Will Gazans be relocated to Europe?

What I am about to outline is quite disturbing. So much so, in fact, that I sincerely hope to be mistaken in the connections being drawn. 

According to the European Commission’s Migration and Home Affairs page, ethnic cleansing is defined as “Rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove from a given area persons of another ethnic or religious group, which is contrary to international law.”  

On July 24 2025, veteran journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh published a piece suggesting that ethnic cleansing is precisely what Israeli government hardliners are planning to do with the people of Gaza. Coming just weeks after his June 19 piece, accurately outlining in advance America’s June 22 bombing of Iran, Hersh published A Future Gaza Without Gazans. 

With the subheading “Israel’s religious right unveils its fantasy plan for the zone after ethnic cleansing”, Hersh describes a presentation which was held in the Israeli Parliament on Tuesday July 22. 

He describes this presentation as “a formal plan for the future of Gaza—as seen by the religious right”, which “was presented to a diverse group of Israeli legislators, rabbis, grieving family members of IDF soldiers lost in combat or in Hamas captivity, and security officials from Gaza.” 

Apparently the plan is called “The Riviera in Gaza—From Vision to Reality”, and presents “a blueprint for a future in Gaza without the Palestinians who now are living and dying there.” 

Hersh describes how the “meeting was headlined by two of Israel’s most outspoken and controversial advocates for the settlement of Israeli citizens in Gaza: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a West Bank settler who has a long history of violent anti-Arab agitation and at least eight convictions for violent anti-Arab activities.”

This is not some fringe meeting. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir not only hold two of the most prominent ministerial posts in Netanyahu’s government, they are leading figures holding up the coalition. As such, it is not an insignificant thing when they hold a publicised meeting outlining detailed plans for re-developing an ethnically cleansed Gaza. 

Hersh outlines in detail the plans for this “Riviera in Gaza”, using a report from one of the journalists at the meeting, which he then describes in no uncertain terms as “fantasy talk” that “evokes the worst of World War II.” 

And although it may seem far-fetched to read about establishing “conference centres and high tech complexes”, of building “an artificial island […] off the coast of Gaza constructed from . . . war debris which will be used for trade and tourism”, especially given Israel’s economic woes, the initial process of ethnic cleansing does not seem unrealistic in the least. 

In a June 16 piece for The Conversation on the UK government’s decision to sanction Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, a senior lecturer in international politics at City St George’s University of London, Leonie Fleischmann, argues that “The prominence of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich reflects a rightward shift in the Israeli electorate that has brought ultra-nationalist settler ideology into the mainstream.” And in a May 30 piece for The Atlantic, The Two Extremists Driving Israeli Policy, Gershom Gorenberg writes that Ben-Gvir and Smotrich “both want Israel to reoccupy all of Gaza, to renew Israeli settlement there,” and to “encourage” the Palestinians who live there to emigrate. For a more expanded introduction to these two figures, one could watch the documentary published by ARTE, a public media broadcaster co-funded by the EU, entitled Israel: Extemists In Power. 

And so, the question begs: If those with an “ultra-nationalist settler ideology” are successful in ethnically cleansing the native Arabs of Gaza from their homeland, where will Gazans go? 

In February 2025, Israel Katz, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party and Israeli government defence minister, suggested that “Countries like Spain, Ireland, Norway, and others, which have falsely accused Israel over its actions in Gaza, are legally obligated to allow Gazans to enter their territory.” This follows on from a November 2023 statement by Amichai Eliyahu, a member of Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party and Israeli government heritage minister: “They can go to Ireland or deserts, the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves.” 

Raw Egg Nationalist is taking such suggestions seriously. Raw Egg Nationalist is the pen name of Dr Charles Cornish-Dale, an Oxford- and Cambridge-educated anthropologist. On July 23, the day before Hersh’s article, Cornish-Dale published a piece  outlining why the displaced Gazans are likely to end up in Europe. 

“Since the very earliest days of the latest Israel-Hamas war,” writes Cornish-Dale, “I’ve been warning that Israel’s main objective is to displace as many of the Palestinians as possible—perhaps even all of them—from Gaza, and that the only place they’ll end up, if this is allowed to happen, will be the West, most probably Europe. This remains a real risk. Actually, the risk is growing.” 

Cornish-Dale describes how neighbouring countries such as Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan have no interest in taking Gazans, since previous “settlements of Palestinian refugees had radically destabilised every country in the region that had taken them”. This means the Israelis needed to look further afield. And in mid-July 2025, the director of Mossad visited Washington and “told White House special envoy Steve Witkoff that Ethiopia, Indonesia and Libya have expressed their willingness to take large numbers of Palestinians.” 

