'All of Gaza Will Be Jewish,' Vows Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu

Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu asserted Thursday that the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is erasing Gaza, which Eliyahu said wwill be ethnically cleansed of Palestinians to make way for Jewish recolonization.

"The government is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out," Eliyahu, a leading member of the Jewish Power party, told the Haredi radio station Kol Barama. "Thank God, we are wiping out this evil. We are pushing this population that has been educated on Mein Kampf."

"All of Gaza will be Jewish," the minister vowed, adding that Arabs who are loyal to Israel may remain in the strip, because "we aren't racists."

Eliyahu took part in last year's "Preparing to Settle Gaza" conference, which preceded U.S. President Donald Trump's proposal to "level" Gaza, forcibly expel its Palestinians, and transform the coastal enclave into "the Riviera of the Middle East."

As the death toll from Israel's forced mass starvation of Gaza continued to rise, Eliyahu denied that Palestinians are dying as a result of Israel's blockade, asserting that "there's no hunger in Gaza."

"But we don't need to be concerned with hunger in the strip," he told Kol Barama during Thursday's interview. "Let the world worry about it."

Last month, Eliyahu called for the bombing of Gaza food warehouses, asserting that Palestinians in the strip "need to starve."

In November 2023, Netanyahu took the rare step of suspending Eliyahu after he endorsed the "option" of dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza to "kill everyone" there, because "there are no people uninvolved" with Hamas, which led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Eliyahu's remarks were subsequently entered as evidence of intent in the genocide case filed by South Africa against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Nine pages of South Africa's 84-page initial filing in the ICJ case contain statements of "genocidal intent against the Palestinian people" made by Israeli officials.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said Thursday that Eliyahu's comments "are a moral attack and a propaganda disaster."

"Israel will never convince the world of the justice of our war against terror as long as we are led by an extremist minority government with ministers who sanctify blood and death," Lapid argued.

"IDF soldiers do not fight, are killed, and injured to wipe out a civilian population," he added. "They fight to return the kidnapped and ensure Israel's security."

Nearly 60,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since October 2023, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Peer-reviewed studies have shown that the ministry's figures are likely a vast undercount.

More than 142,500 Gazans have also been wounded, and at least 14,000 others are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings.

In addition to the ICJ genocide case, the International Criminal Court—also located in The Hague—has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation.