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U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley, left, and Chris Van Hollen, right, listen to Major General Khaled Maghawer, governor of North Sinai, during their visit to Egypt’s side of the Rafah crossing with Gaza, in 2025. Credit: Mohammed Arafat\/AP<\/p>\n
U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley, left, and Chris Van Hollen, right, listen to Major General Khaled Maghawer, governor of North Sinai, during their visit to Egypt’s side of the Rafah crossing with Gaza, in 2025. Credit: Mohammed Arafat\/AP<\/p>\n
Senator Chris Van Hollen on Wednesday condemned Israeli defense minister Israel Katz for reiterating his call for Palestinians to emigrate from Gaza as a “solution” earlier that day.<\/p>\n
Van Hollen referred in a post on X to a report titled “The Netanyahu Government is Implementing a Plan to Ethnically Cleanse Gaza of Palestinians,” which he released last year<\/a> with Senator Jeff Merkley after visiting Gaza’s border with Egypt.<\/p>\n “Now the Israeli Minister of Defense confirmed that’s the goal. We must end our complicity,” Van Hollen wrote.<\/p>\n In the report the senators published last year, they categorize Israel’s policy in Gaza as ethnic cleansing.<\/p>\n The report criticized past statements by Israeli officials about Palestinians leaving Gaza voluntarily. “Any talk of ‘voluntary departures’ is a cruel hoax,” the report read. “Departure is not ‘voluntary’ when the conditions needed to support life are extinguished.”<\/p>\n After our trip to the Gaza-Egypt border last year, @SenJeffMerkley<\/a> & I released a report entitled, “The Netanyahu Government is Implementing a Plan to Ethnically Cleanse Gaza of Palestinians.” Show more<\/a><\/p>\n Speaking Wednesday at a conference hosted by Israeli news site Ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth, Katz said that Israel is “fully organized and prepared” to move Palestinians out of Gaza “if it becomes possible.”<\/p>\n Katz added the “accepting countries want U.S. support. Every country that is willing to accept Gazans wants American backing,” adding that U.S. President Donald Trump “didn’t cancel the plan at the moment; he has frozen it,” amid pressure from “all the Arab countries.”<\/p>\n Katz, who said that Egypt had pressured the Trump administration to oppose the emigration plan, also said that “it is being discussed all the time, including now, and I think that in the end, there is no other solution that will serve everyone’s interests.”<\/p>\n “80 percent of Gazans would like to emigrate, and we’re checking that all the time in the polls. For this to happen, we need the United States \u2013 and the moment will come when it becomes clear that Hamas is not honoring its commitments. Then we will get the green light to move forward militarily, territorially and in other areas as well,” Katz added.<\/p>\n
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\nNow the Israeli Min of Defense confirmed that’s the goal.
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\nWe must end our<\/p>\n