While eyes remain peeled on Israel’s increasingly violent and expanding campaign in Lebanon, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is proving ever more predatory with the Gaza Strip. With aggrandizing impunity, more territory is being acquired for familiar reasons: Hamas is on the run and needs to be crushed further (the organisation is proving oddly resilient and contradictory to Israeli objectives here); Palestinian autonomy, even in so small an area, would be a future threat to Israel unless heavily invigilated and policed; and, well, there is that old desire to ethnically cleanse the territory.
Speaking at a conference on May 28, Netanyahu outlined his plans for further seizures. “We are currently squeezing Hamas; we now control 60% of the territory of the Strip – you know this. We were at 50, we moved to 60. My directive is to move to…” (at that point, an enthusiastic voice in the crowd interjected with “100”). Not wishing to state it that obviously, the PM went on to say that the IDF would “go step by step. First of all, 70. Let’s start with that. We’re pressing them from all sides, we’ll deal with the remnants.”
On May 27, the Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz wrote on his X account that the government “had pledged to eliminate everyone who led the October 7 massacre, and that is what we will do.” The agenda of elimination in the Strip is an ongoing one, with the announced killing of Hamas military commander Mohammed Odeh giving him a certain febrile glee. “The fourth commander of the Hamas terror organization’s military wing in Gaza was eliminated yesterday and sent to meet his partners in the depths of hell.” Hamas would never be allowed to “rule Gaza civilly or militarily.” Katz also went further, suggesting with heavy ominousness that the “plan for voluntary emigration from Gaza” would commence “at the proper time and in the proper manner.”
The fact that the IDF had already gobbled territory to a hefty proportion of 60% had already breached the terms of the US-brokered ceasefire effective since October 10, 2025. (The original amount was 53%). In mid-May, Netanyahu, in remarks made at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva on the occasion of the 59th anniversary of the unification of Jerusalem, boasted that Israel had, over the previous two years “shown the world what immense power is inherent in our people, in our state, in our army, in our heritage.” The most important thing was breaking “the barrier of fear. We brought our hostages home, to the very last one. Today we control 60 percent.”
This should have come as a surprise, but such breaches and violations are common fare in Israel’s singular interpretation of ceasefires. (Pro-Israeli critics naturally overlook this, seeing, instead, a stubborn Hamas outfit that refuses to disarm while committing its own complement of ceasefire violations.) The ceasefire in Gaza has proven a particularly bloody one for Palestinians, with 738 having perished since October last year. In January, Haaretz was already reporting on the westward shift of the Yellow Line. According to Laurie Bouvier, a geographic information systems expert working for Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the 60 percent figure was an accurate one, and likely to change given ongoing expansion with new yellow blocks identified in such neighbourhoods as Zeitoun in Gaza City.
The Hamas-run government media office described Netanyahu’s promise of seizing 70% of territory as “a dangerous escalation.” According to its head, Ismail al-Thawabta, “any attempt to impose a new reality of occupation in Gaza is null and illegitimate.”
From New York, the United Nations spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric also added the views of the organisation by stating that, “One hundred percent of Gaza should be for the Palestinian people.” The UN had “been calling on Israel to pull back from its occupation from the so-called yellow line, and that will continue to be our position.”
The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF has expressed concerns the seizure of even more land by the Israeli forces will only worsen a situation where food, water and hygiene are lacking. UNICEF spokesman Salim Oweis, speaking from Gaza to reporters based in Geneva, noted how people had “been crammed into around 40 percent of the space.” They were “sheltering among broken buildings, rubble and mounting solid waste.” The suffering this was causing children was becoming “widely apparent: children with respiratory infections, acute watery diarrhea, and more than half of all households reporting skin diseases.”
This will only be seen by the Israeli authorities as another sob story, the needless tearjerker disseminated by international organisations and commentators who should know better. There is an agenda to implement with necessary ruthlessness, Palestinian officials to kill along with their families, political emasculation of Palestinian will to achieve and, ultimately, a Strip cleansed of Arabs in favour of the Jewish state’s bright and noble citizens.
