Gaza, 2002. Palestinian boys climb a fence for a better view of a protest against Israel. Abid Katib/Getty Images
Written by Piero Messina
What is the geopolitical and geostrategic objective of the Israeli government towards what remains of Palestine? What does Israel want to achieve from this conflict, which Netaniayhu himself announces will be long and painful? The IDF is attacking Gaza from the air, land and sea. Supplies, electricity and connections have been almost completely compromised and to understand what is really happening we will have to wait for this phase of the conflict to end, a phase which for the Israeli Minister of Defense is not yet a land invasion.
For every military analyst it is now clear that such a deployment of forces does not only have the objective of eliminating Hamas. So, how far does the Tel Aviv government want to go?
According to some analysts, one of the options on the table is to destroy the underground network of tunnels, the real skeleton of Hamas’ operating system. The idea would be to flood those tunnels. At the end of such an operation, it would transform Gaza into a gigantic lake of death and destruction.
If this operation appears anti-human, there is a document recently published by the think tank Misgav (The Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy) which paints a political objective that has nothing to envy of the “final solution” of Nazi memory.
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The paper is signed by Amir Weitman, one of the most influential thinkers from the Likud party. Weitaman is what is called a Hawk in geopolitics. In his latest television appearance on Russia Today he threatened the Russian government for the “supposed” support provided by Moscow to Hamas. Furthermore, Weitman added that once the Hamas dossier is resolved, the Israeli government will have to ensure that Russia is defeated in Ukraine.
But Weitman’s warmongering tone is diluted and appears to be of little importance when compared to his post-war strategy in Palestine.
The document signed by Weitman for Misgav is titled “Plan for the resettlement and definitive rehabilitation in Egypt of the entire population of Gaza”. In short, Weitman hypothesizes a definitive expulsion of the Palestinians from that land which would end up being entirely under the control of Tel Aviv.
The first objective set by the scholar and politician is of a military nature: the war that the IDF is fighting “must produce the appropriate conditions so that the population of Gaza can immigrate to Egypt”. Weitman also imagines being able to align the economic and geopolitical interests of the State of Israel, Egypt, the USA and Saudi Arabia in this project.
On what data does the analyst base his project: “in 2017, it was reported that there are approximately 10 million vacant housing units in Egypt, of which approximately half are built and the other half are under construction, an enormous quantity of built and empty apartments in state and private ownership and in sufficient building areas to accommodate approximately 6 million inhabitants”.
Weitman does the math in the Egyptian population’s pocket: “Most of the local population is unable to buy apartments despite their very low price (between 150 and 300 dollars per square meter). The analyst also explains what could be offered to Palestinians driven from their lands: “the average cost of a 3-room apartment with a surface area of 95 m2 for an average Gazan family of 5.14 people amounts to around 19,000 dollars . Taking into account the currently known size of the entire population living in the Gaza Strip, which varies from approximately 1.4 to approximately 2.2 million people, it can be estimated that the total amount that will be required to finance the project will be around of the order of 5-8 billion dollars, a figure that reflects a value between only 1% and 1.5% of the GDP of the State of Israel”. The project is defined by Weitman as “easily financed by the State of Israel”. According to the thesis presented on Misvag, therefore, Israel should finance the Egyptian government to buy those houses for the Palestinian population.
For Weitman, this is how the problem of the Gaza Strip is resolved, “which for years has represented an obstacle to peace, security and stability not only in the Gaza Strip, but throughout the world”. And it is the analyst himself who indicates his project as an “innovative, economic and sustainable solution”. After the economic analysis, Weitman also explains the geopolitical reasons in favor of his plan. “For European countries – writes the analyst – the risks of illegal immigration are reduced. Saudi Arabia will also benefit significantly from the move because the evacuation of the Gaza Strip means the elimination of an important ally of Iran and a huge contribution to the stability of the region.”
