Overview

• Mossad director David Barnea met with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff in Washington to seek American backing for resettling Gaza’s displaced residents
• Barnea cited tentative openness from Ethiopia, Indonesia and Libya to receive large numbers of Palestinians under a voluntary transfer framework
• Witkoff remained non-committal on U.S. involvement and Washington’s willingness to actively facilitate the plan is still unclear
• Israel’s government portrays relocation as voluntary, but U.S. and Israeli legal experts warn that uprooting Gaza’s population could amount to a war crime
• The diplomatic push follows abandoned Trump-era proposals for direct U.S. redevelopment of Gaza and now hinges on incentive-based outreach to third-party nations