‘Gaza house demolition is part of ethnic cleansing agenda of Israel’ – Independent group alleges

With the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza getting expelled on a daily basis, Israel is carrying out its ethnic cleansing agenda by demolishing their homes, says Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.

Halper, an anthropologist, told Anadolu Agency that Tel Aviv wishes to convert the Arab country into a Jewish abode.

“The only way that could be done is by displacing the Palestinian people, taking them off their land, and then taking their land and replacing them with Jewish settlers. House demolitions have become the main vehicle for this policy of ethnic cleansing,” he added.

Not less than 300,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed beyond repairs, which is about 70 percent of the houses in Gaza since Israel started pounding the enclave on October 7.

“So if you put all those homes together from 1948 until today, you see that the demolition of Palestinian homes is the main way in which Israel was trying to displace the Palestinians from their lands and then turning the country into a Jewish country,” he said.

According to Halper, Israel expelled 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948, accounting for nearly eighty percent of Palestine’s population at the time, and continues to uproot nearly 2.5 million Palestinians in Gaza today, rendering the region “uninhabitable.”

“Israel is forcing the Palestinians out because there’s no water, there’s no food, there’s no economy, there’s no infrastructure. And Israel talks about voluntary transfer, which is another word for ethnic cleansing,” he stated.

Meanwhile, the death toll in the enclave has jumped to 30,410 and 71,700 wounded in Israeli attacks over the past five months.

The revised death toll in Israel from the October 7 Hamas attacks stands at 1,139.