Killing civilians wholesale, starving them to convince those unaffected to change course, and shepherding whole populations like livestock into conditions of further misery would all qualify as heinous crimes in international law. When it comes to Israel’s war in Gaza, this approach is seen as necessary politics, unalloyed by the restraints of humanitarianism. When confronted with these harsh realities on the ground, unequivocal denials follow: This is not happening in Gaza; no one is starving. And if that were the case, blame those misguided savages in Hamas.
As the conflict chugs along in pools of blood and bountiful gore, the confused shape of Israel’s intentions continues in all its glorious nebulousness. Pretend moderation clouds murderous desire. There is no sense that those unfortunate Israeli hostages captured by Hamas in its assault on October 7, 2023 matter anymore, being merely decorative for the imminent slaughter. There is even less sense that Hamas will be cleansed and removed from the strip, however attractive this idea continues to be.
Such evident limits have not discouraged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet, who have decided that more force, that old province of the unimaginative, is the answer. According to the PM, the cabinet had agreed on a “forceful operation” to eliminate Hamas and salvage what is left of the hostage situation.
A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, Brigadier-General Effie Defrin, has explained on Israeli radio that the offensive will apparently ensure the return of the hostages. What follows will be “the collapse of the Hamas regime, its defeat, its submission.” Anywhere up to two million Palestinian civilians in Gaza will be herded into the ruins of the south. Humanitarian aid will be arranged by the Israeli forces, to be possibly distributed through approved contractors.
The IDF chief of staff, Lt. General Eyal Zamier, confirmed that the approved plan will involve “the capture of the Strip and holding the territories, moving the Gazan population south for its defence, denying Hamas and the ability to distribute humanitarian supplies, and powerful attacks against Hamas.”
Within the Israeli cabinet, ethnocentric and religious fires burn with bright fanaticism. The Israeli Finance Finister Bezalel Smotrich remains a figure who ignores floral subtlety in favour of the blood-stained sledgehammer. He remains that coherent link between cruel lawmaking and baffling violence. “Within a few months,” he boasts, “we will be able to declare that we have won. Gaza will be totally destroyed.” With pompous certitude, he also claimed that the next six months would see Hamas cease to exist.
Such opinions, expressed at the “Settlements Conference” organised by the Makor Rishon newspaper in Ofra, a West Bank settlement, gives a sense of the flavour. Palestinians are to be “concentrated” on land located between the Egyptian border and the arbitrarily designated Morag Corridor. As with any potential abuser keen to violate his vulnerable charges while justifying it, Smotrich tried to impress with the idea that this was a “humanitarian” zone that would be free of “Hamas and terrorism.”
The program here is clear in its chilling crudeness. Expulsion, relocation, transfer. These are the words famously used to move on populations of sizeable number in history, often at enormous cost. That this should involve lawmakers of the Jewish state adds a stunning, if perverse poignancy to this. They, the moved on in history, the expelled and the condemned wanderers, shall expel others and condemn them in turn. Smotrich also points the finger to desperation and hopelessness, the biting incentives that propel migration. The Palestinians will feel blessed in their banishment. “They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.”
Impossible to ignore in Smotrich’s steaming bile against the Palestinians is the broader view that no Palestinian state can arise, necessitating urgent, preventative poisoning. In addition to the eventual depopulation of Gaza, plans to reconstitute the contours of the West Bank, ensuring that Israeli and Palestinian traffic are separated to enable building and construction for settlements as a prelude to annexation, are to be implemented.
The issue of twisting and mangling humanitarian aid in favour of Israel’s territorial lust has raised some tart commentary. A statement from the Humanitarian Country Team of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, a forum led by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), does not shy away from the realities on the ground. All supplies, including those vital to survival, have been blocked for nine weeks. Bakeries and community kitchens have closed, while warehouses are empty. Hunger, notably among children, is rampant. Israel’s plan, as presented, “will mean that large parts of Gaza, including the less mobile and most vulnerable people, will continue to go without supplies.”