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This should not be a surprise to anyone.
Israel has occupied or blockaded Palestinian territories since the “six day war” in 1967.
Put simply, this is a continuation of their bastardry under the “leadership” of that arsehole Nettinyahoo.
What more does Albanese need to justify calling in the Israeli Ambassador, withdrawing his credentials and expelling him from Australia? Is the Israel/Jewish lobby so powerful that our own Prime Minister cannot act against this horrendous nation? Netanyahu’s rabble raising rants come the same day that the UN has blacklisted the IDF and classified its inhuman actions along with those of ISIS and Al-Queda. Is there a total news blackout over Canberra?
where is The West? Where are the Democracies? Where is Australia’s strong condemnation and the calling in of Zionist Israel’s Ambassador to Australia? When will he be removed from our shores for now being the representative of Sexual abuse in “War” (ie Genocide) as called out by UN????
Babies still being bombed and torture is still occurring. Our own citizens are being tortured and raped by Zionists. How WEAK is our Govt!!!
So so deeply distressing!!
Israel was hacked out of a perfectly legal Palestine in 1948, which the controlling British had no right whatever to “give away.” The UNO had no such right either. The USA had no right, but, turncoat Truman, advised that he needed Jewish money and power for re-election, became a pro-Zionist supporter. This was racist, supremacist, imperialist criminality. The British Cecil/Balfour family group allied its drives to control this with Rhodes, Milner and huge Rothschild pushes and profiteering interests. Bedouin tribes went unloved, betrayed. Now, endless murdering, robbing, humiliating supremacist superstition driven filth ensues constantly. A chosen master race at it? We’ve seen that…and now, Trumpery clouds everything…
When the history of humanity is written, rewritten, the dominant theme will be that of oppressors robbing, thieving, stealing, razing, raping, pillaging, looting, killing, engaging in genocidal missions, denying, lying, justifying based on historical precedents and biblical superstitions, rationalising based on paranoid fantasies and animalistic hatred and stupidities… the faults and errors of the human creature are endless and lead to savageries that even the lords of the jungle cannot contemplate.
How long will this last? Is a thousand years too positive a number? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?
Kanga, that’s all true, but we must not lose sight of the fact that while all the rape and pillage is going on, the vast bulk of humanity is quietly going about its business — working, putting food on the table and a roof overhead, relaxing with family and friends.
And blogging to make the world a better place.
This tells us that a foundation trait of humanity is decency.
That’s what will prevail in the end.
Just don’t ask me when. 🙂
Uncletimbrob: So true. Nothing new. To be expected. Sadly.
Thankyou Steve for the positive thoughts. I find it amazing that when most individuals are peaceful and doing altruistic work for their communities, and so many are creative and artistic, that, as nations, we are determined on dominating and destroying neighboring states on often very feeble grounds
Men and women of good will and conscience established what we have come to know as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The Statute establishes the ICC’s function, jurisdiction, and structure, including the four core international crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. The Court has the legal capacity to exercise its functions and powers on the territory of any State Party and, by special agreement, on the territory of any other State.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) can exercise jurisdiction over nationals of non-signatory states under two specific conditions: when the alleged crimes occur on the territory of an ICC member state [Palestine is a member state but Lebanon is not], or when the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) refers a situation to the ICC
The ICC has issued a warrant for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu, for him to be surrendered to the court and for him to be subjected to the justice of the Court.
It is for us to ensure that Netanyahu is apprehended and delivered to the Hague.
It has always been about a giant land grab, the people who lived there are an inconvenience to be frightened, murdered and railroaded into leaving. Netanyahu and his band of nationalist thugs are going to keep expanding and extending until they are removed from power and I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
Moving the yellow line to 60 or 70% is just a fiction, what they mean is bomb the shit out of everything progressively with the intention of leaving not one building standing. The other fiction is that they are trying to eliminate Hamas. (Which as Binoy remarked is proving remarkably resilient though That’s just another excuse for the campaign of genocide. The entire west is complicit now because it will not stop the Israeli madness. The psychopathic butcher Netanyahu, his supporters and the Israeli Death Forces must be brought to book. Our own government’s cowardly supineness in the face of the clear evil of Israel is to be condemned. How many more innocents have to die before Israel is curtailed?
