The Israeli military is preparing to fully occupy the Gaza Strip, internally displace the remaining population and provide only the “minimum caloric amount necessary for survival,” according to three international publications.

On Monday, both the US-based National Public Radio (NPR) and the UK’s Financial Times confirmed a report published Friday by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Israel is “Preparing to Occupy Gaza, Reinstate Military Rule and Fully Control the Palestinian Population.”

The publications report that Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) current offensive in Gaza, which began last Tuesday with the massacre of 400 people in a single day of airstrikes, is aimed at the full military occupation of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military has widened the areas it is occupying day by day, internally displacing an ever-larger section of the Palestinian population.

Left unsaid in the reports on the renewed occupation is its connection to the plan, first laid out by US President Donald Trump in February and officially embraced by the Israeli government, to ethnically cleanse Gaza and annex its territory.

On Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz reported that Israel’s security cabinet has formally voted for the establishment of an office to oversee the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. The office will be a “Voluntary Emigration Bureau for Gaza residents interested in relocating to third countries,” Katz claimed.

While Israeli officials have claimed that the displacement of the Palestinians would be “voluntary,” the fact is that this massive relocation operation would require direct military coercion. As such, the plan for the complete military occupation of Gaza would be a basic prerequisite for putting the ethnic cleansing program into effect.

Friday’s report in Haaretz alleged that “preparations are underway for a large-scale operation to occupy Gaza and restore full Israeli control.”

Confirming this report, NPR reported Monday:

The Israeli military has drawn up plans for a major ground invasion into Gaza to fully occupy the territory within a few months and establish military rule there.

Israel would order Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinians into a smaller “humanitarian zone” than the area it has currently designated for civilians. The military is examining options for soldiers to control the distribution of food limited to a minimum caloric amount necessary for survival.

In a separate article, the FT reported:

... the IDF would call up several combat divisions to reinvade and subdue Hamas, take control of wide swaths of the enclave and force the territory’s 2.2 million population into a small, so-called humanitarian zone along the Mediterranean coast.

It continued: “The Israeli military would then administer Gaza,” adding “Such a plan would uproot millions of Palestinian civilians and corral them into an even smaller stretch of barren land.”

The FT said:

One of the people familiar with the deliberations said Israel could take over the distribution of all humanitarian aid and had recently assessed how many calories each Palestinian would require.

The Israeli military is preparing for months of operations involving “combat, victory and administration,” the official told the FT.

During the Holocaust, the systematic extermination of Europe’s Jews by Germany during the Second World War, Nazi officials removed Europe’s Jews from their neighborhoods and concentrated them into ghettos, in preparation for their transport to camps in Eastern Europe. The restriction of food rations in the Warsaw ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland resulted in the deaths of thousands of Jews each month at its peak. As the war progressed, a decision was made to go from relocation and “slow death” to active extermination in death camps.

The concentration of Gaza’s population in so-called “humanitarian zones” and the severe restriction of their food consumption would be the essential preparation for their displacement out of Gaza and the permanent occupation and annexation of the Gaza Strip, as proposed by Trump in February.

As this plan proceeds, Israel’s military onslaught on the Gaza Strip and its reign of terror in the West Bank is accelerating.

In the past 24 hours, 65 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, bringing the total number of deaths from Israeli attacks in the past week to over 730.

On Monday, the Israeli military forcibly displaced the population of the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza in preparation for a ground offensive. “To all those present in the area of Jabalia, this is an early warning before a strike…, head south towards the known shelters immediately,” the IDF said.

On Monday, two Palestinian journalists were killed in Israeli airstrikes. Hossam Shabat, a reporter for Al Jazeera Mubasher, was killed in a targeted airstrike in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, after the Israeli army killed journalist Mohammad Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today, in a separate strike in Khan Younis. The killings bring the number of journalists killed in Gaza since October 2023 to 208.

In a statement, the Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the killing of Shabat and Mansour. “The deliberate and targeted killing of a journalist, of a civilian, is a war crime,” said the organization’s chief executive, Jodie Ginsberg. She added, “Journalists and civilians must never be targeted.”

Shabat’s colleagues shared his last words:

If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed—most likely targeted—by the Israeli occupation forces.

He added:

I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents—anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side.

The United Nations said Monday that constant Israeli attacks on its staff were forcing it to reduce the number of its international staffers in Gaza by one-third. At least 250 UN employees have been killed since October 7, 2023.

The UN said in a statement:

The Secretary-General has taken the difficult decision to reduce the organization’s footprint in Gaza, even as humanitarian needs soar and our concern over the protection of civilians intensifies.

Last week, an Israeli tank attacked a UN compound in Gaza, killing a 51-year-old staffer, Marin Valev Marinov, who worked with the UN Office for Project Services.

In a statement on Monday, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) reported that 124,000 Palestinians in Gaza had been displaced over the past week. It wrote:

Families carry what little they have with no shelter, no safety, and nowhere left to go. The Israeli authorities have cut off all aid. Food is scarce and prices are soaring. This is a humanitarian catastrophe. The siege must end.

Meanwhile, Israel’s reign of terror in the West Bank continues. On Monday, Hamdan Ballal, Palestinian co-director of Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, was attacked by Israeli settlers and arrested by Israeli soldiers. Basel Adra, the co-director of the film, said that a group of settlers attacked Ballal’s home in the West Bank village of Susya. Adra said that two dozen settlers, some armed with guns, carried out the attack while the Israeli military stood watch then proceeded to arrest Ballal.

In a post on Twitter, his fellow co-director Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist, said:

A group of settlers just lynched Hamdan Ballal, co-director of our film No Other Land. They beat him and he has injuries in his head and stomach, bleeding.

He added:

Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him. No sign of him since.