Israels plan for Gazas future

[MixedMetals]

Defense Minister Israel Katz said Monday that he has instructed the IDF to prepare a plan to establish a "humanitarian city" on the ruins of Rafah, which would eventually house the entire population of the Gaza Strip.

According to Katz, the plan involves moving 600,000 Palestinians, primarily from the al-Muwasi area, into the new zone after security screening. Once inside, residents would not be allowed to leave, the defense minister said.

Katz added that, if conditions permit, construction of the "city" would begin during the 60-day Israel-Hamas cease-fire currently under negotiation.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-07-07/ty-article/.premium/defense-minister-israel-to-concentrate-all-gaza-population-in-rafah-humanitarian-zone/00000197-e56a-d1ad-ab97-e5ef764e0000

But that’s just your personal take on it. I will have a look at your recommendations. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to agree with how you have dissed the other authors. Surely a measured view of both sides might be a better way to understand the problems.

Article 27:
The Palestinian Liberation Organization is the closest to the heart of the Islamic Resistance Movement. It contains the father and the brother, the next of kin and the friend. Our homeland is one, our situation is one, our fate is one and the enemy is a joint enemy to all of us. Secularism completely contradicts religious ideology. Attitudes, conduct and decisions stem from ideologies. That is why, with all our appreciation for The Palestinian Liberation Organization - and what it can develop into - and without belittling its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we are unable to exchange the present or future Islamic Palestine with the secular idea. The Islamic nature of Palestine is part of our religion and whoever takes his religion lightly is a loser. The day The Palestinian Liberation Organization adopts Islam as its way of life, we will become its soldiers, and fuel for its fire that will burn the enemies.
Article 28:
Arab countries surrounding Israel are asked to open their borders before the fighters from among the Arab and Islamic nations so that they could consolidate their efforts with those of their Muslim brethren in Palestine. As for the other Arab and Islamic countries, they are asked to facilitate the movement of the fighters from and to it, and this is the least thing they could do.
Article 30: Writers, intellectuals, media people, orators, educators and teachers, and all the various sectors in the Arab and Islamic world - all of them are called upon to perform their role, and to fulfill their duty. Jihad is not confined to the carrying of arms and the confrontation of the enemy. The effective word, the good article, the useful book, support and solidarity - together with the presence of sincere purpose for the hoisting of Allah's banner higher and higher - all these are elements of the Jihad for Allah's sake.
Article 31:
Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions - Islam, Christianity and Judaism - to coexist in peace and quiet with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam. It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region, because the day these followers should take over there will be nothing but carnage, displacement and terror.
Article 32:
World Zionism, together with imperialistic powers, try through a studied plan and an intelligent strategy to remove one Arab state after another from the circle of struggle against Zionism, in order to have it finally face the Palestinian people only. Egypt was, to a great extent, removed from the circle of the struggle, through the treacherous Camp David Agreement. They are trying to draw other Arab countries into similar agreements and to bring them outside the circle of struggle.
Article 33:
The Islamic Resistance Movement, being based on the common coordinated and interdependent conceptions of the laws of the universe, and flowing in the stream of destiny in confronting and fighting the enemies in defence of the Muslims and Islamic civilization and sacred sites, the first among which is the Aqsa Mosque, urges the Arab and Islamic peoples, their governments, popular and official groupings, to fear Allah where their view of the Islamic Resistance Movement and their dealings with it are concerned. They should back and support it, as Allah wants them to, extending to it more and more funds till Allah's purpose is achieved when ranks will close up, fighters join other fighters and masses everywhere in the Islamic world will come forward in response to the call of duty while loudly proclaiming: Hail to Jihad. Their cry will reach the heavens and will go on being resounded until liberation is achieved, the invaders vanquished and Allah's victory comes about.
Article 34:
Palestine is the navel of the globe and the crossroad of the continents. Since the dawn of history, it has been the target of expansionists. Expansionists have more than once put their eye on Palestine which they attacked with their armies to fulfill their designs on it. Thus it was that the Crusaders came with their armies, bringing with them their creed and carrying their Cross. They were able to defeat the Muslims for a while, but the Muslims were able to retrieve the land only when they stood under the wing of their religious banner, united their word, hallowed the name of Allah, and surged fighting under the leadership of Salah ed-Din al-Ayyubi.
Article 35:
The present Zionist onslaught has also been preceded by Crusading raids from the West and other Tatar raids from the East. Just as the Muslims faced those raids and planned fighting and defeating them, they should be able to confront the Zionist invasion and defeat it.
Article 36:
The Islamic Resistance Movement adopts Islam as its way of life. Islam is its creed and religion. Whoever takes Islam as his way of life, be it an organization, a grouping, a country or any other body, the Islamic Resistance Movement considers itself as their soldiers and nothing more.

