Israel Ready to Move Palestinians Out of Gaza, Katz Says, Awaiting US Support

Jerusalem, September 2, 2026: Israel has plans in place to facilitate the departure of Palestinians from Gaza, but moving forward will require US backing and countries willing to take them in, Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday.

Speaking at a conference hosted by the Israeli news outlet Ynet and the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Katz said Israel was ready to help Palestinians leave Gaza by whatever means available.

"There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration," he said, adding that the Israeli government was "organised and prepared to get them out, by sea, by air, by every way possible."

The remarks have reignited international controversy over proposals to relocate large numbers of Palestinians out of Gaza.

Katz said the proposal to facilitate mass Palestinian emigration from Gaza remains under discussion but has been frozen for now by US President Donald Trump. He described it as "frozen" rather than cancelled, and said the countries that might take in Palestinians are waiting for American backing before they commit.

"The plan hasn't been cancelled; it is being discussed all the time, even now," Katz said, according to reports of his remarks.

He added that US approval would be key to winning that cooperation, and singled out Egypt as unwilling to let the process move through its territory. The US Embassy referred requests for comment to the State Department in Washington. As of Wednesday, there was no public confirmation that the US had approved a plan to forcibly remove Palestinians from Gaza.

Katz described the proposal as "migration" or "emigration," stopping short of calling it forced deportation. He claimed roughly 80 percent of Gaza's residents want to leave, pointing to surveys conducted by Israel. The Times of Israel reported, however, that he did not offer detailed public evidence for the figure.

That distinction between voluntary migration and forced displacement sits at the heart of the dispute. Palestinian and international critics argue that any mass removal carried out under coercive wartime conditions could amount to forced displacement, whatever it's called. The Guardian framed Katz's comments as an attempt to win Trump's support for expelling Palestinians from Gaza, while other outlets stuck with the Israeli government's own language of "migration" or "emigration."

Katz's comments trace back to an idea Trump floated earlier in his second term, that Palestinians leave Gaza altogether while the territory is redeveloped. That proposal drew fierce pushback at the time, especially from Palestinian representatives and Arab governments, Egypt among them. Trump later backed away from its most contentious elements, and the US-backed framework that followed did not call for forcing Palestinians out.

Even so, Katz said the relocation idea has not been abandoned and remains under discussion. Katz said that if it became clear Hamas was not fulfilling its commitments, Israel would receive a “green light” to advance militarily, territorially and in other areas.

The idea of moving Gaza's population out of the territory has alarmed critics and international observers. International humanitarian law prohibits the forcible transfer or deportation of civilians from occupied territory, with only narrow exceptions, and critics say any effort to compel Palestinians to leave Gaza could run afoul of that prohibition. Israel, for its part, has cast the plan as helping people who want to leave rather than expelling them. But Katz's pledge to move people out "by sea, by air, by every way possible" has only deepened concerns about how such a program would actually work, and whether any departures under it could truly be called voluntary.

Katz spoke the same day Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited an Israeli military position inside Gaza, where he said Israel has no intention of withdrawing from the territory it now controls. "We control the territory and are staying on this line," Netanyahu said, according to reports, reaffirming that disarming Hamas and demilitarizing Gaza remain Israel's goals. Together, the two men's remarks underscored how unsettled the questions of Gaza's governance, security and territorial future remain.

What is confirmed is that Katz says Israel has built out plans and an organized directorate to facilitate Palestinians leaving Gaza, and that the effort needs US backing to move ahead. What hasn't been confirmed is that the United States has formally signed off on forcibly removing Palestinians from Gaza. And the 80 percent figure remains Katz's claim rather than an independently verified statistic; he pointed to Israeli-run surveys but didn't lay out the underlying data.

For now, the relocation plan remains a deeply contested proposal under discussion, not a program underway. But Katz's remarks make clear the idea of large-scale Palestinian emigration from Gaza hasn't gone away. It's still very much alive in Israeli government thinking.