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U.S. officials insist Palestinians will not be forcibly displaced from the Gaza Strip under President Donald Trump’s peace plans, even as senior Israeli ministers publicly promote proposals encouraging residents to leave the enclave, NBC News reported Saturday.
U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee said there was no Israeli plan to remove Palestinians from Gaza against their will, while maintaining that residents who wanted to leave should be allowed to do so.
“I can tell you categorically there is no plan of the Israelis to displace people out of Gaza against their will,” Huckabee said at a news conference in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to NBC News.
There was, however, an “open-mindedness” toward allowing people to leave voluntarily, he said.
“To incarcerate them in a place they don’t want to be should be an absolute, I think, just disgrace,” Huckabee added.
The debate over Gaza’s roughly 2 million residents has intensified ahead of Israel’s Oct. 27 elections as members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition publicly discuss relocating Palestinians or encouraging them to leave the territory.
Huckabee visited the occupied West Bank in early September and described Israeli settlers carrying out attacks against Palestinians as “terrorists.”
“I know that’s an uncomfortable word for some people, but when you try to create an atmosphere in which people feel uncomfortable living in their own homes, their children playing in their own lawns and yards, and people feeling that they’re not safe and that they’re not secure because of the behavior, the actions, and the intimidation of others, that’s terrorism by any definition,” Huckabee said during a visit to Turmus Ayya, north of Ramallah in the central West Bank.
During the visit, Huckabee met with Palestinian-Americans and heard testimony about challenges they face in their daily lives, homes and properties amid settler violence.
He said Washington would continue to send the message that “people in these communities have a right to live with a level of security and safety.”
“The Israeli government has a responsibility to make sure that happens,” Huckabee said.
Despite his criticism of settler violence, Huckabee is known for adopting Christian Zionist views and has previously claimed that Israel has “the right to control large parts” extending from the Nile to the Euphrates and large areas of the Middle East.
His visit came amid a sharp increase in attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians across the occupied West Bank.
The U.N. said in August that settler violence had reached “unprecedented levels,” with more than 1,430 attacks resulting in casualties or property damage documented in 2026 as of early August.
International law experts cited by NBC News warned that distinguishing voluntary migration from forced displacement would be extremely difficult given conditions in Gaza, where most residents have already been displaced from their homes.
Adil Haque, a professor at Rutgers Law School and author of “Law and Morality at War,” said the forcible transfer of civilians constitutes “a war crime and a crime against humanity, particularly when it’s conducted by an occupying power against civilians in an occupied territory.”
Haque said coercion under international law does not necessarily require direct physical force.
“Force here can involve the actual use of physical force, the threat of physical force, duress or taking advantage of a coercive environment,” he said.
Much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble during Israel’s military campaign, and deadly airstrikes have continued despite a cease-fire agreed in October.
Human rights advocates had accused Israel of turning Gaza into an “open-air prison” even before the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel and the subsequent Israeli offensive, citing a blockade that had been in place for nearly two decades.
Israel tightened restrictions after Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, saying the measures were intended to prevent weapons and military equipment from reaching the group.
Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir last week presented a seven-year proposal that he said would encourage Palestinians to voluntarily leave Gaza.
“Since the beginning of the war, I have been standing up, shouting and demanding that the encouragement of emigration from Gaza be implemented,” Ben-Gvir said at a Sept. 3 news conference.
“It is possible. It is realistic. It is in our hands,” he said.
Under the proposal, as many as 250,000 Palestinians would leave Gaza during the first year, with the rest of the population following within seven years, according to NBC News.
Ben-Gvir suggested Palestinians would have the right to leave Gaza but would not automatically be entitled to return.
The “legal conclusion” was “that the right to leave exists, but there is no automatic right to enter,” he said.
Ben-Gvir did not explain how Palestinians would be encouraged to leave.
He said, however, that if his Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power, party joined the next government, he would seek to establish a ministry responsible for emigration.
Ben-Gvir and other far-right Israeli ministers have previously called for Israeli resettlement of Gaza.
He has also faced condemnation for sharing AI-generated videos involving detained Palestinians, including one depicting prisoners being transported on a conveyor belt into a detention camp and later emerging emaciated. The video was later deleted.
NBC News reported that Ben-Gvir called in August for the “targeted” killing of “30 or 40” people in Gaza every night.
Haque said that although Ben-Gvir’s proposal was framed as voluntary migration, it could still be considered coercive under international law because of the conditions Palestinians face in Gaza.
Stephen J. Rapp, who served as U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues from 2009 to 2015, similarly said portraying potential mass displacement as voluntary was “not possible in the coercive context within which we’re dealing.”
Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the London-based think tank Chatham House, described the use of the term "voluntary migration" as misleading.
“I think the issue of voluntary migration is just a euphemism to eventually force displacement,” Mekelberg said.
“Most people want to stay at home,” he added. “If they leave, it’s because you’ve made their life impossible and then they flee, and that’s exactly the Ben-Gvir and Katz idea.”
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