News- Middle East: The drama that occurred at the OR Tambo Airport in Johannesburg, South Africa, involving Palestinians who landed there from the occupied Gaza Strip, has led to the indisputable conclusion that forced displacement orchestrated by the Israeli regime was behind it.

While expectedly it has not only generated widespread media coverage, but shamefully also attempts by Israel and its army of well-resourced propagandists to spin it as "voluntary exile." 

However, it would be shortsighted to overlook the decades of campaigns conducted by the settler colonial regime in Tel Aviv to rid Palestine of Palestinians - by hook or crook. 

For instance, a secret 1969 plan to force Gazans to migrate to Paraguay was revealed in 2020. 

Back then, it was negotiated by the notorious Mossad intelligence agency with Paraguayan dictator and Nazi sympathizer Alfredo Stroessner. Though the plan called for 60,000 Palestinians to move to the South American nation, ultimately, only 30 Palestinians did so.

In the current context, it is crucial to take note of reports that reveal bitter divisions have emerged in Israel’s war cabinet over the post-war destiny of the remaining Gaza population. 

Central to their debate is the policy of ethnic-cleansing, methods of implementation and deceitful cover of "voluntary migration". 

Unfortunately for them, the South African episode has backfired. And the reasons are clear. 

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman, Jordan, said it was unlikely that Palestinians who left did so without “Israeli coordination”.

“Nobody can approach that imaginary yellow line [in Gaza] without being shot at. These people had to be bused through the yellow line, through the 53 percent of Gaza that the Israeli army still controls and is operating in out of Gaza, through Israel to the Ramon airport,” she noted.

Further probes revealed that Israel has designated the Ramon airport as the point of departure. It goes back to Donald Trump's controversial plot to empty Gaza of its population. 

According to reports in Israeli media, military affairs minister Israel Katz had, at a military briefing, presented plans to move Palestinians out of Gaza. 

Though the idea of relocating over 2 million residents of Gaza has been shot down by a number of countries, Israel has not backed off. 

From the information obtained by media outlets, the Israeli army has been identified as being directly involved in the process, along with the mysterious Al Majd entity, to depopulate Gaza. 

For the purpose of ethnic-cleansing, the Israeli occupation army has established five land crossings from Gaza to Ramon that would be used. 

In coordination with Al Majd and the IDF, Palestinians would travel by bus from Gaza to Ramon Airport, 250 kilometres south, where it is based in the Red Sea's military zone Eilat. 

Contrary to the disgusting lies spewed by Israeli apologists, Itamar Mann, a professor of law at the University of Haifa, finds it deplorable that Israel may be exploiting Gaza’s dire situation by forcibly displacing vulnerable Palestinians.

"It does seem like they were being flushed out” of Gaza, was the reaction of SA President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has tasked relevant authorities to undertake a thorough investigation of the circumstances that led to the OR Tambo incident. 

Indeed, the clarity provided by SA's International Relations Minister Ronald Lamola when he said the flight was part of "a clear agenda to cleanse Palestinians from Gaza and the (occupied) West Bank" dismisses any notion of "voluntary migration". 

Oroub al-Abed in Middle East Monitor observed that for decades, Zionist Israel has pursued systematic methods to dispossess Palestinians. 

"The open violence — bombardment, blockade, and home demolitions — is merely the most visible. Yet the subtler machinery of displacement has never ceased. It operates quietly, through psychological exhaustion, bureaucratic restriction, and controlled mobility."

The danger al-Abed highlighted is that bureaucratically, Palestinians risk erasure of their legal identity, for without proof of exit, their rights of return dissolve. 

Israel's current game plan is not any different from its history of deceit. Politically, it signals a chilling shift from siege to disappearance — the continuation of ethnic cleansing by administrative means.

Iqbal Jassat is an executive member of the Media Review Network, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Source: Press TV