That current charter doesn't though. Have you read it?

Have you read the Likud one? I asked but you again didn't mention?

I said:

So if you are looking for a library of authors to support the "Jews colonised Israel" narrative, they are probably the gold standard. If you want to hear the other side too and make your own mind up then maybe add in some variety with...

Yes, my personal take on it is that you should read both sides and then form your own view once you have all the information.

The leopard has changed its spots?

a. The Likud government will place its aspirations for peace at the top of its priorities and will spare no effort to promote peace. The Likud will act as a genuine partner at peace treaty negotiations with our neighbors, as is customary among the nations. The Likud government will attend the Geneva Conference. .
b. The Likud governments peace initiative will he positive. Directly or through a friendly state. Israel will invite her neighbors to hold direct negotiations, in order to sign without pre-conditions on either side and without any solution formula invented by outsiders (invented outside ).

Nah love, request denied

Ilan Pappé, an Israeli born historian, who, due to his research, was hounded out of Israel and now lives in the UK, even though no one could refute his research.

Norman Finkelstein is a US Jewish professor, who doesn’t appear to have a racist bone in his body, but appears to have studied and realised how awfully the Israeli governments have treated the Palestinians over the years.

Noam Chomsky, a socialist in his youth maybe, but tried on many occasions to reconcile himself with Israel, but eventually came to the conclusion that he could not get along with Zionism.

Avi Shlaim, an Iraqi Jew, well to do, who had to flee Iraq because of perceived persecution from bombs planted in the Jewish areas in Baghdad, only later in life after doing research to find out the bombs were planted by Mossad agents.
He names them in his book 3 Worlds, Memoirs of an Arab Jew.

As I said, two sides to every story. Things can be interpreted differently.

Sorry I just understood the second part of what you suggested.

It is wise to read all information that you can, especially on complex issues. If you find the information contained to be dishonest, ridiculous, racist, revisionist or even outright completely preposterous, then I think it's fine to say so.

I have given clear reasons why I feel that way, this is what critical thinking is. You can try it now.

75000 Jews left Egypt. In Egypt, this is what happened after 1948:

• Jews were accused of being zionist collaborators whether they were
• They were fired from their jobs for being Jewish
• Nuremberg style laws were implemented stripping them of rights
• There were mass arbitrary arrests
• Their property was confiscated
• Their* *businesses were shut down
• Their bank accounts frozen.
• There were ani-Jewish riots
• Some were arbitrarily stripped of citizenship
• Some were expelled after being given
• Jews were placed under arbitrary police surveillance
• Kids threw rocks at them in the street
• They were tortured
• Some were executed and some died in jail

I am not talking about some Jews, I am talking about all of them - doctors, accountants, shop owners, all of them.

Things got worse after the Suez Crisis, and the Jews that remained were given days to leave and were forced to sign their property over to the government and pack one suitcase. Synagogues were smashed up, Jewish school shut down. My mother clearly remembers their close family friend going through this. She showed me photos.

Avi Shlaim has argued that Zionist deliberately provoked, the Jewish exodus from Arab countries, shifting blame onto "Zionist agents".

I find that to be utterly ridiculous.

"Zionist agents" didn't force Iraq, Egypt, Libya, and others to enact explicitly antisemitic laws, expel Jews, seize their assets or otherwise ethnically cleanse them - we chose to do it. We chose to do it and we were wrong.

So no, I am not sure what you think a measured view would be. I think the man is a complete idiot with some sort of weird axe to grind. I wouldn't read a shopping list if he wrote it.

While we’re arguing the lit, an 8 month old called Saeed was pulled out the rubble with no head today. His body looked so skinny.
God love him.

What have our Nations become? We are all responsible for the murder of these children, watching and enabling the Israeli far right to run riot. It’s shooting fish in a soon to be even smaller barrel.

