Biståndsminister Benjamin Dousa (M) om svälten i Gaza: ”Apokalyptiskt"

Ram Ben-Barak (left) and Danny Danon (right) (Yonatan Sindel, Oren Ben Hakoon/Flash 90)

Two Israeli lawmakers, one from the ruling Likud party and the other from the opposition Yesh Atid party, have urged the international community to take in Palestinian refugees from the Gaza Strip

In a rare display of cross-party solidarity, Danny Danon (Likud) and Ram Ben-Barak (Yesh Atid) published an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, calling for “countries around the world to accept limited numbers of Gazan families who have expressed a desire to relocate.”

Writing that “Hamas’s unprovoked terrorist attack has endangered not only Israel but the more than two million people who live in the Gaza Strip,” Danon and Ben-Barak criticized the United Nations for “doing nothing tangible to help Gaza’s residents” and urged the international community to “explore potential solutions to help civilians caught in the crisis.”

One such solution would be for countries in Europe to accept a limited number of Gazan refugees who are looking to relocate from the war-torn coastal enclave, they suggested.

Citing the war in the former country of Yugoslavia and the Kosovo war as times that European countries have opened their borders to refugees, as well as the 1.2 million refugees accepted by Germany in the wake of the Syrian civil war, the two lawmakers urged countries around the world to “offer a haven for Gaza residents who seek relocation.”

“We simply need a handful of the world’s nations to share the responsibility of hosting Gazan residents. Even if countries took in as few as 10,000 people each, it would help alleviate the crisis,” they continued.

“The international community has a moral imperative—and an opportunity—to demonstrate compassion, help the people of Gaza move toward a more prosperous future and work together to achieve greater peace and stability in the Middle East.”

Danon and Ben-Barak are not the first to raise the option of granting refugee status to displaced Gazans.

On October 16, a report in the Financial Times indicated that in response to being pressured by the European Union to accept refugees fleeing Gaza, Egypt in return suggested that European countries do the same.