Washington DC - After a fact-finding mission, Senators Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley have come to the "inescapable conclusion" that Israel is trying to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip.

The two Democratic senators made the conclusion in a report entitled The Netanyahu Government Is Implementing a Plan to Ethnically Cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, which they released after joining an August 24-September 1 congressional delegation to the Middle East.

"During our week-long visit to Israel, the West Bank, the border of Gaza, Jordan, and Egypt, the facts demonstrated overwhelmingly that Israel is putting these words into action by implementing a plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians and dealing a death blow to the vision of a future Palestinian state that would include Gaza and the West Bank," the lawmakers wrote, after citing examples of Israeli politicians' statements calling for the destruction and takeover of Gaza.

Van Hollen and Merkley further condemned Israel's "use of food as a weapon of war" as it tries to drive Palestinians out of their homeland by "making it impossible for them to live there."

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Israel has been widely accused of engineering mass starvation in Gaza. The United Nations has officially declared a famine in the Palestinian territory, while a growing number of human rights organizations and experts have determined that Israel is committing genocide.

The senators noted that while the focus of their report was Gaza, they also witnessed an alarming increase in Israeli settler activity in the West Bank, which they called a process of "ethnic cleansing in slow motion."

Van Hollen and Merkley went on to outline the atrocities against Palestinians facilitated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US-backed so-called aid scheme that has replaced and severely reduced established international distribution channels.

Israeli troops regularly open fire on Palestinians seeking aid, with at least 1,373 people killed between May 27 and July 31.

"We heard a firsthand account from a doctor who had treated many of the Palestinians who were injured by the gunfire around the GHF sites. They stated that when GHF announces the time food distribution sites open, 'our staff start preparing body bags.'"

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UN experts and Human Rights Watch have condemned the GHF sites as "death traps," while human rights and legal organizations have urged the group to cease operations amid the Israeli-induced famine in Gaza.

"The combination of allowing only a handful of GHF sites to operate and limiting those sites to southern Gaza is a clear indication that their operations were designed by the Netanyahu government to use food as a method of population control," Van Hollen and Merkley stated.

"The Israeli government has made clear it wants to empty northern Gaza of its population, especially as it has now launched a fresh offensive against Gaza City. By restricting the flow of food into northern Gaza while establishing the GHF sites in the south, it is using hunger and food to achieve that objective."

The senators added that the world "must impose penalties and costs" on those implementing the ethnic cleansing plan.

Israel – with unflagging US military and diplomatic support – has killed more than 64,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023, according to the territory's health ministry, though the true number is believed to be far higher.