The Military Unit That Will Lead the Displacement of One Million Palestinians from Gaza City
Under the title “The military unit that will lead the evacuation of one million residents from Gaza City,” Itay Ilanai, military, intelligence, and security analyst at Israel Hayom, provides a striking insight into Netanyahu’s government, the army, and their operational plans for Gaza. These plans fall under what is being called “Gideon’s Chariots II.”
Given the importance of the report and the danger of the intentions it reveals, this paper highlights its key points.
The Establishment of the “Population Transfer Organization”*
In 2013, Israel created a strategic military unit called the Population Transfer Organization (abbreviated in Hebrew as Machlul), led by Brigadier General Udi Bar Moha in the Southern Command operations room.
Together with a broad multidisciplinary team, he developed the doctrine of population movement as part of future war plans for Gaza. The army’s planning division even described it as “an art of war.”
These methods were first partially tested during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, and later became integral to the combat style in Operation Guardian of the Walls in 2021. In this framework, Gaza was divided into blocs whose boundaries reflected Palestinian perceptions of neighborhoods and clans rather than externally imposed logic. “The borders of each bloc match the village, the neighborhood, and the alleyways,” according to the doctrine.
Forcing a Million People to Move:
Ilanai’s report, published on 22 August 2025, begins with the question:
“How do you force a family to leave its home, and how do you move a million Gazans southward?”
Military officers respond based on their accumulated experience in “population transfer” since the 1980s, as well as from the U.S. campaign in Fallujah, Iraq. The expert in psychological warfare, Ron Schleifer, builds on the idea that “no one likes to leave their home, so you must convince them that staying is worse than leaving for the unknown.”
According to army data, by January 2024 — the early months of the war — the army had:
-Dropped over 7 million leaflets
-Sent over 13 million text messages
-Made over 15 million phone calls (mostly automated messages)
In addition, soldiers from the 504th Intelligence Brigade announced evacuations through loudspeakers mounted on military vehicles roaming neighborhoods. Messages were tailored to each area, taking into account the dominant clan living there.
In the next stage, artillery barrages before ground entry were used primarily to frighten civilians, sending the “clear message” that evacuation was necessary. Military historian Aviad noted that the Israeli army employed “an unprecedented level of firepower in the history of war — certainly against civilians. Perhaps this is the best persuasion tool, more effective than any announcement.”
The Limits of External Migration:
According to UN data, 82% of Gaza’s population already lived in areas defined by Israel as “evacuation zones” before the war. A basic principle for ensuring successful displacement was to provide these people with water, food, and tents.
The report highlights two military systems devoted to “population transfer”:
-One in the northern command
-One in the southern command, specializing in Gaza
Both are tasked with preparing operational, logistical, psychological, and legal frameworks for every displacement campaign.
Since forced displacement has become a central element of Israel’s war on Gaza, accumulated experience — reinforced after 7 October 2023 — has shaped an operational model for applying the plan.
Displacement as a “Success”:
Former Southern Command operations chief General Erez Weiner defends repeated displacement as a military achievement and dismisses assessments that it was impossible or caused humanitarian catastrophe. He directly criticizes the Biden administration for rejecting the idea at the time.
For Weiner, population transfer is one of the current war’s successes:
“At the start of the campaign, we evacuated about one million people from northern Gaza and Gaza City to the south in a short time. Later, we evacuated 300,000 from Khan Younis very quickly. Then we reached the decisive stage — the conquest and complete evacuation of Rafah, including its destruction.”
Finance Minister Smotrich supports this approach, stressing two conditions for persuading civilians to evacuate:
-Humanitarian aid must not enter Gaza City — only the evacuation zones.
-Israel must clearly state it has no intention of halting the war. “You must leave, because bombing and attacks will reach you soon.”
Failure of External Resettlement
Attempts to relocate Palestinians outside Gaza largely failed. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics notes that only about 38,000 people left Gaza — all with dual nationality, foreign residency visas, or medical evacuation permits.
The legal risks for the army are mounting. Forced displacement could lead to prosecution of officers before the International Criminal Court. With the move to Gideon’s Chariots II — the evacuation of Gaza City — the legal danger will be greater than ever, making it the most serious war crime exposure to date.
Displacement Obstacles:
Tents: Palestinians carry their tents with them, enabling them to re-establish camps anywhere. This slows the army’s advance. Israel is therefore trying to control tents and their installation sites.
Bombardment dilemma: preemptive shelling intended to scare civilians into leaving may also reveal the direction of Israel’s military movements, exposing troops to ambush.
Schleifer emphasizes the need for Israel itself — not international agencies — to manage humanitarian systems: food distribution, education, health, and tent cities, under a revived military government.
Politically, Netanyahu and Smotrich support directing large budgets to “humanitarian aid” — in practice, to manage displacement — while Ben Gvir opposes. But the government is united in its decision to starve Gaza City into submission, breaking residents’ will until they accept expulsion.
Military Rule as an Unavoidable Outcome
Former military leaders argue that transferring such large numbers into an area representing just 25% of Gaza will inevitably force Israel to house, feed, and govern civilians directly, dragging the army into military rule.
This step — long avoided — carries enormous risks:
-International sanctions
-Soldier dissent or refusal
-Urban warfare to resist forced ‘evacuation’
Some advocate “voluntary displacement by force” — unprecedentedly intense bombardment that advances house by house, until civilians bear full responsibility for staying in place.
Historical Parallels:
The planning recalls the Haganah’s “Village Files” (1941–42), which mapped every Palestinian village, family, and even livestock to enable later expulsion in 1948.
According to the army’s psychological warfare division, people are slow to abandon their homes.
The main persuasion tool is terror:
-Heavy bombardment
-Cutting off electricity, radio, and television
-Total blackout of daily life
-Monitoring and control
The “population transfer command” oversees:
-Mapping residents and gathering intelligence
-Coordinating all branches of the army, including artillery, air force, and legal advisers to ensure operations appear compliant with international law
Surveillance systems monitor displacement in real time. General Erez Weiner explained:
“We need to know: Who informed the civilians? When and how? Did they respond? What percentage evacuated? Only then can areas be cleared for fire.”
Advanced tools include:
-AI-powered remote monitoring
-Facial recognition systems along evacuation routes to identify fighters disguised as civilians or to detect Israeli captives hidden in crowds
Ilanai’s Conclusion
The Gideon’s Chariots II plan necessarily leads to:
-A long-term Israeli military occupation of Gaza City
-Direct military rule over civilians
-A prolonged war of attrition without achieving declared war aims
Conclusion:
The Israel Hayom report exposes one of the most dangerous transformations in this war of extermination, revealing Netanyahu’s and his government’s intent: to eliminate both the Palestinian population and its territorial presence in Gaza.
The Population Transfer Organization (Machlul) is a blueprint for ethnic cleansing and genocide, disguised with humanitarian language like “aid” and “shelter.”
This doctrine is comprehensive and applicable not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank, southern Lebanon, southern Syria, and even Palestinian communities inside Israel, particularly in coastal cities and the Negev.
International pressure — sanctions, recognition of Palestine — affects Israeli policy, pushing it to lean more on the Trump camp while punishing Palestinians to undermine statehood or any political solution.
Since external expulsion has failed, Israel is now adopting sustained, repeated internal displacement, shrinking Gaza’s population over time.
* Population transfer is a serious crime in international law, prosecuted at both the Nuremberg and Tokyo International Military Tribunals at the end of the 2nd World War. For example, Nazi officers Alfred Jodl and Alfred Rosenberg received the death penalty for that crime, among other charges. For contemporary legal bases and commentary on the serious crime of population transfer, see International Law Commission, “Draft Code of Crimes against the Peace and Security of Mankind,” 1996 and Commission on Human Rights, “The Human Rights Dimensions of Population Transfer, including the implantation of settlers,” 1993.
Photo: Palestinians displaced in Gaza by Israel aggression against the civilian population. Source: Progress Center for Policies.
| ثيمات |
| • إقليمي • التشريد • السياسات العامة • الشعوب الأصلية • اللاجئين • النازحين • النزاع المسلح/ العرقي • الوصول إلى الموارد الطبيعية • تدمير الموئل • حقوق السكن • شعوب تحت الاحتلال • نزع المكلية • نقل السكان |
