Israel Police Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wants to help the Palestinians leave the Gaza Strip. They don’t like it there anyway, judging by all the complaining, and Ben-Gvir maintains it is the only way to truly guarantee the events of Oct. 7, 2023 and their aftermath are never repeated.
His party, Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), has now put numbers and bureaucracy behind the idea. The “Disengagement 7/10” proposal envisions facilitating the voluntary departure of roughly 250,000 Gazans in its first year, more than 1 million within three years and about 1.86 million over seven years.
That is a remarkable departure from the ritual language of conflict management and humanitarian aid that typically surrounds Gaza. It’s more in line with US President Donald Trump’s earlier suggestions of assisted emigration and the reconstruction of a very different Gaza Strip. Ben-Gvir and others saw those remarks as a long-awaited recognition that the old formulas had failed. That continuing to feed Gaza with money, aid and a certain degree of diplomatic immunity had only served to set the stage for Oct. 7 and derail any possibility of genuine peace.
Like Trump, Ben-Gvir is very blunt, and insists the world stop pretending that Gaza’s future must be confined to Gaza. He proposes a government ministry dedicated to voluntary emigration, backed by its own budget, international negotiating team and operational staff. The framework would offer routes for employment, education, medical treatment, family reunification and community sponsorship, with receiving countries participating by agreement.
“Instead of digging tunnels,” Ben-Gvir said, “the time has come to pack suitcases.”
That line will be presented abroad as proof of Israeli villainy. Yet there is nothing immoral about allowing people trapped under Hamas to seek a life elsewhere—provided the choice is genuinely voluntary and destination countries agree to receive them. The moral obscenity is the international insistence that Gazans remain forever inside a Hamas-shaped prison because their departure would disrupt a useful political narrative.
The plan also recognizes a basic truth too often avoided in Jerusalem: military victory alone does not settle Gaza’s future. Israel can destroy terrorist battalions, eliminate tunnel networks and maintain security control. But if Gaza remains densely populated, economically hopeless and ruled—openly or covertly—by men committed to Israel’s destruction, the next war is inevitable.
There are formidable obstacles. Countries must be willing to absorb nearly two million Palestinian Arabs. The United States would need to provide diplomatic backing. Hamas, which has every reason to keep Gazans under its control, would seek to obstruct departures. Ben-Gvir’s proposed funding—an initial 10 billion shekels, with far more potentially tied to international participation—would demand serious scrutiny.
But the alternatives deserve scrutiny, too. Rebuilding Gaza under the same assumptions that produced Oct. 7 is little more than an invitation to repeat a catastrophe.
Voluntary emigration will not solve every problem. It may, however, offer individual Gazans a future beyond Hamas while giving Israel a chance to ensure that its next disengagement is not another strategic suicide note.
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The world will not want this, so pray that Hashem will overrule and allow the Gaza’s to emigrate.