"I am stating my commitment to the people of Israel out loud: With God's help, I will advance this plan in the next term. Instead of the illusions of Peace Now, we need the actions of emigration now. Instead of digging tunnels, it is time to pack suitcases. Instead of working in terrorism, it is time to find work abroad and build new lives."
On Thursday, September 3, 2026, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, chairman of Otzma Yehudit, held a press conference to unveil "Disengagement 710," a twenty-page document titled National Work Plan for Voluntary Emigration from the Gaza Strip. He called it realistic and concrete and the result of a year and a half of work. Its targets are numerical: roughly 250,000 Gaza residents departing in the first year, 1.11 million within three years, about 1.86 million within seven. Its mechanism is a new government ministry for voluntary emigration with its own minister, director-general, independent budget, international negotiating team and implementation apparatus, which Otzma Yehudit will demand as a condition of joining the next government after the coming Israeli elections. Its pathways are employment, education, medical treatment, family reunification and community sponsorship, with individual security screening, a package covering travel, initial housing, vocational training, employment and support for up to 24 months, and monthly publication of applications, approvals, departures, costs and absorption figures. Its money is an initial Israeli investment of NIS 10 billion and a matching framework of up to NIS 50 billion, contingent on international participation and agreements with receiving countries. Turkey, Ethiopia, Congo and Arab states are named as destinations under examination. No country has publicly agreed to receive anyone; Spain and Ireland have rejected the suggestion, and Arab governments have refused for years. The Israeli rights group Adalah called the proposal illegal and inhumane; forced transfer of civilians from occupied territory is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. The plan arrived one day after the statements recorded in entry #45, in which Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel is "organised and prepared to get them out - by sea, by air, by every way possible" and that Trump had frozen rather than cancelled the removal proposal. On September 5, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee said categorically that no Israeli plan exists to displace Gazans against their will. On September 10, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar, at a press conference in Ljubljana, said Israel is not planning to expel or deport anyone, and added that if someone "wants to immigrate on his own will, and there is a country which is ready to accept him, we will not oppose that, but we will also not enforce anyone against their will." Ynet's reporting notes Ben-Gvir revived the emigration plan as a campaign centerpiece after instructing his staff to play down his earlier proposal for crocodiles outside prisons.
Ran the plan as an atrocity and the denial as a correction, on separate days, and let the second retire the first. September 3 coverage led with illegality and international condemnation, which is warranted and which is also the easiest possible framing, because a plan called illegal by rights groups needs no further reporting to be dismissed. The Sa'ar story ran a week later as the government clarifying itself. What almost nobody did was hold the document and the denial in the same frame long enough to notice that they are not about the same thing. The denial is about compulsion — no expulsion, no deportation, nobody forced. The document is about inducement, and it is specific: a ministry, a budget, per-year quotas, a 24-month support package and monthly departure statistics. Those are not contradictory claims, they are a claim and a non-response, and the non-response was reported as a rebuttal. Nor did anyone ask the obvious follow-up of either man: if there is no plan, what is the twenty-page document with the NIS 10 billion line, and if the departures are voluntary, why does the plan need a quota.
Entry #45 recorded three positions from one government in one week and an American ambassador's categorical denial closing the file. This is the fourth position, and it is the only one with an appropriations figure attached. The pattern is now stable enough to name: a minister publishes an operational plan for depopulating Gaza, another minister or an ambassador denies any plan exists, and because the denial is about force and the plan is about incentives, both survive contact with the press. The word doing the work is "voluntary," and no one who uses it has been asked what voluntary means for a population inside a territory whose reconstruction is conditioned on a disarmament its own government called largely achieved while saying it had not finished. Entries #24 and #25 recorded Ben-Gvir posting video of zip-tied detainees and being told by his own president that abuse is forbidden; he is still in the security cabinet, and the plan he published is a coalition demand rather than a fringe pamphlet. What the record holds after September 10 is a numbered seven-year schedule with a ministry and a budget, three separate denials that any plan exists, an election in which the plan is a bargaining chip, and no country willing to take a single person.