Muhammad Shehada
SOURCE / August 10, 2025
Israel’s “occupation plan” of Gaza City means depopulating, cleansing and flattening the largest remaining urban centre sheltering over a million people
Israel’s Prime Minister declared officially his plan to “occupy” Gaza City. But Gaza is already occupied, always has been since 1967. So what does Israel mean by occupying?
It means implementing the notorious “Generals Plan” to Gaza City, Deir al-Balah and the Nusairat refugee camp; the last 3 areas Israel hasn’t fully wiped out and where most Gazans are sheltering.
The “Generals Plan” is ethnic cleansing (per Israeli leaders’ own words), which is carried out in 5 steps:
- Fully encircle and besiege a city
- Cut food and water and take hospitals and other vital services out
- Bomb incessantly by air, land and sea
- Invade gradually and force people out at gunpoint
- Flatten everything with bulldozers, mines, explosives and shells
Israel tested the “Generals Plan” in Northern Gaza in late 2024. There were around 150,000 Gazans there at the start. The IDF surrounded them, cut off all food and water for over 100 days, took out the Indonesian Hospital and the Kamal Adwan Hospital, gradually advanced from all directions, forced people out at gun point, until only about 12,000 were left.
Anyone who didn’t leave Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia during the “Generals Plan” was considered a “potential terrorist.” Wherever the IDF advanced, they rounded up people, kidnapped hundreds at random to the infamous Sde Teiman torture camp, and put the rest on death marches southwards.
The cornerstone of Israel’s campaign in Northern Gaza was to depopulation then flattening everything so Gazans would have nothing left to go back to. Once the IDF “cleansed” the area, they brought in Jewish settlers, contractors and bulldozers to demolish all homes left standing. The commander in charge, Yehuda Vach, a settler himself, hired his brothers and hilltop youth terrorist settlers to carry out the demolition work.
“Occupying” Gaza city now means repeating the Generals Plan. Israel is very open about what’s next: The will encircle the city, lay total siege on its one million inhabitants, bomb incessantly from all directions, advance with ground troops and tanks, force people out, and deem anyone left behind a “Hamas terrorist.” Then flatten everything like Jabalia and Rafah.
Make no mistake about it. What Israel did in Northern Gaza and Rafah and now wants to repeat in Gaza City was called “ethnic cleansing” and a “war of annihilation” by Israel’s right-wing former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon. Olmert called it “indiscriminate unrestrained brutal and criminal killing of civilians.”
Israel has repeatedly tried to depopulate Gaza City in the first 16 months of genocide with indiscriminate bombing, starvation, invasions … etc. but it failed. In August 2024, Israel called it a “cat and mouse game” because every time the IDF invaded an area to push people south, Gazans instead fled to an adjacent neighbourhood, waited until the IDF left, and returned to put tents on the ruins of their homes.
Gaza City is now sheltering over 1 million people. Over 70% of the city has destroyed, but it’s not fully wiped out like Rafah or Jabalia. If Israel gets its way in Gaza city and Deir al-Balah, there would literally be nothing left of the entire Gaza Strip. This is what Smotrich meant when he said last May “We are destroying everything left of Gaza.”
Where would a million Gazans go? A concentration camp in Rafah, then mass expulsion.
Israel’s Finance Minister quietly allocated 3 billion NIS (almost $1 billion) last week for a Gaza “security box” to establish such a camp. A demo version of that camp already exists under Israel’s proxy ISIS-linked gang Abu Shabab.
Netanyahu’s own ministers are making clear the Gaza city takeover plan is NOT about defeating Hamas or releasing captives. It is all about wiping out the enclave’s largest and last remaining urban centre.
Muhammad Shehada is a Gazan writer and analyst
