Published: 2 December 2024
Last updated: 3 December 2024
A former defence minister who served under Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing" in the northern Gaza Strip.
Ya'alon, a former IDF Chief of Staff and Defence Minister from 2013 to 2016, gave a series of interviews in which he said the forced evacuation of Palestinians met the definition of ethnic cleansing.
“The path we are currently being led down involves conquering, annexing, and ethnic cleansing. Look at the northern Gaza Strip—transfer, call it whatever you want—and establish Jewish settlements. That’s the reality. Now, if you look at the polls, 70% of the public, sometimes more, supports a certain vision: Jewish, democratic, liberal, and so on, along with separation. We cannot lose sight of that. Those leading us now are dragging us toward nothing less than destruction,” he told Lucy Aharish on DemocratTV on Saturday.
A visibly surprised Aharish pressed him: “You just used a phrase I never thought I’d hear from you—ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Is that really what you think? That we’re heading in that direction?”
Ya’alon responded: “Why say ‘heading’? What’s happening there right now? Beit Lahiya is gone, Beit Hanoun is gone. Operations are underway in Jabalya, essentially clearing the area of Arabs.”
When it was put to him that one of the definitions of ethnic cleansing is “mass murder as a means of diluting the population of a specific group in a specific area,” Ya’alon said, “I’m not talking about mass murder” but rather about “a different definition… evacuating a population from its homes, destroying their homes — that’s what’s happening in Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya”.
