Ron DeSantis Promises to Support “Mass Removal” of Palestinians in Gaza

Ron DeSantis said Wednesday that he would not stop Israel from forcibly removing Palestinians from Gaza if he is elected president.

The Republican primary debate featured just DeSantis and Nikki Haley, and saw a shocking return to actual policy discussion. At one point, moderator Jake Tapper asked DeSantis if he supported the mass removal of Palestinians.

“I am not going to tell [Israel] to do that,” DeSantis said. “But if they make the calculation that to avert a second Holocaust, they need to do that,” then he wouldn’t stop them.

The word for the mass expulsion of an ethnic group is ethnic cleansing.

DeSantis also said he did not believe in a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and Gaza, instead accusing “Palestinian Arabs” of refusing to recognize the existence of Israel. The Palestinian Authority does, in fact, recognize Israel.

Israel, however, only seems open to a two-state solution if the second state is on an entirely different continent. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition has reportedly been secretly speaking with the Democratic Republic of Congo about resettling thousands of Palestinians in the African nation.

Netanyahu and his allies have repeatedly floated the idea of forcibly removing Palestinians, but the idea has been vehemently rejected by the international community.

Israeli officials, however, have made it increasingly clear in recent days that their plan is to completely eliminate Palestine. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said last week that a way to solve the war was to “encourage the voluntary migration of Gaza’s residents to countries that will agree to take in the refugees.”

Separately, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir told reporters that the war was an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza.”