There are ways to do less harm, yet our countries enable this violence.

Israel will never be a Zion for its people having done this. It’s sickening.

How about uniting and saying ‘free Gaza from Hamas’?

Norman Finklestein said that October 7th warmed his soul. Was a lovely guy.

Michael Sfard, one of Israel’s leading human rights lawyers on why Katzs plan is a crime against humanity and not helping Palestinians out.

“(Katz) laid out an operational plan for a crime against humanity. It is nothing less than that,” Sfard said. “It is all about population transfer to the southern tip of the Gaza Strip in preparation for deportation outside the strip.

“While the government still calls the deportation ‘voluntary’, people in Gaza are under so many coercive measures that no departure from the strip can be seen in legal terms as consensual.

“When you drive someone out of their homeland that would be a war crime, in the context of a war. If it’s done on a massive scale like he plans, it becomes a crime against humanity,” Sfard added.

Prof Amos Goldberg, historian of the Holocaust at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on ethnic cleansing and why this isn't a plan to keep Palestinians safe.

The defence minister laid out clear plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Goldberg said, and the creation of “a concentration camp or a transit camp for Palestinians before they expel them. It is neither humanitarian nor a city,” he said of Katz’s planned holding area for Palestinians.
“A city is a place where you have possibilities of work, of earning money, of making connections and freedom of movement.There are hospitals, schools, universities and offices. This is not what they have in mind. It will not be a livable place, just as the ‘safe areas’ are unliveable now.”

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/07/israeli-minister-reveals-plan-to-force-population-of-gaza-into-camp-on-ruins-of-rafah

I have given clear reasons why I feel that way, this is what critical thinking is. You can try it now.

Because only you can do critical thinking? I also lived in the middle east for 45 years. I have an Arab husband. I am more than capable of reading up on the situation and forming my own opinions.

I consider Hamas way, way more responsible for this war than myself - like a million billion times more responsible so no, I don't accept that I am responsible for the death of this poor baby born in Hell.

Do you blame Hamas at all or just "our nations"?

There have been demonstrations IN GAZA for exactly this. Before Biden went they were “90% detailed or killed” apparently. Yet here we’re are a year later still killing infants. Who is Hamas now? Where is the list of people who are Hamas? Is it exhaustive? Is it the military arm? The political?

As Hamas were the actual government- is that anyone employed by the government? All the healthcare workers? The teachers and street cleaners?

Who are the current targets for committing terrorism? Netenyahu and the far right have decided this is all of Gaza.

Of course I blame Hamas.fir risking the wellbeing of Palestinians. But our nations have let this get out of hand. Through supporting, we’ve perpetrated this. We’ve all watched this. And paid for it with our taxes.

I don't consider myself responsible for things I've watched.

I'm aware of the war but didn't cause it. I don't even fight over parking spaces in Waitrose in case of retaliations, let alone start a fight on that scale knowing full well it would lead to a huge number of civilian deaths Israeli and Palestinian.

Oh I see you edited because in your first response you forgot the obligatory "of course I blame Hamas but ..."

How much do you really blame them if you prefer to blame me and people like me "our nations" ?

There is two sides to every story, and sometimes one side is bull shit. Facts are:

Ilan Pappé
Claim:
He was “hounded out of Israel” because no one could refute his research.
Reality:
Pappé wasn’t "hounded" - he left amid backlash because his academic methods were heavily criticised, including cherry-picking sources, misquoting, and inserting ideology into scholarship. Notably, he defended Teddy Katz’s fraudulent thesis claiming a massacre in Tantura - a case which Katz himself admitted in court was based on fabricated quotes. Many Israeli historians (including left-leaning ones) like Benny Morris do refute Pappé, accusing him of distorting evidence to push an anti-Zionist narrative. He wasn’t exiled — he chose to leave and continues to peddle a narrative that casts Zionism as evil and Palestinians as faultless victims, ignoring Arab rejectionism and terrorism entirely. And I think he makes a nice living covering for antisemites.

