Above photo: AFP.
David Barnea wants the US to provide incentives to Libya, Indonesia, and Ethiopia to accept hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
David Barnea, the director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, held meetings in Washington this week seeking help from US officials to convince countries to take hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who Israel plans to ethnically cleanse from Gaza, Axios reported on 19 July.
According to two sources, the Israeli spy chief told White House envoy Steve Witkoff that Israel has been in talks with Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Libya to accept Palestinians as refugees.
While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims his government’s goal of expelling much or all of Gaza’s population will be “voluntary” for Palestinians, US and Israeli legal experts say it would constitute ethnic cleansing and a clear war crime.
During their meeting, “Barnea told Witkoff that Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Libya had expressed openness to receiving large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza,” the two sources speaking with Axios said.
“Barnea suggested that the US offer incentives to those countries and help Israel convince them,” Axios wrote.
Witkoff did not commit to assisting Israel with its plans, one source said.
The White House, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, and the foreign ministries of Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Libya did not comment on the report when queried by Axios.
A truly outrageous and sickening request from the Netanyahu government.
The U.S. should not be complicit in or use ANY governmental, American taxpayer resources to aid and abet what amounts to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian civilians from Gaza.
We cannot stand for this.… pic.twitter.com/wBlSNHXG4W
— Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) July 18, 2025
In February, President Trump proposed the expulsion of all two million Palestinians from Gaza to allow Israel to annex and develop it as the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
US officials reportedly insisted that Netanyahu find countries that would agree to receive large numbers of Palestinians displaced from the Gaza Strip.
Nearly all of Gaza’s over 2 million residents have been internally displaced during the war, as Israel’s bombing campaign has leveled much of the strip, including homes, hospitals, mosques, and schools.
Huge swathes, including residential neighborhoods, have also been destroyed by Israeli bulldozers in an effort to make Gaza uninhabitable for Palestinians and force them to live in tent camps.
Israel is seeking to force them all into a large concentration camp to be constructed on the ruins of the destroyed city of Rafah on the Egyptian border.
“That plan has sparked concerns in Egypt and many Western countries that Israel is preparing for the mass displacement of Palestinians out of Gaza, something Netanyahu’s ultranationalist coalition partners and many inside his own party have been pushing for years,” Axios wrote.
They say that light reveals all.
Such is the case in Gaza. A woman records a sunrise on the ocean and it reveals a horrific and tragic sight. This is what Gazans call home now, just simple tents on the ground, their homes and lives all destroyed by Israel 🇮🇱.
It’s absolutely… pic.twitter.com/pFixQiTD4k
— Noctis Draven (@DravenNoctis) July 1, 2025
On 13 October, just one week after Hamas attacked Israeli settlements and military bases, Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence issued a report recommending the occupation of Gaza and total transfer of its 2.3 million inhabitants to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
The document, which was leaked a short time later, identifies a plan to transfer all residents of the Gaza Strip to North Sinai as the preferred option among three alternatives regarding the future of the Palestinians in Gaza at the end of the current war.
The document recommended that Israel evacuate the Gaza population to Sinai during the war, establish tent cities and new cities in northern Sinai to accommodate the deported population, and then create a closed security zone stretching several kilometers inside Egypt.
The deported Palestinians would not be allowed to return to any areas near the Israeli border, the leaked proposal stated.
