Maybe you were waiting for the alarm bells to ring, or for the Israeli army spokesperson to issue an official announcement. But the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, long referred to in Israeli parlance as “transfer,” is already underway. Not in some distant future. Right now.

It’s not exactly happening before Israeli eyes — it’s always possible to look away — but the echoes are reaching Israeli homes. The thundering blasts from Gaza heard across the country are personal messages, like those the army used to send Gazans in a previous era of cruelty: “Your home is about to be bombed. Leave immediately.” This is the updated version of the message, addressed not to the people of Gaza, but to Israeli citizens: “The transfer is underway. It is progressing. And it cannot be undone.”

Of course, the transfer didn’t begin just now, and in the horrific chaos of recent months, it’s hard to fully grasp the scale and meaning of what’s unfolding. It’s also not proceeding exactly as its initiators wished. But that is precisely the danger: when a process like this stalls, the likely response is escalation, and a still more dreadful result.

So how is the transfer being carried out at this moment? Through starvation and the destruction of vital infrastructure. Through the weaponization of “humanitarian aid.” Through relentless, systematic bombing. Many of these tactics have been reported in the media, but the “food distribution method” remains one of the least intuitive. It is crucial to understand: what may appear to be a “tragic logistical failure” is, in fact, a deliberate strategy.

Monopolizing food aid

The recurring massacres of Palestinians rushing to food distribution centers, with at least 245 Palestinians killed in the past two weeks, have shocked many. But these incidents should not distract us from the structural change: instead of hundreds of food distribution centers operating across the Gaza Strip by experienced international organizations, Israel set up only four centers for over two million people. That is not how to meet the needs of a population after many months of devastation and deprivation. It’s how you starve and strip survivors of their human dignity.

The location of the four centers is no less important. One is in the central part of the Strip along the Netzarim Corridor, and three in the south, west of Rafah. A quick look at the map is enough to understand: there is no connection between the locations of the “distribution centers” and the needs of the people.

Instead, the goal is to promote “moving the population” southward, ideally into the “concentration zones.” Since this constitutes a crime against humanity, Israel employed concealment tactics: first expelling established aid groups that could provide aid efficiently, then outsourcing distribution to opaque entities like the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

As early as May 11, Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly stated in a secret session of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that “receiving aid would be conditional on Gazans not returning to the places from which they came to the aid distribution sites.” This policy’s underlying logic was confirmed by Dr. Tammy Caner, a lawyer and director of the Law and National Security Program at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a think tank with close ties with the Israeli military.

Indeed, the recent and sudden U-turn by Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich— who went from vehemently opposing any aid to “Arabs” to endorsing it so “that the world does not stop us and accuse us of war crimes” — should also be understood as an endorsement of Netanyahu’s scheme to use food distribution to extort Gazans into “consenting” to their displacement.

Dr. Caner also confirmed that according to most experts, if Israel’s stated concern is Hamas seizing aid supplies, the logical solution would be flooding Gaza with abundant provisions in order to eliminate any single group’s ability to monopolize resources. But in fact, monopoly is precisely the point: Israel wants it for itself, to wield it as leverage against the civilian population. Starvation and distribution under the occupier’s conditions are two complementary methods of using food as a weapon.

A dangerous failure

Facilitating “population transfer” through the denial and conditional provision of basic necessities is not a new Israeli tactic. In a yet-unpublished study, I found that in the early 1950s, Israeli authorities systematically weaponized access to essential supplies, primarily against Palestinians and to a lesser but significant extent against Jews (mostly Mizrahim) whom the state sought to use to settle frontier regions.

Yet it remains unclear whether the starvation-transfer plan is achieving its intended goals. Reports from Gaza suggest that those reaching distribution centers are primarily the ones physically strong enough to walk several kilometers and carry back a week’s worth of food. Meanwhile, Israel has so far failed to compel the hundreds of thousands remaining in northern Gaza to make the long journey south — and at this stage, has also failed to stop many from returning. After all, who would embark on such a grueling trek if they can’t bring food back to their loved ones who stayed behind?

Does this mean the danger is diminishing — that starvation-transfer plan isn’t working? Not necessarily. The plan is still in its early stages and if allowed to continue, the suffering it produces could very well achieve its intended effect. More importantly, in the absence of public criticism, oversight, or meaningful international pressure, the likely response to the short-term failure of coercive measures is escalation: more destruction, more violence. There are already signs of this in northern Gaza, which comes after the army’s complete flattening of Rafah. The apparent goal of this systematic demolition of vital infrastructure and residential buildings is to force residents out in a way that makes return impossible.

