US ambassador says Israel not planning forced displacement in Gaza

The US ambassador to Israel says there is no plan underway to force Palestinians out of Gaza, after Israeli ministers laid out ideas on how to expel the war-battered territory's two million people.

"I can tell you categorically there is no plan of the Israelis to displace people out of Gaza against their will," Ambassador Mike Huckabee told reporters on Saturday, as he visited Palestinian-Americans in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Sanctioned Israeli far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir laid out a plan on Thursday that aims to see the departure of 250,000 Palestinians from Gaza in the first year, followed by the rest of the roughly two million residents over the next six years, through what he described as "voluntary emigration".

In the past week he also quietly deleted two videos from his social media pages, which critics said promoted the starvation and poor treatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

The sanctioned Israeli minister described his seven-year plan as a "voluntary emigration". (Reuters: Amir Cohen)

His remarks came a day after Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel was ready to remove Palestinians from Gaza by sea and land but was waiting for the United States, which he said was discussing where the population would go.

Mr Katz on Wednesday said there was "no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration".

Without citing his source, he added that 80 per cent of people in Gaza wanted to leave but Hamas was preventing them.

US wants Palestinians to 'have the right to leave'

Mr Huckabee said that US President Donald Trump's administration — which has made hostility to international migration a central priority — wanted to give Palestinians the option to leave by choice.

Mr Trump stunned the world early in his second term by proposing to displace all Palestinians at least temporarily from Gaza and turn the rubble-strewn territory into a luxury resort.

He backtracked after pushback from countries including Egypt, the only country other than Israel to border Gaza.

"There is an open-mindedness if people wish to leave, that they should have the right to leave," Mr Huckabee said on Saturday, calling it a "disgrace" to "incarcerate" Palestinians inside Gaza.

"Nobody is suggesting there would be forced displacement — the Israelis are not, the Americans are not. I know of no one who supports that," he said.

Forced displacement of a civilian population from occupied territory is considered a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.

Virtually the entire population of Gaza has already been displaced internally by Israel's military offensive, following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Since the war began, some far-right Israeli politicians have spoken of bringing settlers back to the Gaza Strip — where Israel dismantled settlements in 2005 as part of a unilateral plan to disengage from the densely populated region.

The remarks on displacement come in the run-up to the October 27 elections, in which polls show a tight race for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has brought once shunned far-right figures into his cabinet.

Huckabee calls violent Israeli settlers 'terrorists'

Mike Huckabee met residents of Turmus Ayya, a Palestinian town in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Also during his visit, the ambassador condemned Israeli settler violence in the West Bank as an "act of terror" and violent settlers as "terrorists".

"If there are squatters that come in and put up their own flags and take possession of something that does not belong to them, if they burn a car, if they torch a mosque, if they go into someone's home and vandalise it, paint graffiti on the walls, that's a criminal act."

"But it extends beyond a criminal act. It's an act of terror."

The Israeli government has built nearly 150 settlements — home to well over 500,000 settlers — since it captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, but settler attacks on Palestinians have surged during the war in Gaza which began in 2023.

Mr Huckabee also used the term "terrorists" last month after weeks of unrest in the West Bank town of Qusra, where settlers surrounded several homes including one owned by a Palestinian American.

Days later, residents of the West Bank village of Bazariya said settlers burned a mosque and left a message on a wall in graffiti reading "Huckabee regards from the terrorists" in Hebrew.

"I'm glad they admitted it," the ambassador said on Saturday of the incident, adding: "I don't think that's what they intended to do, but I do think that they represent a very tiny minority."

On Saturday's visit to Turmus Ayya, the ambassador began his remarks by making clear he was addressing US citizens, who make up a small percentage of the roughly three million Palestinians in the West Bank.

Mr Huckabee met with about 10 Palestinian American residents who described the impact of the violence on their lives and properties, the municipality told The Associated Press.

"I'm very aware that a lot of the American people who live in Turmus Ayya and other communities across this region are not enjoying the life they deserve to live, not enjoying it in a peaceful way," Huckabee said. 

"It's a life that is disturbed by people who have created extraordinary challenges that are unfair and illegal."

The US Embassy can't investigate criminal activity, he said, but it can tell its host government "there are needs that need to be addressed, there are issues that cannot go unnoticed, and specific crimes and acts of terror that cannot continue without that country doing the investigation and adjudication that every person has a right to expect."

AFP/Reuters/AP