Support for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza has increased among Israelis, according to the poll [Getty]
An overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews say they support US President Donald Trump‘s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza and expel Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan, a pollster revealed on Monday.
The Jewish People Policy Institute Israel Index survey found that eight out of ten Jewish Israelis agreed with Trump’s proposal that Palestinians in Gaza “should relocate to another country”. Palestinian citizens of Israel mostly rejected the idea.
Palestinian citizens of Israel are often referred to within Israel as “Arabs” — a term that while technically correct, is seen as a deliberate erasure of their Palestinian identity. The term is also often used by Jewish Israelis and Zionists to support theories that Palestinians come from other Arab countries and should be expelled to those states.
Forty-three percent of all Israelis said that the expulsion plan was “practical” and should be implemented, while 30 percent said the plan was “desirable” but not practical.
A minority of 13 percent – made of up 54 percent of Palestinian respondents and just three percent of Jewish Israelis – described the Trump plan as “immoral”.
Support among right-wing Israelis for the plan stood at 81 percent, who said the Trump proposal was both practical and desirable. Among those who described themselves as being in the centre, support stood at 31 percent, and 27 percent among self-described leftists.
The JPPI said that the idea of expelling Gaza’s population now enjoys significant support among Israelis, compared to previous surveys conducted in the 1990s and 2000s, which saw support at round 40-50 percent.
Last week, Trump floated a plan to “just clean out” Gaza and said he wants Egypt and Jordan to take Palestinians from the territory.
“You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing. You know, over the centuries it’s had many, many conflicts that site. And I don’t know, something has to happen.”
The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced, often multiple times, by Israel, with at least 61,709 people being killed in the past 15 months as a result. Amid Israel’s devastating war on the enclave, Israeli hardliners, including in government, called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and for Jewish settlements.
On Monday, President Trump also appeared to swerve a question on whether he supported Israeli annexation of the occupied West Bank,Â
“I’m not going to talk about that. It certainly is a small, it’s a small country in terms of land,” Trump said.
“See this pen?” he said. “This wonderful pen on my desk is the Middle East, and the top of the pen – that’s Israel.”
He added: “That’s not good, right? You know, it’s a pretty big difference. I use that as an analogy – it’s pretty accurate, actually.
