Israel should pay 1.4 million Palestinians to leave Gaza, Moshe Feiglin says

Bribing Palestinians with money to leave Palestine is not a novel concept. And yet the idea is as plausible as sauntering down to the local elementary school and offering to purchase the children. Listen to the casualness in the voice of Knesset deputy speaker Moshe Feiglin as he discusses this and other disturbing concepts during this presentation about Gaza last July 14, a few days after last summer’s slaughter in Gaza began. This talk (published in the last month) seems to fly in Israel; many people are normalized to it by now, even though they may not agree with him. Feiglin:

There’s no difference between the city of Yafo [Jaffa] and the city of Gaza. Two Eretz Israel cities sitting on the seashore of the Mediterranean. What’s the difference between Gaza and Yafo. Nineteen years, that’s the whole difference. [Acquired 1948 and 1967]… Both biblical cities, with long Jewish history…

We’re not defending ourself, we’re fighting for justice. It’s ours. This is the first thing we should understand. And we should take it over, and we should take it over, capture the whole Gaza Strip – as we did in 1967 and I’m talking about the right goal, the right goal should be victory, nothing less than that. Victory means destroying your enemy, and take over the place.

The enemy is not the tunnels, the enemy is not the rockets, and the target is definitely not to weaken the Hamas. Did Churchill say that the enemy is the Luftwaffe airplanes? Was the target to weaken Hitler [Hebrew words]. If that’s the way World War Two would have been done, there would be no victory at the end of it. God forbid. The Six Days War, it took less than a day to take over the Gaza Strip… You don’t run up to tunnels, you don’t go into the homes, you hit the leadership hard. You understand that you the good guy and they are the bad guy, you represent good, they represent evil. We have a war over here, and the war is not against the Hamas and there’s no innocent people around it. So these are the two rules. First of all, we should look for victory, we should win, we should take over, we should destroy Hamas and take over the whole city and we should do it according to Jewish law and not according to this immoral ideas that putting our soldiers in danger…

[audience applause]

The question is what are we going to do afterwards with 1.8 million Arabs in Gaza? There are three categories. The first category is those who fighting against you, who fought against you, fighting against you – still not accepting your full sovereignty on your land. And if I did not mention that of course it’s part of it, I’m not talking about going back to Gaza as a colonialist as we did in 1967, no. I’m talking about going back to Gaza as the owner of the land, as we did in Yafo [Jaffa] in 1948. Those who fought you in the past or don’t accept your sovereignty today should be destroyed or sent away. That’s the first category, it’s simple.

Eighty percent, around 80%, maybe more of the people who live in  Gaza Strip wants to leave, wants to find a future in a better place, out of this country… Israel can help that process to happen, Israel should invest a lot of money [that’s] today is being invest in rockets, in barbed wires, in guards in every coffee shop and so on, exactly in that target. So in 10-15 years the Arab population in Gaza will be much smaller and the minority that will decide to stay can stay, somehow with the same position as the Arab in East Jerusalem did. Not immediately, not automatically– they’ll have to go through a few tests and so on. A few years should pass and only according to the Israeli interests, on our own time and our own– amount — that we will decide to let them get that position, they will be able to.

Meanwhile, we should look at reality and see that a tremendous miracle is going on today in the land of Israel. All the population in the world – east and west, including the Arab world – is shrinking, getting smaller and smaller. People not having more than two kids today. Most of the countries east and west having less, including the Arab world.  The only community, if I can call it, that is growing today in the whole world, instead of getting smaller, is the Jewish community in Eretz Israel. Not in the diaspora, in Eretz Israel.  By the way, every year in Judea and Samaria 15,000 Arabs leave anyhow, without any help.

[audience applause]

There was a time not long ago when Feiglin was considered completely outside the mainstream, but those days appear to be over. These ideas have wormed their way into very common national discourse. I watched this 2013 interview on America’s Jewish television network, Shalom TV, with Moshe Feiglin the other day after reading Lieberman unveils racist peace plan: Pay Palestinians to leave Israel. Recorded at Feiglin’s home on the illegal Jewish-only colony of Karnei Shomron, deep in the heart of occupied Palestine, he got the host Mark Golub eating out of the palm of his hand. “One of the most wonderful voices” in Israel — and “what a gorgeous setting,” Golub says. Every square inch of historical Palestine belongs to the Jewish people “because God gave it to us,” Feiglin says. And only by saying that can we solve the problem and achieve peace…

At 25 minutes in the video Feiglin unveils his plan to pay Palestinians to leave Palestine.

Feiglin’s religious nationalist movement “Manhigut Yehudit“, meaning “Jewish Leadership” is the largest faction within the Likud Central Committee, which decides Likud Party policy.

Thanks to Ronnie Barkan.