But Raw Egg Nationalist isn’t buying what Mossad is selling: “The real question, if Israel is going to persist in its plan, is where the Gazans will actually go. I don’t believe for one second they’ll go to Ethiopia, Indonesia and Libya. To me, this just looks like a clever bit of manipulation, intended to tug on the heartstrings of Western liberals and enrage the large numbers of Palestinians and Muslims who are already in the West and wield increasing political power.” He reckons “Germany will probably be the first” Western government to step in, “then others will follow, chastened by her example.” 

Given the all-consuming Nazi guilt which seems to pathologically haunt the German establishment psyche, its unconditional support for Israel, and its anti-democratic persecution of immigration critical voices, it wouldn’t be too surprising if Chancellor Merz was to channel the spirit of his predecessor and issue some redux of “Wir schaffen das”. 

Then again, France might get there first. In a July 15 piece for Brussels Signal, Anne-Laure Dufeal outlines a decision by France’s National Asylum Court to allow the entire population of Gaza to apply for asylum. Soon after, in an article published the same day as Hersh’s piece above, Le Monde’s Jerusalem correspondent describes how the Israeli government openly aims to depopulate Gaza and how, since May, “polls have shown that between 70 per cent and 80 per cent of the Israeli Jewish population supports the idea of expelling Palestinians from Gaza”. Later that day, President Macron announced that “I have decided that France will recognise the State of Palestine”. 

If one runs further with Cornish-Dale’s line of speculation, perhaps the government of my home nation of Ireland will be among the first to assist in Gaza’s ethnic cleansing. After all, in May 2024, Ireland broke ranks with most of the EU and joined Spain and Norway in formal recognition of the State of Palestine. On the surface, it may seem contradictory that they would support Palestinian Statehood only to eventually assist in Gaza’s ethnic cleansing. However, if instead of viewing their support for the Two State Solution as a sincere expression of solidarity, we were to view it as performative moralism and, by extension, as a means of distracting the Irish public from their incompetence in governing domestic affairs, such a contradiction disappears. 

After all, why would the Irish government care about Palestinian political sovereignty when they don’t even care about Ireland’s? The choice to opt in to the EU Migration Pact, when they could have followed Denmark’s example of charting a successfully independent course, epitomises their post-national inclinations. This was a despicable decision which Independent Parliamentarian Mattie McGrath described as “the single biggest transfer of sovereignty in the history our State”, and, “the greatest ever betrayal of the Irish people by their own members of parliament”. 

Here I question the motivations behind my government’s support for Palestinian Statehood not as a post-national globalist, nor as a Zionist, but as an Irish nationalist who is appalled by Israel’s ethnic cleansing and who supports the right to self-determination, on their own soil, of native Palestinian Arabs.

That said, as an Irishman loyal to his nation, I am also deeply concerned about the violent decay and social volatility evident not only here, which I’ve sketched elsewhere, but across our neighbours. Per capita crime statistics from places like Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and the UK are disturbing: How many more stabbings, rapes, shootings, bombings, beheadings, and Christmas market massacres, by massively disproportionately violent newcomers, will Europeans tolerate? 

To use my homeland as case study, our government has been totally ignoring the will of at least 75 per cent of the population who, for years now, have thought that immigration has gone too far – including people that feel political solutions are so hopeless they have resorted to perpetrating dozens of “arson attacks against planned, actual or rumoured” International Protection Accommodation Centres (IPAS) centres. As dark portent of where these immigration driven tensions may escalate toward, the Irish police, the Gardaí, in order to battle totally unprecedented civil unrest, have recently purchased water cannons. Thanks to extremist immigration policy, we could well be witnessing, to borrow a term from Aris Roussinos over at Unherd, something akin to the “Ulsterisation” of the South. 

And so, despite Israeli brutality that even Brussels acknowledges, it is fair to ask if those Europeans already reaching boiling point over reckless immigration, and over regime elites they perceive to hate them, will passively accept perhaps two million Palestinians into their dangerously fracturing societies?

Indeed Cornish-Dale, in referencing professor David Betz of Kings College London – a modern warfare expert previously interviewed in Brussels Signal by Ralph Schoellhammer – wonders if importing the population of Gaza would “help tip European societies into open civil war”. Perhaps we are set to find out.