Norman Finkelstein
Claim:
A fair-minded Jewish academic who simply “realised how awfully Israel treats Palestinians.”
Reality:
Finkelstein is not some neutral observer - he’s a professional provocateur who routinely downplays Hamas terrorism. He’s been accused of antisemitism, not just by the right, but by liberal Jewish groups, for mocking Holocaust remembrance. He’s also been caught making deeply racist comments, including a grotesque letter describing Black neighbours as “apes” - a fact based on court-record evidence. In the particular article I was sorry enough to come across he was making some pseudo intellectual argument about how Black stereotypes were compliments!

Noam Chomsky
Claim:
Tried to reconcile with Israel but found Zionism incompatible.
Reality:
I don't have much of a problem with the guy, beyond the fact that as I said, he's spent decades blaming the US and Israel for virtually every geopolitical problem, while giving authoritarian regimes and terrorist groups a free pass. He sees the world through the typical "west bad" eye glasses that I think i really immature, but it is how most college students see the world. Then they grow up and realise actually America is not the devil.

Avi Shlaim
Claim:
Discovered that the bombs in Iraq that caused the Jewish exodus were planted by Mossad, and names them in Three Worlds.
Reality:
His claim is based on a single claim from an ex-Mossad agent, with no corroboration. I don't believe it is true. He has no evidence. But if it were true, let's think about this...do you think Iraqi Jews left Iraq because..

a) A series of bombs went off that killed 3 - 4 people in 1950 and 1951

or

b) Because they were subjected to one of the worst antisemitic campaigns in modern history over more than a decade including:

• Being stripped of jobs
• Being arrested en masse
• Being tried under martial law for “Zionist ties.”
• Being tortured
• Being fined and imprisoned on flimsy charges .
• that the Bagdad radio literally played Mein Kampf in Arabic every night!
• that an Iraqi Hitler youth had formed where they threw stones at Jews and shouted hatred at them in the street
• Jews were executed in public on bogus charges
• That they were subjected (with no state redress) to one of the worst pogrums in history where over 180 were murdered in their houses, more than 500 Jewish businesses were attacked and some of the most brutal acts in history occurred, including cutting off of women's breasts and parading them through the street

So what do you think? they left because of some bombs that we don't know who set them off? Or they left because of an ongoing state-sponsored, systematic ethnic cleansing under nationalist and extremist influence?

Every serious historian agrees that Jews were fleeing Iraq due to state-sponsored antisemitism, arrests, property seizures, and existential fear. Just this one idiot has come up with an alternative way to blame the Jews for their own ethnic cleansing.

To say Zionists caused the Jewish exodus from Iraq is not only historically false, it’s morally obscene - it absolves Arab regimes of ethnic cleansing and blames Jews for their own dispossession. There is no conclusive evidence that Mossad planted bombs to scare Iraqi Jews into fleeing and even if there were then that would not be why they left.

These authors all present one beautiful prize: A way to say "here's some Jews that are willing to provide stories or ideas which confirm our own antisemitic prejudices". So people love it. They will take any old Quack!

If a series of Black people were to write books on how Black people brought slavery on themselves, or other such ridiculous nonsense, I am sure a bunch of neo Nazis would think they were the wisest and most learned Black people who ever lived!

Their ideas simply do not hold up to scrutiny.

In the Middle East and North Africa 74% of adults agree with multiple antisemitic stereotypes, according to the ADL global survey. I witnessed that first hand. Maybe it would be good as a family to expand your reading beyond authors most Jews find to be antisemitic. That is a pretty good barometer.

This has not been a war for a long time.
We are responsible for funding this with our taxes and not changing our governments’ policy. We fund military cooperation, allow transport of indicted war criminals and provide arms used to remove the head from an 8month old’s body while that are starving in their cots.

ALL of us.

I strongly refute that we perpetrated this, and can't understand this position at all.

I don't hold myself accountable for how any trade agreements are worked out. Any tax levels set. Any decisions made on education. Or any other nation's war strategy. I don't understand why anyone would.

I hold myself accountable for voting for those who's policies most align with my own opinions. And if decisions are taken that I dont agree with then I don't vote for that party anymore.

If you want collective responsibility for decisions taken by those in government then its a very, very dark road you're choosing. Are Gazans to also be held responsible for the decisions of Hamas? Are Israelis to be held responsible for the decisions of BN?

Bibi’s new book maybe? Would that be a good benchmark? Bibi. My Story?

No, there’s no public money transferred from the UK Treasury to Israel’s war effort. Your taxes have not funded the war.