Amid tacit American support, muted international criticism, and the paralysis of regional actors, Israel is entering one of the most perilous and consequential phases of its campaign against the Palestinian people.
What is unfolding is not a collection of isolated military operations or policy shifts, but a coherent strategy combining military escalation, territorial annexation, and demographic engineering. The aim is the consolidation of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and the gradual erasure of Gaza’s Palestinian identity through forced displacement and so-called “reconstruction” schemes.
The convergence of these measures signals a profound transformation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one with implications not only for the people of Palestine but also for the very credibility of international law.
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a special session to deliberate on the imposition of Israeli sovereignty over the Occupied West Bank. According to the Israeli media, the Israeli government has formally informed Washington of its annexation plans, underscoring its determination to press forward despite global opposition.
The Israeli newspaper the Jerusalem Post reported that American officials have conveyed a deliberately nuanced position: the ultimate decision rests with Israel. The United States has neither endorsed nor explicitly opposed the move, effectively granting Israel political cover to act unilaterally.
This ambiguity reflects a longstanding pattern in US policy, where rhetorical commitments to peace coexist with tacit acceptance of Israeli expansion.
That same day, the Israeli army carried out a sweeping arrest campaign across the West Bank. Among those detained was Tayseer Abu Sneineh, the mayor of Hebron. Witnesses described the arrest of 13 residents in Nablus, with additional detentions in Qalqiliya and Ramallah.
These arrests coincided with a broader wave of measures aimed at tightening control over the West Bank. In June, Israel unveiled a new land-seizure initiative led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. The plan involves the legalisation of illegal settler outposts and the forced displacement of Bedouin communities in an effort widely regarded as another step towards formal annexation.
On 20 August, the Israeli government approved the highly controversial E1 settlement project. The plan is designed to bisect the West Bank, cutting Ramallah and Nablus off from Bethlehem and Hebron, while simultaneously isolating East Jerusalem. The project would render a contiguous Palestinian state territorially impossible.
These developments unfold at a time when momentum for recognising Palestinian statehood is growing. On Tuesday, Belgium announced it would formally recognise the State of Palestine at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly session in New York. Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot pledged that Brussels would also impose “firm sanctions” against Israel in response to its escalating violations.
France, too, has signalled a historic shift. In July, President Emmanuel Macron declared that France would recognise Palestine at the UN meeting scheduled to open on 9 September. Since then, more than a dozen Western nations have called on others to join them, raising the possibility of a significant diplomatic turning point.
This widening recognition contrasts sharply with Israel’s annexation agenda. While Western capitals appear increasingly willing to acknowledge Palestinian statehood symbolically, few have introduced tangible measures capable of halting Israel’s advance on the ground. The result is a widening gap between rhetoric and reality.
While annexation proceeds in the West Bank, Israel has intensified its military campaign in Gaza. Reports indicate that approximately 60,000 reservists are being mobilised to reinforce the offensive. The first wave, comprising five brigades, or around 15,000 soldiers, has been deployed to northern and central regions, including the Lebanese and Syrian borders as well as the West Bank. This redeployment is designed to free active-duty forces for combat inside Gaza.
Sources cited by Reuters suggest the campaign could extend for weeks or even months, with mass Palestinian civilian evacuations from targeted areas expected to continue until October.
Netanyahu has reportedly reassured his ministers that Washington quietly endorses the operation. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, he informed them that US President Donald Trump supports the offensive provided it is executed swiftly.
Yet even Israeli military planners concede the risks: commanders anticipate as many as 100 Israeli fatalities in the attempt to capture Gaza City and privately acknowledge doubts about the operation’s ultimate feasibility.
Alongside the bombs and arrests, new blueprints for Gaza’s future are circulating. A plan reportedly drawn up within the Trump administration envisions nothing less than the wholesale remaking of Gaza – not for its people, but for external investors and tourists.
According to the Washington Post, the 38-page proposal calls for the US administration of Gaza for at least a decade, the relocation of its two million residents, and the transformation of the enclave into a resort and manufacturing hub.
At the heart of the scheme lies the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust (GREAT Trust), established under the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The plan envisages moving Palestinians into “Humanitarian Transit Areas,” large-scale camps inside or outside the territory, or encouraging their “voluntary” departure abroad. In exchange for their homes and land, residents would receive digital “tokens” representing their lost property, along with modest stipends, rent subsidies, and limited food rations.
