way:
......a slow ethnic cleansing is already under way, primarily through the systematic destruction of the Palestinian economy; when people cannot make a living, many will leave.
Life for Palestinians means constant harassment at checkpoints. Olive trees, central to agriculture there, are bulldozed by Israeli troops who claim they provide cover for snipers. Palestinian homes are demolished, supposedly because Palestinians built on their land without appropriate permits, which Israel will not give them. [...]
As Effi Eitam of the right-wing National Religious Party has put it, if Palestinians find "the situation so hard and so dangerous that they prefer to move to some other part of the world," well, he will shed no tears.
The plan appears to be working. According to the Jerusalem Post, by August last year about 80,000 Palestinians had left the West Bank and Gaza, a 50 percent increase over last year.
If this ethnic cleansing--either the slow version or expulsion by Israeli soldiers--is successful, another term may come into play: genocide. The crime of genocide is generally associated with mass killing, but international law defines genocide as acts intended "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group." One of the five types of acts is "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."
Creating conditions "so hard and dangerous" that they drive people off their land is a way to eliminate the Palestinian people. Not all the Palestinians need be killed; once completely dispersed in other countries, they will cease to be a recognizable group that could press a claim to that land.