Concerning predictions made by Daniella Weiss, a far-right Israeli settlement movement extremist, have come to light after funding to a UN relief agency was cut off leaving millions of civilians, over half of them children, in a perilous position.
The former mayor of Kedumim, an Israeli settlement located in the West Bank, has predicted a widespread exodus of the Gaza population as fighting in the region continues to intensify.
At a conference in Jerusalem, she said: “There will be no Arabs in the Gaza strip. They will go to Turkey, to Scotland, to Britain. I don’t want to kill them. I want them out of Gaza.
“And we’ll use different methods. One of them is not to give them any humanitarian aid. So the countries of the world will have pity on them and take them”
Daniella Weiss is a far-right Israeli Orthodox Zionist settlement movement extremist, and a former mayor of Kedumim, an Israeli settlement located in the West Bank.
She was first elected mayor of Kedumim in September 1996, and was re-elected for a second term in November 2001 through 2007.
Weiss has been arrested numerous times, including for assaulting a police officer and interfering with an investigation into the destruction of Palestinian property.
More recently, she has been affiliated with the Nachala settlement organization, which helps younger settlers establish illegal outposts in the West Bank, an initiative that’s controversial even among the settler community.
She is also a neighbour and an ally of Bezalel Smotrich, the extremist minister of finance, who has said that the Palestinian people do not exist and that Palestinian communities need to be erased.
Her predictions about cutting of humanitarian aid to Palestinians has proved chillingly accurate after the funding of a UN relief agency – UNRWA – was cut off following accusations by Israel that some of its workers took part in the deadly Hamas’ 7th October attack.
Western countries including the US, UK and Germany said they would suspend funding to the organisation, which provides aid to more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East.
Aid agencies say that 2 million civilians, over half of them children, rely on UNRWA aid in Gaza.
“The population faces starvation, looming famine and an outbreak of disease under Israel’s continued indiscriminate bombardment and deliberate deprivation of aid in Gaza”, they said.
Without it, many may have no choice but to leave.
Asked about the funding pause, Ireland’s deputy premier Micheal Martin said: “UNRWA is the key humanitarian intervention for decades and ever since the Nakba, as Palestinians would call it.
“UNRWA had been supporting Palestinian refugees in Jordan, in the West Bank, in Gaza, for decades now, it is the essential linchpin of economic support, humanitarian support in the form of food, healthcare supports in terms of health centres and hospitals.
“When I was in Gaza, it was UNRWA who were supporting the primary school system, and to pull that out now would be catastrophic in the context of a terrible war.
“So our impulse is fundamentally a humanitarian impulse, realising the enormity of the UNRWA contribution to basic necessities of life in Gaza. To pull away that now, I think, would be devastating for Gazans and devastating for ordinary people living in Gaza.
“I can’t understand how we could contemplate it, to be honest, from a humanitarian point of view.”
It is against this backdrop that David Cameron, the foreign secretary, should be lauded for raising the prospect of Britain recognising a Palestinian state in a bid to help end the conflict with Israel.
Lord Cameron told a London reception that the move would help to make a two-state solution an irreversible process, something that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is opposed to.
He discussed the need to give the “Palestinian people a political horizon” under diplomatic efforts to end the Israeli-Hamas war as he addressed a reception for Arab ambassadors in Parliament.
Lisa Nandy and David Lammy, on the Labour benches, have also made this plea, in a sign that not all is lost for the long-suffering people of Palestine.
But make no mistake, the future of Palestinian people in the region has never been more perilously poised.
Related: Tory grandee Ken Clarke warns UK risks becoming an ‘elective dictatorship’
