(June 25, 2025)

Yunis explained that in recent years, the army focused on denying Palestinian building requests — as opposed to mandating the wholesale expulsion of Palestinian residents — as a way to mitigate international criticism. “They didn’t want the world to see that they’re carrying out ethnic cleansing, so they didn’t do big expulsions, with people being loaded onto trucks,” he told +972 and Local Call. “They’ve been trying to wear us down gradually, preventing us from working, demolishing homes, in the hope that people will become fed up and leave.”

Now, however, wholesale expulsion has become a very realistic prospect.