Senators say US complicit in Israel's ethnic cleansing of Gaza

U.S. senators Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley said their recent visit to the region led them to the “inescapable conclusion” that Israel is conducting ethnic cleansing in both Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank and that "America is complicit."

Van Hollen and Merkley, who are both members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released a report on Thursday following their participation in a congressional delegation visit to Israel, the West Bank, the border of Gaza, Jordan and Egypt in late August.

"We found that the Netanyahu government has used a two-pronged approach to pursue its current strategy to displace Palestinians from Gaza — the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure and the use of food and humanitarian assistance as a weapon of war," the report reads. "The goal is, in effect, to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its Palestinian population."

The report begins by listing statements made by members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government calling for the destruction of all of Gaza and the removal of its people from the land.

The Senators visited Israel, meeting with the president, the American ambassador, hostages' families, and Israeli army soldiers from the whistleblowing organization Breaking the Silence. They visited an Israeli village on the border with Gaza, the Port of Ashdod and the Kerem Shalom crossing. They also visited the West Bank and, although the report's findings are focused on Gaza, it does describe conditions there as "ethnic cleansing in slow motion."

After a visit to Jordan, the senators traveled to Egypt. "Our first stop was the Rafah border crossing," the report reads. "Egyptian officials gave us a tour of the border area with Gaza, from which we could see into Gaza. From the rooftops, we witnessed firsthand the devastation and destruction: Rafah had been reduced to rubble."

Most of the 21-page report's findings, according to its authors, pertain to Netanyahu's refusal to allow food and humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave. Van Hollen and Merkley also report at length about the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Fund, whose sites they say act as "tools to restrict the flow of food and control population movement; and to make conditions so unbearable that Palestinians 'volunteer' to depart."

The concept of "voluntary exodus" pushed by the Israeli government, the senators write, is one of the "most fraudulent, sinister, and twisted cover stories ever told."

"There is nothing voluntary about wanting to depart when your home is gone, when your agricultural fields are no longer accessible," Van Hollen said at a press conference marking the report's publication.

Referring to Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who prop up Netanyahu's coalition, Van Hollen and Merkley conclude their report by saying: "They have used the horrors of Oct. 7 as both the argument and the opportunity to achieve goals they held long before the war started ... renewed Israeli occupation and control of Gaza as part of their vision of a Greater Israel."