Yemen’s foreign ministry condemns Israeli ministers’ calls to expel Palestinians from Gaza
Yemen Herald News 
ADEN, Yemen — Yemen’s foreign ministry condemned statements by two Israeli cabinet ministers calling for Palestinians to be removed from Gaza, the state news agency Saba reported on Sunday.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates called the statements a violation of international law and an assault on the rights of the Palestinian people, according to the agency.
Yemen rejects any attempt to displace Palestinians or to impose a new demographic or geographic reality in the occupied Palestinian territories, the ministry said.
It called on the international community and the UN Security Council to meet their legal and moral responsibilities and to confront the calls.
The ministry said the Gaza Strip is an inseparable part of occupied Palestinian land. It stressed preserving the unity of the Palestinian territories in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Yemen reaffirmed support for the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and to an independent state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, Saba reported.
The statement did not name the two Israeli ministers.
Israel Katz, the Israeli defence minister, told a news conference last week that the government was organised and prepared to remove Palestinians from Gaza by sea, by air and by every way possible, CBC News and Al Jazeera reported. He said there was no real solution for Gaza without such migration.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, set out a plan to remove all Palestinians from the strip and called for a ministry to handle emigration, Democracy Now and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported. The plan sets a target of 250,000 departures in the first year and 1.86 million within seven years.
The population of the Gaza Strip is about 2.1 million.
The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 prohibits the forcible transfer or deportation of protected persons from occupied territory, whatever the motive. Legal scholars and UN bodies have cited that provision in objecting to proposals to move Gaza’s population.
Katz linked the plan to Washington. CBC News reported him as saying Israel was ready to move Palestinians out of the strip if the United States gave the go-ahead.
Proposals to relocate Gazans have circulated since early 2025, when US President Donald Trump floated moving the population and redeveloping the territory. Arab governments rejected the idea at the time.
The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Qatar and Egypt issued a joint condemnation of the two ministers’ remarks, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasem called the statements an extremely dangerous development, according to Palestinian media reports.
The account of Yemen’s statement rests on Saba, which is run by the internationally recognised government. The ministry has not published the text separately, and Yemen Herald found no independent confirmation of its wording.
Yemen has never recognised Israel and has long backed a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines. Saba reported on Monday that Foreign Minister Afrah al-Zouba described the Palestinian cause as a matter of right and justice rooted in Yemenis’ national conscience.
Gaza has also shaped the war inside Yemen. The Houthi movement, which holds Sanaa and much of the north, began attacking merchant shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in November 2023 and said the campaign was pressure on Israel over the war.
The internationally recognised government, seated in Aden, opposes those attacks and says they threaten navigation through the Bab al-Mandab strait. It has separately voiced support for the Palestinians.
The government has raised the Palestinian question in several recent diplomatic contacts. Saba reported that al-Zouba praised South Africa’s stance on the issue when she met its non-resident ambassador on Sunday.
Yemen took part in a preparatory meeting of the Arab Group ahead of the UN Human Rights Council session at the start of the month, the agency reported.
Fighting at home has intensified in the past week. Houthi forces launched simultaneous ground assaults in southern Hodeidah and in three districts west of Taiz on Thursday, according to Al Jazeera and Arab News, which described the attack as the largest since the UN-brokered truce of April 2022.
Hans Grundberg, the UN special envoy for Yemen, called the escalation extremely alarming and urged the parties to halt hostilities, his office said.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said nearly 1,800 families fled in less than 48 hours and that several displacement camps in Maqbanah and Jabal Habashi emptied under shelling. It said emergency stocks were severely depleted.
At least four civilians were killed and nine wounded in a missile strike on the Heijah al-Abd road south of Taiz on Saturday, Al Jazeera and The National reported. Both outlets attributed the attack to Houthi forces.
The United Nations humanitarian plan for 2026 puts the number of people needing assistance in Yemen at more than 22 million, of whom 18.3 million are acutely food insecure. It records more than 2.2 million children under five as acutely malnourished, including 516,157 severe cases.
The plan counts 5.2 million people displaced inside Yemen and seeks 2.16 billion dollars to reach 12 million of them.
Saba did not say when the ministry issued its statement.
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