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The Oxford Dictionary defines “euphemism” as “a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.” Wars and conflicts that cause unbearable suffering have also become fertile ground for irritating euphemisms. After all, individuals or groups involved in inflicting pain and misery on others are trying to hide their sense of shame, embarrassment, guilt, or accountability by using “creative” and “imaginative” euphemisms in order to deflect from their responsibility for their ill-doings.

For example, one of the most used, though scorned, euphemisms from recent military history is “collateral damage,” a term first used during the Vietnam War. In reality, this refers to death, injury, or damage to property inflicted on noncombatants — sometimes unintended, but very often recklessly — during military operations. Two more examples are “extraordinary rendition” and “friendly fire.” The first refers to seizing terror suspects and whisking them away to remote places in order to use illegal interrogation techniques, including torture; while the second refers to being shot accidentally by your own side — and there is nothing friendly about that.

New wars bring with them new euphemisms or the dusting off of old ones, and in recent months Israel has increasingly been using two that are infuriating, but worse, pose a danger that if translated into reality are most likely to result in the committing of further war crimes. Let us start with the increasing use of “voluntary migration” regarding the people of Gaza. Nothing is voluntary in what is being suggested by Israeli officials. Cabinet ministers began floating this idea just weeks after the Hamas attack of Oct. 7.

The ultra-nationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who heads one of the religious ultra-nationalist parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, and happens also to be a prominent settler in the occupied West Bank, declared in November 2023: “I welcome the initiative of the voluntary emigration of Gaza Arabs to countries around the world, as the right humanitarian solution for the residents of Gaza.”

As the war continued, Netanyahu joined the chorus of supporters and endorsed this despicable idea, encouraged by the US president's suggestion to push the entire Gaza population out of the enclave, while calling it “a remarkable idea,” and one that “should be really pursued.” To translate this idea into a practical plan, Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz announced the establishment of a new directorate in the Defense Ministry tasked with enabling Palestinians to “voluntarily” leave the Gaza Strip.

The use of the world “voluntary” is deliberately misleading because those who are plotting the operation are well aware that Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the occupying power or to that of any other country, occupied or not.”

Gaza’s more than 2 million people were living in the world’s biggest open-air prison even before the war broke out.

Yossi Mekelberg

The only exception is for the purpose of ensuring the security of the people displaced, and even the current Israeli government would find it impossible to convincingly advocate that this is their intention. Instead, experts in international law suggest that the constant displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and attempts to move them altogether out of the enclave are in breach of international law, and for the rest of us represent a cruel and immoral act of immense proportions, with serious political implications across the region.

Those who toy with “voluntary migration” know that they abuse the term voluntary, as it suggests doing something of one’s own free will. Gaza’s more than 2 million people were living in the world’s biggest open-air prison even before the war broke out, and since then have been experiencing a living hell.

Most have already been forcefully displaced several times, suffering from extreme shortages of food, water, medical help, shelter, and other basic needs. They are also traumatized by what they have experienced and witnessed in nearly two years of a war that hardly distinguishes between combatants and noncombatants, while every day they live in the constant fear that this might be the last for themselves and their loved ones. And despite that, most do not want to leave what is their home, even if it is a devastated one. Who could blame them if in the face of this cruel reality, and with no end in sight, they did wish to leave? But fleeing from the horrors of a death trap hardly constitutes voluntary migration.

If this situation does not scare them enough to make them run for the border, the Israeli government has come up with the even more sinister idea of building a “humanitarian city” on the ruins of Rafah. One wonders what sick brains have been brewing this evil plan to cram at least 600,000 souls into a new encampment on the border with Egypt, in a location that is already one of the most densely populated territories in the world. Audaciously, Israel’s defense minister made no attempt to hide the true intention of this huge camp, openly declaring that those who move there will be free to leave, but only to go to another country — once again this doublespeak of “free will” and “completely voluntarily.” For the rest of us, this is a plan to transfer as many Palestinians as possible out of Gaza.

The international community must not fall into the trap of these euphemisms, and must call out these horrific ideas for what they are — cruel and inhumane, and aimed at pushing out of Gaza as many as Palestinians as possible, and leaving the place under Israeli control, along with the idea being floated of building settlements there for Israelis.

Those who supported Israel, and rightly so, after Oct. 7, should be brave and use what leverage they have to remove from the agenda any forced displacement or the building of what one former Israeli prime minister has called a concentration camp. The anger directed at Hamas for the hostages still held in captivity must not continue to be directed at innocent civilians as a justification for committing atrocities, and Israeli society must wake up and acknowledge this. After all, it is being done in their name.

A good start would be to call a spade a spade, and call out “voluntary migration” for what it is:  an attempt to force the residents of Gaza out of their homes and push them into an inhumane camp and not a so-called “humanitarian city.”

• Yossi Mekelberg is a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. X: @YMekelberg