As incessant Israeli bombing rains down on Gaza, Tel Aviv officials and ministers – far from the battlefield – raise a different kind of war, a war of words.
After one of Benjamin Netanyahu's ministers suggested using a nuclear bomb on the besieged Palestinian territory, another referred to the mass displacement as a second Nakba, or "catastrophe."
Israeli Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter described the displacement of large numbers of Palestinians from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip as the "Gaza Nakba 2023."
"We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba." Dichter, a member of the right-wing Likud party, told Israeli Channel 12 earlier Saturday.
"From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war – as the Israeli army seeks to do in Gaza – with masses between the tanks and the soldiers."
When asked about comparing the situation in Gaza to the Nakba, Dichter said again: "Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end."
"I do not know how the war will end. Gaza City occupies a third of the Strip's area and contains half of the Strip's population, but this is only a third of the Strip, and there are the other two-thirds of the Gaza Strip and six refugee camps," he added.
Palestinians use the word "Nakba" about the events of 1948, when armed Zionist militias forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to leave their homes and villages under the pressure of bombing and mass killings in the historical lands of Palestine, pushing them further into the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and neighboring countries, in a major ethnic cleansing before the announcement of the independence of Israel.
Following the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also declared that Israel is "at war," calling the Israeli war on Gaza a "second war of independence."
Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari confirmed a press conference on Saturday evening that tens of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced in recent days from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu, however, warned his Cabinet ministers to "be careful with their words" when they talk about Israel's ongoing military campaign.
Earlier last week, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, from the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said that "one of Israel’s options in the war in Gaza is to drop a nuclear bomb on the Strip," Times of Israel reported.
Speaking on a radio interview, Eliyahu voiced his objection to allowing any humanitarian aid into Gaza.
"We wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid," the minister said, adding that "there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza."
The far-right minister also said the Palestinian population "can go to Ireland or deserts, the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves."
He added: "Anyone waving a Palestinian or Hamas flag shouldn't continue living on the face of the earth."
Eliyahu was later suspended from government meetings, while opposition leader Yair Lapid called for Eliyahu’s dismissal, saying he "harmed our (country’s) international standing."
For more than a month, the Israeli army has been attacking all parts of the Gaza Strip, while its ground operation has focused on isolating its northern part and establishing a heavy military presence.
The threat to use a nuclear bomb enraged Palestinians and Foreign Minister Riad al-Maliki filed a formal complaint with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) against Israel.
According to the Palestinian official news agency WAFA, al-Malki sent an official letter to IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi last Wednesday, stating that the nuclear threat is "completely consistent with the prevailing discourse in Israel" against Palestinians.
Al-Maliki added that the threat entails "an official recognition that Israel possesses nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction."
Israel has been carrying out relentless air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip – including on hospitals, residences and houses of worship – since the Palestinian resistance group Hamas launched a cross-border attack on Oct. 7.
Since then, the number of deaths from the ongoing Israeli attacks has surpassed 11,100, including more than 8,000 children and women, according to the government media office in Gaza.
The Israeli death toll is nearly 1,200, according to official figures.
