[naasking]

Ethnic cleansing and genocide are obviously not the same. If Israel's intent were to kill virtually all Gazans, that would be genocide, but it seems very plausible that they would be entirely satisfied if all Gazans just left Gaza, which would be ethnic cleansing.

[disgruntledphd2]

Look, I remember this being discussed at the time as a euphemism to avoid the necessity for intervention.

The wikipedia article suggests that I'm not alone in this belief: "Both the definition and charge of ethnic cleansing is often disputed, with some researchers including and others excluding coercive assimilation or mass killings as a means of depopulating an area of a particular group,[6][7] or calling it a euphemism for genocide or cultural genocide.[8][9]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing