Israeli Cabinet Minister Adds To Calls For ‘Voluntary Emigration’ From Gaza

An Israeli Cabinet minister said this week that the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip will compel Palestinians to leave the territory, despite widespread condemnation of Israeli calls for so-called “voluntary emigration” amid an invasion that Gazan health authorities say has claimed the lives of more than 23,000 Palestinians.

In an interview posted online Monday by Israeli broadcaster Knesset TV, Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said “we certainly need to encourage emigration” from Gaza.

HuffPost independently translated the conversation, a clip of which gained attention on X, formerly Twitter, Wednesday.

“I said voluntary emigration, and in Judaism, there is an idea known as ‘Compelling him until he says, I want,’” Kahri said shortly before the clip of the interview sharedon X begins, referring to a Jewish legal concept that typically applies to divorce or charitable giving.

When the interviewer, Moran Azulay, asked how the Israeli government would accomplish that, Karhi’s reply was blunt.

“The war does what it does,” he said.

Does that mean, Azulay asked, Israel would “continue to pressure them with force, with hunger, and with difficult conditions?”

“We’re pressuring Hamas into a corner right now — not with difficult conditions. We do give humanitarian support to the uninvolved,” Karhi responded. (Many international observers have criticized Israeli rules and restrictions on this aid.)

Pressed again by Azulay, Karhi acknowledged that the conditions in Gaza are hard for civilians and that “they will continue to be hard so long as we have not returned the hostages home and so long as we haven’t exterminated Hamas.”

In Hamas’ cross-border attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Palestinian militants not only killed