The latest:
No country ever agreed to receive Palestinians from Gaza, collapsing the voluntary emigration plan Donald Trump unveiled beside Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Yedioth Ahronoth. Mossad told a June inter-ministerial meeting it had found no willing state. The Movement for Freedom of Information, which pursued records through court petitions, concluded there was nothing behind the plan and likely never would be.
Details:
- The origin: Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Trump announced a voluntary transfer of Gaza’s residents from a podium alongside Netanyahu, and that the idea became the coalition’s central ambition, particularly for Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Israel’s security cabinet issued a decision in March 2025 to prepare for moving Gaza’s population.
- The machinery: Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered a directorate created inside the Defense Ministry to handle voluntary emigration, while the government tasked Mossad with finding states willing to accept Gazans, the paper said. Netanyahu held periodic meetings on the file and ordered contacts with candidate countries accelerated.
- The empty file: Katz said on 6 February 2025 he had instructed the military to prepare a plan enabling any Gaza resident to leave for any country agreeing to receive them. When the Movement for Freedom of Information requested those plans, the army replied it held no information allowing it to answer, an implicit acknowledgment nothing had been done.
- The directorate: The Defense Ministry said the emigration directorate is headed by Deputy Director General Yaakov Bleichstein, appointed alongside his existing role, and that no specific criteria were set. It said the body uses outside service providers, and declined to describe its activities on security grounds.
- What was refused: The organization sought the number of Gazans whose emigration the directorate arranged, their departure dates, the crossings used, destination countries and whether any were minors. The ministry said it could not meet requests for individual details, copies of its plans, or the directorate’s participation reports.
- The negotiations: One discussion recorded that Israel had reached understandings with five states, among them Ethiopia, Libya and Indonesia, according to the report. Mossad chief David Barnea raised the file with US envoy Steve Witkoff and other American officials, seeking Washington’s help in persuading those governments. Nothing materialized.
- Trump’s reversal: The American president effectively abandoned the idea, and his 20-point plan, published more than seven months after the emigration announcement, explicitly called for encouraging Gazans to remain in the territory. Under that plan, which Israel adopted, promoting emigration is a direct violation.
- Why states refused: Arab and other governments rejected transfer over security fears about extremist and militant infiltration, political opposition to anything framed as a second Nakba, and the cost of absorbing hundreds of thousands of destitute refugees, the paper said.
- The hostage cost: The effort was accompanied by public statements while hostages were still held in Gaza, and by the time the plan was finally shelved their return had been delayed by many months, according to the report.
- The revival: Ofer Winter, leader of the new Amach Yisrael party, declared on the eve of his launch that transfer is the only solution for Gaza, without specifying how it would be implemented or how foreign states would be persuaded to accept it.
Background:
Katz said on 27 May 2026 that the voluntary emigration plan would still be carried out at the right time and in the right way, wording that confirmed it remained unexecuted more than a year and a half after the Trump-Netanyahu White House meeting.
Between the lines:
Two things kept the plan alive politically long after it died operationally. Netanyahu delegated authority on the file partly to keep Ben Gvir inside the government, according to the report, which made the process itself the deliverable. And because the army held no plans and the directorate published no criteria, no measurable failure was ever recorded — leaving the idea available for reuse now, two months before elections, by candidates who face no accounting for the last attempt.
What’s next
Whether Winter details an implementation mechanism during the campaign, and whether further court petitions force the Defense Ministry to release the directorate’s participation reports and criteria it has so far withheld.