There is even explicit confirmation of this intent in leaked remarks by Netanyahu during the same session of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee: “We’re destroying more and more homes — they have nowhere to return to. The only natural outcome will be that Gazans will want to emigrate out of the Strip. Our main problem is with receiving countries.”

This is what the ongoing bombings are designed to accomplish: to continue the waves of destruction from previous months and render northern Gaza, along with other areas, uninhabitable. The major transfer project remains very much on the table, with various factions of the Israeli right — both inside and outside the government — actively involved.

The outcome of ‘concentration zones’

Where are people supposed to go if they cannot withstand the unbearable pressure? For months, Israel has been in talks with potential “receiving countries” — a selection of authoritarian regimes that, one can assume, are weighing factors like regime stability, international legitimacy, and, undoubtedly, what they would receive in return for their cooperation. But as long as there’s a lack of willing “receiving” countries, the question remains: where, exactly, is Israel trying to transfer these people?

Israeli authorities openly speak of creating three so-called “concentration zones” within Gaza itself. These areas appeared on a leaked map published by The Times on May 17, based on diplomatic sources. But the map is misleading: it omits the fact that residents have already been expelled from the entire border area of the Gaza Strip, and that a systematic campaign of demolition has already taken place there. According to official statements, Gazans will not be allowed to return or live in those areas.

In a map published in Haaretz a week later, the designated “concentration areas” appear even smaller. According to rough estimates, the Gaza block covers around 50 square kilometers, the central camps block about 85, and the Al-Mawasi coastal strip just eight.

Data gathered by humanitarian organizations also confirms that Palestinians in Gaza continue to be expelled into ever-smaller territories. Before the war, impoverished Gaza already had a population density comparable to that of London. If Israel succeeds in forcing the civilian population into the zones marked on the Haaretz map, over 2 million Gazans would be crammed into just 40 percent of the Strip. The resulting density would reach approximately 15,000 people per square kilometer — living in a scorched landscape, stripped of infrastructure.

Official Israeli spokespeople refer to these as “concentration areas,” but their limited size, the prohibition on exiting them, and the near-total absence of infrastructure or means of survival, makes it possible to confidently refer to them as concentration camps.

Realistically, there are only so many ways to confine millions under military oversight on a narrow strip of land. For military and political leaders, the leaking of maps and plans serves another function: to test the waters — to see if anyone will resist, to find out just how far they can go before encountering consequences. Maybe they’ll manage to concentrate the survivors into three “concentration areas.” Maybe the end result will be something else. Do you really want to wait to find out?

No master plan required

My Palestinian friends will say: of course, as we’ve said all along, the Nakba is not a single event, but an ongoing process. That’s entirely true. But that shouldn’t mean we miss the significance of what is happening right now.

First, dispossession and expulsion unfold at a variable pace, with periods of acceleration and escalation, as well as stretches of stabilization. There have even been moments of modest, yet meaningful, Palestinian return. What we are witnessing now is an almost inconceivable acceleration of forced displacement.

Second, pace is not only a matter of time. When the pace of the process accelerates, so does its brutality. The line between ethnic cleansing and extermination can vanish quickly, almost automatically, when armed forces accelerate the process without restraint. In conditions of war, without international oversight and under the cover of chaos, a failed or stalled transfer can slide into mass killing.

That’s how transfer turns murderous, especially when it stalls. The repeated displacement of people within the confined territory of the Strip is not only designed to sever them from their homes, but also to rip apart the fabric of their lives. Some die “on their own.” Others become a “problem” that must be solved through yet more brutal means. Systematic destruction creates a new reality: entire areas rendered uninhabitable, which then seemingly justifies further expulsion on “humanitarian grounds.” The forced relocation to so-called “concentration areas” produces unbearable living conditions by design.

When people seek relief from the crushing pressure, the exit door may open, but only in one direction. The alternative? Life inside the “concentration areas” may at some point push the population to resist, in any way they can. Such resistance could then be used as a pretext for policing raids, for revenge operations, for massacres — all of which would accelerate the process. It’s entirely possible that faced with the failure to corral people into massive holding pens, to force them out of Gaza, or to “manage” the humanitarian catastrophe it has itself created, the army will push the murderous dynamic even further.

The twentieth century has shown us, time and again, how quickly armed forces radicalize when operating under the doctrine of total war against civilian populations. That is how those most committed to destruction rise to command — people like Israeli Brigadier General Ofer Winter. To move from a failed transfer to full-scale ethnic cleansing, to escalate this disaster beyond anything we’ve yet seen, no master plan is required. Our silence is enough.

Thanks to Amira Hass, Liat Kozma, Lee Mordechai, Alon Cohen-Lifshitz, Gerardo Leibner, and Meron Rapoport for their help and comments.

A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.