The US and Israeli governments have opened up discussions with officials from Sudan, Somalia and the internationally unrecognized breakaway Somaliland over the mass expulsion of Palestinians in Gaza and their forcible relocation to those countries.
The talks were first reported by the Associated Press (AP) Friday and separately confirmed in a report in the Financial Times.
The ongoing discussions mirror the “Madagascar Plan,” the proposal by officials of Nazi Germany to resettle Europe’s Jews to Madagascar, the then-French island colony just off Africa’s southeast coast. The plan marked a key transition point to the Holocaust, in which the leaders of Nazi Germany carried out the mass extermination of the Jews instead of merely deporting them.
Somalia has one of the lowest Human Development Index rankings in the world, with widespread poverty, food insecurity and lack of access to healthcare and education. Sudan has experienced decades of civil war, triggering ethnic killings, sexual violence and mass displacement affecting millions of people.
The AP reported that “The contacts with Sudan, Somalia and the breakaway region of Somalia known as Somaliland reflect the determination by the US and Israel to press ahead” with Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Asked to comment on the revelations by the AP, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israel was building a “very large emigration department” within the Ministry of Defense.
In February, Trump announced his plan to ethnically cleanse and annex Gaza for the United States. “We’re going to have Gaza,” Trump said. “We don’t have to buy. There’s nothing to buy. We will have Gaza. ... We’re going to take it,” Trump said on February 11.
The AP reported that separate outreach efforts by the United States and Israel to the three potential destinations began last month, shortly after Trump and Netanyahu introduced the Gaza plan. The officials also noted that Israel was primarily leading these discussions.
The AP reported:
Two Sudanese officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive diplomatic matter, confirmed that the Trump administration has approached the military-led government about accepting Palestinians. One of them said the contacts began even before Trump’s inauguration with offers of military assistance.
Trump’s plan to displace the people of Gaza is a flagrant violation of the prohibition under the Fourth Geneva Convention of the forcible transfer of civilians during armed conflicts. And his plan to steal their land violates the 1970 United Nations treaty, ratified by the United States, which stipulates that “The territory of a State shall not be the object of acquisition by another State resulting from the threat or use of force.”
Michele Zaccheo, a UN spokesperson in Geneva, responded to the AP’s report by saying:
Any plan that could or would lead to the forced displacement of people or any type of ethnic cleansing is something that we would obviously be against, as it is against international law.
Last weekend, Finance Minister Smotrich said the Israeli government was creating an administration for the “voluntary” migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. “We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the prime minister and defense minister,” he said.
Endorsing Trump’s proposal for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, he continued, “If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” adding, “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The ongoing preparations for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza take place as Israel continues its total blockade of food, water and electricity into Gaza, which is aimed at either starving the population of Gaza to death or forcing it to relocate through famine. For 13 days, no food or water has entered Gaza, and food insecurity and starvation are spreading.
Gaza’s government media office reported that 80 percent of its citizens have lost access to food sources, and 90 percent of the population is without reliable access to clean water. A quarter of Gaza’s remaining bakeries have been forced to shut down due to shortages of supplies, while others are on the verge of closing. The office reported that 150,000 people are suffering from either chronic disease or war wounds and are facing major shortages of medical supplies.
Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told Al Jazeera that there is “fear, alarm and concern that supplies are running out.”
She continued, “The water and sanitation situation was already dire with most of the facilities destroyed during the months of fighting.” She added that the Israeli cutoff of electricity to Gaza “reduces access to drinking water to about 600,000 people.”
On Thursday, the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) on the Occupied Palestinian Territory accused Israel of genocidal acts targeting the reproductive rights of Palestinians. The report was the first time that a UN committee officially and formally asserted that Israel has committed genocidal acts.
The commission declared:
Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention.
The report explained:
Sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities have been systematically destroyed across Gaza, including maternity hospitals and maternity wards of hospitals and Gaza’s main in-vitro fertility clinic.
The mounting evidence of Israel’s plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza and systematically exterminate the Palestinian population only underscores the criminality of the drive by the Trump administration to persecute opponents of the Gaza genocide, including Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested this week and is being held incommunicado and facing deportation for opposing the Gaza genocide.