&When the history of humanity is written, rewritten, the dominant theme will be that of oppressors robbing, thieving, stealing, razing, raping, pillaging, looting, killing, engaging in genocidal missions, denying, lying, justifying based on historical precedents and biblical superstitions, rationalising based on paranoid fantasies and animalistic hatred and stupidities…
Canguro:
The title of James Fell’s new book says it all more concisely: Greedy Sexist Religious Bigots.
Oz, under the spell of Anglo-America, in the early to mid 20th Century a well known bolt-hole for those fleeing Europe, including a share of war criminals, was significantly involved in the establishment of Israel.
Leader of the ALP and Minister for External Affairs, H.V. “Doc” Evatt, as an avowed Zionist, before and as first President of the UNGA (1948-9), organized and had passed the partitioning of Palestine without referral to the Palestinians. Meanwhile his ALP mate in Melbourne Arthur Calwell fearing a Labor fed election loss, lobbied the large Jewish community in Melb for financial backing, and encouraged “Doc” Evatt to lobby his Zionist associates in Sydney. Significant funds were raised, yet Labor lost the election. Even so, that major stream of funding went on for many years.
And through all those years, the Zionist Manifesto became more supremacist and aggressive in its demands, as did the quasi-state of Israel via its militarized govt and its habitation of vicious armed gangs against Palestinians and all foreign state comers. The British and French left the Palestinians for dead, as the brutalized Polish-Lithuanian, Russian and American Ashkenazi rolled in full of wrath and hope for a ‘Greater Israel’.
The process continued, and gained ongoing massive backing by America from the 1960s.
There have been innumerable attempts to settle the disputes between the ‘Greater Israel’ actions and the rights of Palestinians, but funding by America has encouraged Israeli expansive adventurism.
The assassination of Rabin, and rise of Netanyahu and his propaganda machine to its vicious, armed-to-the-teeth supremacist apogee, in league with America beholden to its all powerful Zionists and evangelist Christian-Zionists, saw the acceleration of oppression of Palestinians and quest for ‘Greater Israel’.
The deception of the Abraham Accords enabled the ‘proxy twins’ Netanyahu and Trump to have huge US military bases offering ‘protection’ in the now supine & wealthy Arab Gulf States, but underlying, to aid ‘Greater Israel’ and target Iran – the only active defenders of Palestinians, whilst at the same time facilitating America’s aim of controlling the world’s oil.
The ‘Greater Israel’ incursions accelerated. Then the mass murder and starvation of Palestinians, destruction of Gaza and southern Lebanon, and incursions throughout the Levant then unilateral war on Iran.
The ‘proxy twins’ believed they had trapped the world. Israel does not permit oversight by the IAEA, neither has ratified the ‘Rome Statute’, America constantly voting against resolutions of the UNGA, and vetoing action in the UNSC, both ignore the ICJ & ICC, and both have actively set about smashing the UN.
The situation couldn’t be worse for the world without all-out world-war. But the brazen pathological nature of the ‘proxy twins’, Trump’s attacks on NATO, his world-wide tariff regime, his illegal ventures against Venezuela and Cuba, their unilateral war on Iran and the outfall on Gulf states and closure of the Strait of Hormuz has crushed America financially, politically and diplomatically giving rise to the rest of the world carefully and strategically pushing back – terrified by the significant systemic power remaining with America.
Oz is well and truly trapped, and now with Trump as POTUS, terrified by its history of accommodation with Israel and with America (especially its military CIA & NSA) and all its embedment in Oz, and its facilities especially Pine Gap, data from which Israel has access to via NSA.