GAZA (Dispatches) -- Israeli forces carried out strikes and shelling across the Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing at least one Palestinian and wounding several others, as more than 700 Jewish settler activists gathered overnight near the Gaza fence to establish a new settlement outpost and call for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the strip.
An Israeli drone struck the Tal al-Tuffah area in northeastern Gaza City on Saturday morning, killing one Palestinian and wounding several others, medics said. 
In the central Bureij camp, a young girl was wounded by Israeli army gunfire, and in southern Khan Younis, Israeli armored vehicles opened heavy fire toward tents sheltering displaced families near the al-Namsawi cemetery, residents said. Artillery shelling was also reported east of Gaza City. 
The Gaza Health Ministry said the total number of Palestinians killed since October 2023 had reached 74,396, the majority women and children, with some independent estimates suggesting the toll reaches into the hundreds of thousands.
The settler extremists established the outpost, named Halutzei Gaza (Pioneers of Gaza), opposite Gaza City, in hopes of relocating it within the devastated strip itself after nearly three years of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. 
During the event, terrorists from the Nachala settler movement erected living structures and installed basic infrastructure. Participants included dozens of parents with their children, Israeli soldiers wounded in Gaza, rabbis, Knesset members, and public figures.
The Nachala movement is now calling on the terrorist regime of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to move the outpost from its current location into northern Gaza, claiming the strip is “an inseparable part of the Land of Israel.” 
“Only taking territory and establishing settlements will instill in the enemy a clear sense of defeat,” the Nachala movement stated. 
Daniella Weiss, head of a Zionist settler movement, said: “The settlers want to see the sea. That is a logical and romantic demand. Gaza must be erased so that settlers can see the sea. We must evacuate Gaza of all Arabs and build Jewish settlements in all of Gaza.”
The movement also outlined its demands for the regime that will be formed following this month’s Knesset elections, including the establishment of communities in the Gaza Strip, and “the encouragement of emigration”. 
Emigration is the euphemism Jewish settlers use to refer to the forced expulsion of Gaza’s roughly 2 million Palestinian inhabitants.
After occupying the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israel established a settlement bloc in Gaza called Gush Katif. 
In 2005, then-Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon withdrew the settlers and dismantled Gush Katif in exchange for permission from former U.S. president George Bush to expand settlement in the occupied West Bank. 
Since then, Israel’s Jewish settler movement has sought to reverse the withdrawal, known as the “Disengagement Plan,” and rebuild Gush Katif.
In July 2023, just months before the genocide of Palestinians began, Jewish settler leader Orit Strock called for a war on Gaza to conquer it and re-establish Gush Katif.