Far-right Israeli ministers began more forcefully advocating the wholesale removal of Palestinians in Gaza last week, offering timelines and government mechanisms to conduct illegal forced expulsions while displacement, demolitions and killings continued across Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz told a conference on Wednesday that removing Palestinians from Gaza is “the only solution”, saying Israel is prepared to do it “by sea, by air and by every way possible”, and that US President Donald Trump has merely “frozen” – not cancelled – his support for the idea. Then, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir unveiled a seven-year plan, branded “Disengagement 710”, to remove Gaza’s roughly two million residents through what he called “voluntary emigration”.
Ben-Gvir added that, if re-elected, he would establish a Migration Ministry to expel Palestinians. The US State Department said it “does not support any plan or proposal for the forced displacement, expulsion, or mandatory transfer of the population of Gaza” – but stopped short of directly condemning Katz or Ben-Gvir. Gaza’s death toll has continued climbing through near-daily strikes.
An Israeli special forces raid near Gaza City’s American hospital on Tuesday killed at least four Palestinians, including two children and a woman, ending with the capture of Moin al-Arabeed, described by Israel as the head of Hamas’s internal security. A drone strike killed a child in Jabalia refugee camp on Wednesday, the same day an attack on a tent in Khan Younis killed one person. On Thursday, two Palestinians, including a 13-year-old, were shot dead near Beit Lahia after Israel said they had crossed into an Israeli-controlled area, while a separate drone strike killed a man near a church compound in Gaza City’s Remal neighbourhood.
Strikes continued through the week’s end: On Sunday alone, Israel attacked near a school in Gaza City, wounding several, and a separate drone strike on a car near Gaza City’s Hamid intersection killed Youssef Akila and his young daughter, Wafaa. Before dawn on Monday, at least five more Palestinians in Gaza were killed including three-year-old Saadi Ghalia, who was killed when an artillery shell struck a school in Deir el-Balah sheltering displaced people. By Monday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that 73,658 people have been killed and 174,622 wounded since October 2023, after 160 additional deaths were certified and added to the casualty figures.
Of those, more than 1,340 have been killed since the October 2025 Israeli-Hamas “ceasefire”. The recovery of bodies has slowly continued alongside the killings. Families in northern Gaza held funerals on Sunday for around 100 people, including 60 children, whose remains were pulled from the rubble of Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, many of them members of the extended Malaka family.
Gaza civil defence chief Raed al-Dahshan told Al Jazeera his teams could recover an estimated 8,000 more bodies still under the rubble within 90 days if given proper heavy equipment, but warned that without it, “this work will continue for years”. Between 10,000 and 14,000 people remain missing under Gaza’s rubble. In the strip, humanitarian conditions continue to deteriorate without sufficient aid getting in.
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