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MAJOR GAZA LAND GRAB UNDERWAY AS ISRAEL’S ETHNIC CLEANSING
ESCALATES  
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Brett Wilkins
April 2, 2025
Common Dreams
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_ Israeli forces also bombed an U.N. clinic in Jabalia, killing at
least 68 Palestinians including elders, women, and children—one of
them a newborn baby. _

Palestinian refugees, Wikimedia Commons

 

Israel's far-right government on Wednesday admitted to a major land
grab in the embattled Gaza
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removal of Palestinians accelerated amid ongoing airstrikes that
killed scores of civilians, including at least 68 people slain in the
bombing of a health clinic run by the United Nations agency for
Palestinian refugees.

Defense Minister Israel
[[link removed]] Katz said
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Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) renewed assault is "expanding to crush
and clean" Gaza while "seizing large areas that will be added to the
security zones of the state of Israel for the protection of fighting
forces and the settlements," a reference to plans
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far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government
for the ethnic cleansing and Israeli recolonization of the Palestinian
enclave.

Israeli forces control what they call a buffer zone along Gaza's
entire border and on Monday ordered a sweeping evacuatione that forced
approximately 140,000 Palestinians to flee from Rafah and other areas.
In scenes reminiscent
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the Nakba
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which over 750,000 Arabs fled or were forced from Palestine
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of the modern state of Israel in 1948—Palestinian families were seen
carrying their possessions or loading them atop vehicles and donkey
carts as they sought ever-elusive safety.

Ihab Suliman, a former university professor forcibly expelled from
Jabalia with his family, told
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Associated Press_ on Monday that "there is no longer any taste to
life. Life and death have become one and the same for us."

The fresh wave of expulsions follows last month's creation
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a new IDF directorate tasked with ethnically cleansing northern Gaza
under the guise of "voluntary emigration." Katz said the agency would
be run "in accordance with the vision of U.S. President Donald Trump
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the United States would "take over" Gaza after emptying the strip of
its over 2 million Palestinians and transform the coastal enclave into
the "Riviera of the Middle East." Trump has since attempted to walk
back [[link removed]] some of his
comments.

The renewed ethnic cleansing of southern Gaza came amid heavy IDF
airstrikes throughout the strip, including the Wednesday bombing
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a clinic-turned-shelter run by the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in Jabalia that
killed at least 68 civilians, including women, children, and elders
and wounded dozens more, according to local officials. Graphic video
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aftermath showed a man holding up the headless body of a newborn baby
outside the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia.

Gaza's Government Media Office called the strike "a full-fledged war
crime," while the Palestinian Foreign Ministry urged the international
community to pressure Israel "to halt its genocide, displacement, and
annexation, and impose a political settlement per international law."

Israel admitted to carrying out the strike, claiming it targeted
"Hamas terrorists" hiding among the civilians. Israeli
policy implemented
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Hamas led the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, 2023
permits the IDF to knowingly kill an unlimited number of civilians in
order to kill just one Hamas member, no matter their rank or role in
the organization.

Katz called on Gaza residents to "expel Hamas and return all hostages"
kidnapped from Israel on October 7.

However, the umbrella group representing families of some of the
abductees—24 of whom are believed to still be alive—on Wednesday
accused Netanyahu of "burying the hostages alive" by unilaterally
abandoning aa cease-fire with Hamas last month.

"Did you decide that we are sacrificing hostages for capturing land?"
the Hostages and Missing Families Forum asked
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Katz's announcement. "Instead of getting the hostages out in a deal
and ending the war, Israel's government is sending more soldiers to
Gaza to fight in the same places that they already fought over and
over again."

Since March 18, when Israel broke the cease-fire with Hamas and
resumed its assault on Gaza, more than 1,000 Palestinians,
including over 320 children
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have been killed
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and thousands more wounded, according to local and international
officials.

Since October 2023, Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than
175,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children,
according the Gaza Health Ministry. That figure includes at least
14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath
rubble. Almost all of Gaza's more than 2 million people have been
forcibly displaced, often multiple times. Meanwhile, Israel's
"complete siege" of Gaza has exacerbated
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and sometimes deadly
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and illness.

On Monday, the Gaza Government Media Office said
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at least 1,513 humanitarian workers have also been killed by Israeli
forces since October 2023. It is uncertain whether that figure
includes the 15 first responders—including eight Red Crescent
workers and six Civil Defense personnel—whose bodies, some of them
allegedly bound and shot, were found in a mass grave
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Israel is facing an ongoing genocide case
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the International Court of Justice, and Netanyahu and former Defense
Minister Yoav Gallant are fugitives from the International Criminal
Court (ICC), which last year issued arrest warrants
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the pair for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The ICC joined human rights groups on Wednesday in condemning
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trip to Hungary, a signatory to the Rome Statute
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the world's top war crimes tribunal. Hungarian President Viktor Orbán
and other members of his far-right government are set to welcome
Netanyahu for a four-day visit underscoring both countries' disdain
for international law.

Meanwhile in the illegally occupied West Bank—where thousands of
Palestinians have been killed or wounded
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IDF troops and Jewish settler-colonists since October 2023—the UNRWA
area director said
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scale of forced displacement is unprecedented during the 58 years of
Israeli occupation.

_Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams._

* Israel-Gaza War
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* ethnic cleansing
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* Land Grab
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