Gaza - Saba:
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has accused Israel of executing its plan to forcibly displace Palestinians from their homeland—openly and through official high-level rhetoric—while repackaging the crime as "voluntary migration." Israel is implementing this through a series of on-the-ground and institutional measures, exploiting pervasive international silence, which has provided a safe environment for the continuation of these crimes with complete impunity and no accountability.
In a press statement issued on Wednesday, the Euro-Med Monitor emphasized that Israel is advancing the final phase of its original objective: the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land, particularly from Gaza Strip. This comes after a year and a half of genocidal crimes, including the killing and injuring of hundreds of thousands, the complete erasure of entire cities, the near-total destruction of Gaza, the systematic dismantling of living conditions, and the forced, methodical displacement of its population within its borders. These actions are part of a broader plan to eliminate the Palestinians as a cohesive entity and existence.
The Euro-Med Monitor noted that Israel’s forced displacement plans are a direct extension of its decades-long organized colonial-settlement project, aimed at erasing Palestinian presence and seizing land. What distinguishes this phase from previous ones, the Monitor warned, is its unprecedented scale and danger, targeting 2.3 million people who have endured comprehensive genocide and been stripped of their most basic rights under systematic, coercive conditions marked by extreme brutality and the complete denial of minimal living standards. This constitutes a deliberate effort to push them toward leaving as their only survival option.
He emphasized that forced displacement constitutes an independent crime under international law, defined as the expulsion of people from areas where they are legally present through the use of force, the threat thereof, or other coercive means, without legally recognized justification.
He clarified that coercion in this context is not limited to direct military force but also includes creating an environment that makes staying practically impossible or poses a real threat to life, dignity, or livelihoods. Such coercive conditions encompass various forms, including fear of violence, persecution, detention, intimidation, starvation, or any other oppressive circumstances that effectively strip individuals of their free will and compel them to flee.
Lima Bustami, Director of the Legal Department at the Euro-Mediterranean Observatory, stated: "Israel has already committed the crime of forced displacement against Gaza’s population by coercively displacing them within the Strip without any legal justification and under conditions that blatantly violate international law exceptions. These exceptions only permit evacuations on a temporary basis, for imperative military reasons, and with guaranteed safe zones preserving minimum human dignity—none of which were met. Instead, Israel has employed this brutal, recurrent, and large-scale displacement as a tool of genocide, aiming to destroy the population and subject them to deadly living conditions."
She added: "Although the crime is legally complete, Israel continues to escalate it to an even deadlier level against the Palestinians, reflecting its settler-colonial logic of expulsion and replacement. Now, it is attempting to market this crime as ‘voluntary migration’—a blatant deception that only a complicit international community, choosing silence over accountability, could accept."
The Euro-Mediterranean Observatory noted that Gaza’s population endures unprecedented catastrophic conditions, with Israel destroying every aspect of normal life: no houses, basic services, functional healthcare, education systems, water, electricity, or infrastructure remain. Approximately 2.3 million Palestinians are trapped in less than 34% of Gaza’s original 365 square kilometers, after 66% of its land was either declared a restricted buffer zone or forcibly depopulated through direct bombardment or forced evacuation orders.
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