Israel’s plan to push out all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip has been contemplated as long back as 1967, soon after the Six-Day War ended.

Reading an NBC News report a couple of days ago about a Trump administration plan to relocate 1 million Gazans to Libya reminded me of a conversation between the legendary Warsaw Ghetto leader Marek Edelman and fellow fighter and survivor Simcha Rotem that took place more than quarter of a century ago.

In the conversation, first reported in Haaretz in 2023, Rotem said the Jews who walked into the gas chambers without a fight did so only because they were hungry.

Edelman disagreed, but Rotem insisted. “Listen, man. Marek, I’m surprised by your attitude. They only went because they were hungry. Even if they’d known what awaited them they would have walked into the gas chambers. You and I would have done the same.” 

Edelman cut him off. “You would never have gone” [to the gas chamber.] Rotem replied, “I’m not so sure. I was never that hungry.” Edelman agreed, saying: “I also wasn’t that hungry,” to which Rotem said, “That’s why you didn’t go.”

The NBC report claims Israeli officials are aware of the plan and talks have been held with the Libyan leadership about taking in a million ethnically cleansed Palestinians. The carrot being offered is the unfreezing of billions of dollars of Libya’s own money seized by the US more than a decade ago.

The Arabic word Sumud — or steadfastness — is synonymous with the Palestinian people. The idea that a million Gazans would agree to walk off the 1.4% of historic........

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