NO ONE EVER MEANS "NEVER AGAIN":

[I]t is becoming increasingly clear that the war is in pursuit of a second goal: the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Israeli politicians and officials from the Israeli defense establishment have called for a second nakba and urged the military to flatten Gaza. Some suggest that Palestinians should flee Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and seek refuge in the Sinai Peninsula, including former Brigadier General Amir Avivi and the former Israeli ambassador to the United States Danny Ayalon. 

Avivi and Ayalon insist that evacuating Palestinians out of Gaza is simply a humanitarian measure, protecting civilians while Israel conducts its military operations. But other reports suggest that Palestinians would be permanently resettled outside of Gaza, in an act of ethnic cleansing. On October 17, the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy--an Israeli think tank founded and led by former defense and security officials--published a paper urging the Israeli government to take advantage of the "unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip," and resettle Palestinians in Cairo with the assistance of the Egyptian government. Separately, a leaked document from the Israeli Intelligence Ministry recommended forcibly resettling 2.2 million Palestinians from Gaza in the Northern Sinai and constructing a buffer zone along the Israeli border to prevent their return.  

The proposals are only the latest in a long history of Israeli plans to depopulate Gaza and resettle Palestinians in the Sinai. After the Six-Day war, the Israeli military launched a deadly campaign against Palestinian resistance movements in Gaza's refugee camps; 16,000 Palestinians whose homes Israel destroyed were transferred to Israeli-occupied al-Arish, while 12,000 relatives of Palestinian fedayeen were moved to new camps in the desert. More recently, before Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005, the head of the Israeli National Security proposed that Egypt accept a large percentage of Gaza's population in exchange for land in Southern Israel, which was rejected by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

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