The UN Secretary General and the Emergency Relief Coordinator have confirmed that they will not cooperate in the scheme, seeing that it “does not adhere to the global humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality.”
The same point has been made by the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France and Germany. Despite all being solid allies of Israel, they have warned that violations of international law are taking place. “Humanitarian aid must never be used as a political tool and a Palestinian territory must not be reduced nor subjected to any demographic change.”
To date, a promise lingers that the offensive will only commence once US President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar takes place. But no ongoing savaging of Gaza with some crude effort at occupation will solve the historical vortex that continues to drag the Jewish state risk and oblivion.
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The Jews (and other ethnic groups) are all very familiar with the transport methods employed that enabled the 1939-45 Holocaust. Will Netanyahu and Smotrich build a rail line to the Sinai desert complete with cattle trucks to transport the Palestinians to their ultimate doom? A cynical question perhaps, but what else can we expect from these Zionist extremists?
You cannot defeat Hamas when everything you do breeds more despair and resentment from those against whom you do it. Every death is more reason for future hatred and retalliation, more justification for fighting against you.
We all know that Hamas has always been Netanyahu’s ruse, and that the ‘hostages’ has also become a ruse, particularly in light of the ‘Hannibal Directive’ and the IDF’s killing of many ‘citizens’ in October 2023. The Hamas insurgence certainly happened, but Netanyahu’s Israeli deceit and lies have been endlessly stacked upon it ever since.
Nothing new about the killing machine of Israel except that now it’s in the hands of the criminal hate-filled fascist Netanyahu, the paranoiac political Zionists and fanatics of Likud and the rogue press-ganged lunatics of IDF. All backed and fueled by the crumbling state of militarists, USA – who have their desperate imperial eyes focused on subjugation and rape of the entire Levant and Central Asia.
Via their erstwhile heft, the politically exceptionist USA has continually failed to join with the rest of the world in the war-restraining fundamentals of the UN and international law, and ignored universal humanitarian and environmental edicts, preferring brutal hegemonic militarism, coercion and extraction to slake its unbridled obsession and lust for reckless wealth, power and domination. And increasingly over the last 15+ years has been actively trying to demolish the UN and all its institutions.
America’s once economic power intimidated the ‘West’ (and others) who relied upon it, and toadied to their brutal hegemon. But American political lust has caused it to crumble, and now in the hands of the lunatic kleptocratic authoritarian T-Rump, puppet to American plutocrats, is seeing the lazy Europeans and British re-evaluate their cowardice. All America’s mostly brilliant and successful scientists and academics and their institutions are being smashed, along with their and the world’s poor and vulnerable – we’ve seen it before, and know where it leads.
What is most significant is that the collective increase in wealth and power of the ‘East’ is cleaving the influence and domination of America and Europe, and is placing enormous pressure on the behavior of America and Israel. One can only hope for the sake of Palestine (and others) that the pressure remains even handed, and that America ditches its lust and hubris, listens and acts in the interest of peace and equity for all – something that it only ever gave lip-service to.
More than ever before, the world now is trying to navigate the reality of the adage, ‘It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.’
Horrible to think about this..,murder and theft plotted, planned, committed. Evil.
“ Expulsion, relocation, transfer.”
You left out elimination.
Which is, and always has been, their primary goal.
The 2025 ITV documentary, Our Land – Israel’s Other War, clarifies (as if there were ever any misunderstanding for people with open eyes and unbiased minds) that the Israel v Palestine issue is insurmountable, unfixable, eternal. The level of hatred directed towards the Palestinian people, the attitudinal disgust and dismissal of those people by Israelis, the fundamental wish of the majority of the Jewish people to eliminate Palestinians as a living group undeniable, wicked, demonic, antihumanitarian. There are outliers, Jews who argue to the contrary, and they are also vilified, demonised, abused, bullied, attacked.
Hatfields & McCoys, writ large, winner takes all, particularly since America provides blanket protection for the provocateurs.