New national security adviser said to hold urgent meeting on getting Gazans to leave

Shmuel Ben Ezra’s short-notice summons to rehash ‘encouraging voluntary emigration,’ despite lack of countries willing to cooperate, reportedly catches officials off-guard

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new national security adviser, Shmuel Ben Ezra, reportedly convened an urgent meeting Tuesday on “encouraging voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

According to the Haaretz newspaper, security officials were surprised the issue was being brought up again, and at such short notice.

Mossad representatives said during the meeting that they had found no countries willing to take in Gazans, and that there were otherwise no new developments on the matter, the report said.

“We are unaware of any countries in the world prepared to take in Palestinians who choose to leave the Strip,” the newspaper quoted a security source as saying.

Israeli officials have repeatedly spoken in favor of advancing “voluntary emigration” of Gazans, even though the Gaza peace plan that US President Donald Trump presented in September pledges to “encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.” Some members of the government have also vowed to reestablish Jewish settlements in the Strip, though Netanyahu has disavowed that aim.

Defense Minister Israel Katz announced in February 2025 the establishment of a directorate dedicated to getting Gazans out of Gaza, after Trump announced an earlier plan to oust the Strip’s residents and turn it into a Middle East “riviera.” However, there have been no indications that the directorate has taken any concrete steps.

Trump’s plan, which was welcomed by Israel, sparked fierce criticism worldwide, with critics saying it amounted to ethnic cleansing. The US president abandoned the plan amid the criticism.

But Netanyahu himself has continued to tout mass migration from Gaza. The premier held a high-level meeting on the issue at least as recently as September 2025, and said in an interview the previous month that mass migration of Gazans was “the most natural thing.”

During that interview, Netanyahu also said Israel was in touch with “several countries” about taking in Palestinians from the war-torn Strip.

Contemporary reports indicated that Israel was in touch on the matter with Indonesia, Uganda, South Sudan and Libya, as well as Somaliland, the breakaway East African region that Israel in December became the world’s first and only country to recognize.

With official plans to spark mass migration from Gaza apparently on ice, the right-wing group Ad Kan covertly organized several flights taking Gazans to South Africa and Indonesia between May and November of 2025, according to an Associated Press investigation.

Practically all of Gaza’s 2 million-odd residents have been internally displaced at least once since the war in the Strip was sparked by the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023.