While framed as economic development, the proposal amounts to the digitisation of dispossession. It severs the legal and historical connection of a people to their homeland, replacing it with vouchers and promises of temporary relief.
From the standpoint of international law, the scheme strikes at the heart of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which explicitly prohibits the forcible transfer of populations under occupation. To suggest that departures under conditions of famine, bombardment, and mass displacement are “voluntary” is to strip the concept of consent of all meaning.
The echoes of colonial history are clear. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the European colonial powers justified mass expulsions and land seizures in the language of modernisation, “civilising missions,” or economic uplift. Gaza’s proposed reconstitution fits squarely within this lineage.
Complementing these internal strategies are reports that Israel has explored the relocation of Palestinians abroad. Diplomatic leaks suggest quiet discussions have continued with South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somaliland, Indonesia, and others, though most of these states publicly deny any intent to host large numbers of Palestinian refugees.
The idea, framed as humanitarian resettlement, would see tens of thousands of Palestinians dispersed across foreign lands. South Sudan and Ethiopia maintain longstanding ties with Israel in security and agriculture, while Somaliland, though unrecognised internationally, has shown occasional openness to informal cooperation.
Indonesia, for its part, has clarified that it will not permanently settle Palestinians but has considered hosting thousands of wounded Gazans on a remote island for medical treatment.
A London-based Arab diplomat told Al-Ahram Weekly that Israel and the United States have quietly opened channels with several countries to receive Palestinians under the guise of humanitarian relief or medical assistance. According to the diplomat, forced displacement will not be executed in one sweeping wave, which could provoke immediate international condemnation, but in piecemeal stages designed to diffuse scrutiny.
“It has become increasingly clear that Israel intends to avoid the optics of a mass exodus. Instead, as the humanitarian situation in Gaza collapses further, the plan is to move several thousand Palestinians at a time to different countries. By dispersing them in smaller groups and across multiple destinations, Israel hopes to present these transfers as isolated humanitarian gestures rather than as part of a deliberate policy of population removal,” he stated.
Such an incremental strategy, the diplomat argued, is intended to create the appearance of voluntary relocation while, in practice, dismantling Gaza’s demographic fabric. The avoidance of collective expulsion is designed not only to lessen the immediate backlash, but also to shield Israel from potential charges of violating international law, including the prohibition on forcible transfer under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
If realised, such relocations would internationalise the Palestinian dispossession. By presenting mass expulsion as humanitarian relief, Israel and its partners could normalise a practice international law explicitly forbids. The precedent would be dangerous: it would suggest that populations under siege can be uprooted wholesale and scattered across the globe and stripped of their homeland and their collective identity.
Against this backdrop, the world’s foremost association of genocide scholars has issued its most damning judgement yet. On Monday, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), the largest professional body in the field, including Holocaust experts, declared that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
In a detailed resolution, the IAGS cited systematic assaults on Gaza’s essential infrastructure, including healthcare, education, and humanitarian aid, alongside the staggering civilian death toll. The statement highlighted incendiary rhetoric from Israeli leaders, including calls to “flatten Gaza” and reduce it to “hell,” as well as support for mass expulsions and the near-total destruction of housing.
UN children’s agency UNICEF figures indicate that some 50,000 children have been killed or injured, threatening the survival of Gaza’s population as a community. UN monitors have confirmed famine in parts of the territory, attributing it to Israel’s restrictions on food and medical aid, restrictions international law obliges Israel, as the occupying power, to prevent.
The IAGS resolution stresses that Israel’s campaign has targeted not merely Hamas, but the population of Gaza as a whole. It joins a growing body of statements from international and even Israeli human rights groups describing the campaign in genocidal terms.
Taken together, these developments reveal a coherent Israeli strategy aimed at reshaping the political geography of historic Palestine. Gaza is being reduced to a territory of dispossession: its people confined to southern enclaves, forced abroad, or killed outright and its land repurposed for resorts and industrial projects.
The West Bank, meanwhile, is moving steadily towards formal sovereignty under Israeli control, cementing a territorial consolidation that leaves Palestinians without a viable homeland.
International responses remain fractured. While genocide scholars and human rights organisations sound the alarm, US ambiguity and the exploration of third-country resettlement suggest a troubling willingness among global actors to tolerate or even facilitate the process.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 4 September, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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