrawing. We are staying on this line. We control 60 percent of the strip. And there is still more to come.”

The same day, it says, he visited a religious school in the city of Sderot and looked on as young settlers chanted: “And we will take vengeance, one eye for the two eyes of Palestine, may its name be erased.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir unveiled a plan on Sept. 3 called “Disengagement 710,” which he said would “encourage the voluntary migration of 1.86 million Gazans within seven years.”

He said 250,000 Palestinians would be removed from Gaza in the first year and a million within three years, adding: “It is possible. It is realistic. It is in our hands. It is within our ability.”

Ben-Gvir said a survey found that “76 percent of Israeli society support encouraging immigration from Gaza.”

The letter references a video generated by artificial intelligence that Ben-Gvir posted showing Palestinian detainees entering what it described as a slaughterhouse-style conveyor system, and a separate video of him telling women detainees: “The good conditions in the prisons are over … I’m glad we lowered these conditions to the bare minimum.”

The letter links this rhetoric to reports of Israeli soldiers marking Palestinian detainees with numbers on their bodies, including a case in which a man identified as Ahmad Al-Hathnawi was released with the number 44 written on his forehead. The Israeli military acknowledged the practise, saying “lessons have been learned.”

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also holds a ministerial post within the Defense Ministry overseeing settlement policy, announced a new settlement near Bethlehem on Sept. 3 and said: “We want to bring a million settlers.”

He repeated the assertion that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people,” and on Sept. 7 said the PA “should be brought down,” declaring that the Oslo Accords are “null and void anyways.”

Israel’s Chief Rabbi David Yosef told a crowd on Aug. 22 that Palestinians “are not a people” and “have no rights here.” The crowd responded: “Amen. May the Holy One, blessed be He, destroy all of Gaza.”

The letter documents the “infrastructure of ethnic cleansing” on the ground, saying Israeli forces demolished the village of Khirbet Al-Tabban in the past week, displacing more than 70 people and bringing to 47 the number of Palestinian communities erased since October 2023.

It says Israeli settlers and soldiers killed teenagers Omar Al-Nassan, 17, and Khalil Abu Alia, 16, in the village of Al-Mughayyir the same day Israel’s president told CNN that his country was making a “major effort” to curb settler violence.

Citing a UN report issued on Sept. 4, Mansour said Israeli forces “killed civilians, destroyed hundreds of homes … and went door to door forcing residents to leave” in the Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarm refugee camps, and displaced families “were told by Israeli officers there would be no more refugee camps and that they should all go to Jordan.” More than 40,000 Palestinians remain displaced from the camps, the letter says.

In Gaza, 2.3 million people, including a million children, remain confined to less than a third of the territory’s area, with 1.9 million displaced and two-thirds of households living in tents.

More than 30,000 tents are being held at border crossings against a need for 130,000 before winter, and roughly two-thirds of Gaza’s population face crisis-level food insecurity or worse.

More than 30 Palestinians were killed in Gaza between Aug. 28 and Sept. 7, including 8-year-old Wafaa Akila and her father.

They were killed as he drove her to school, bringing to more than 270 the number of children killed since the ceasefire was announced.

Mansour welcomed recent moves by Britain, France, Canada, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Norway and Belgium to restrict settlement products and sanction those financing the settlement enterprise, as well as similar steps under consideration in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Poland, Portugal and Sweden.

He called on the Security Council to go further, urging states to halt arms transfers, close diplomatic missions in Jerusalem, and impose travel bans and asset freezes.

“Action, not statements, will help the Palestinian people to survive Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign,” Mansour wrote, calling it “the most organized, methodic, and broadcasted ethnic cleansing campaign in modern history.”

The letter is the 892nd that Palestine has sent to the Security Council on the situation since September 2000, according to the Palestinian mission to the UN.