Israeli ambassador pushes back on ‘ethnic cleansing’ charge from Democrats

Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, rejected charges by two Senate Democrats that Israel is engaged in “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians, ahead of a major Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip and increasing violence between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. 

Leiter, in a statement to The Hill on Tuesday, took exception with the conclusion reached by Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Oreg.), who described their impressions of Israel’s war against Hamas as aimed at forcing the flight of Palestinians from Gaza, and policies in the West Bank as squeezing Palestinians into enclaves or being forced out of the territory.   

“The charge of ‘ethnic cleansing’ against Israel is false and dangerous. It is not a legal definition but a political label, used to inflame tensions, spread hate, and fuel antisemitism,” Leiter said in a statement. 

“Israel does not deport Palestinians because of their identity. Israel has, rather, temporarily removed non-combatant populations from war-zones in order to guarantee their safety.”

Ethnic cleansing is not a crime formally defined under international law, but its practice – namely a policy of forced or coerced displacement of a certain group of people – can constitute crimes against humanity and be part of a larger legal determination of genocide, according to the United Nations. 

Van Hollen and Merkley, speaking to reporters last week, said they were granted limited views of the Gaza Strip but looked into the city of Rafah from the border with Egypt. They said what once was a vibrant city had been reduced to rubble, the city razed to the ground, serving as one example of what they said was a large-scale campaign to influence the “voluntary emptying of Gaza its population, in other words, pushing people out of Gaza.” 

Leiter said the use of terms like “ethnic cleansing” was creating a false narrative that “incites rather than informs.” 

“This war is against Hamas, the group that carried out the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” he said, referring to Hamas’s terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed approximately 1,200 people, took more than 250 hostage and triggered the wider war. 

“It is not a war against the people of Gaza. The goal is to defend Israel’s borders and restore security for our people.”

Leiter said that Hamas exploits civilians as human shields and uses civilian infrastructure as part of its war bases and pointed to Israeli efforts of facilitating delivery of humanitarian aid – a process that has come under international scrutiny and pressure from the U.S. to scale up amid charges of famine in the strip. 

“The only ideology of ethnic cleansing in Gaza is Hamas’s, which seeks to destroy Israel at every turn and at any cost. The destruction of Israel is the first principle of the charter that guides them, and murder, mayhem, and terror is their MO,” Leiter continued. 

“Stability in the region requires the release of our hostages, Hamas’s defeat and dismemberment, and freedom for everyone from Hamas’s reign of terror. That is how this war, that was forced upon us, must end.”

Van Hollen and Merkley are not the only lawmakers who are disturbed by Israel’s conduct of the war and its displacement of Palestinians.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the chairman emeritus of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he raised concern in conversations with Israeli officials over efforts to find third countries to take in displaced Palestinians. While the plan is presented as providing safe harbor during reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, President Trump has suggested that Palestinians would not return.

“The other final point that disturbed me a bit as well, talking to their leadership, was this idea of displacement of Palestinians to Uganda or other African nations,” McCaul said in conversation Tuesday on a panel hosted by the news site NOTUS.

“They said it would be voluntary or they would pay them money, I’m not sure that has a good optic to it as well. If we’re really looking for buy-in from the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and the King of Jordan, this has to be handled very delicately from the Palestinian side. 

Leiter, in his statement, did not respond to Van Hollen and Merkley’s charges of a slow-motion ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Merkley criticized the Israeli government for undertaking a collective campaign “designed to drive Palestinians out of the West Bank.” 

The lawmakers issued their charge of ethnic cleansing as a dire warning to preserve the possibility of a two-state solution. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly backed off a plan last week to bring up annexation of the West Bank, amid pushback from the United Arab Emirates.

Still, the Israeli government is criticized as greenlighting expansion of settlements in the West Bank and violence between Israeli settlers and Palestinians has escalated over the past few years. Four Palestinian-Americans have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7.