Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says that the Israeli army is “on the eve of a forceful entry to Gaza”, where it will be permanently stationed in future.
He was speaking after his security cabinet gave its approval to a new plan for tens of thousands more Israeli soldiers to seize and occupy parts of Gaza, forcing its 2.3 million population into an even smaller enclave of shattered buildings in the south.
Civilian casualties are likely to be horrendous and will be in addition to at least 52,615 Palestinians already killed in Gaza along with 118,752 others injured since the start of the war on 7 October, 2023, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Israel stopped all aid entering Gaza on 2 March and ended the ceasefire on 18 March. Since then a further 2,200 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli bombardment. The escalation by Israel is scheduled to take place after Donald Trump completes his visits to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates that begin on 13 May.
Pressure from Trump prior to him taking office led to a brief ceasefire, but his subsequent vision of the Gaza Strip as “the Riviera of the Middle East” – from which Palestinians will be permanently removed – has served to legitimise Israeli plans for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.
Netanyahu may have been surprised by the lack of push-back from the West, as well as the Arab and Islamic countries, as the destruction of Gaza has proceeded over the past 18 months since Hamas launched an attack that killed 1,200 Israelis. At that time, any Israeli intention to destroy Gaza, expel its population and replace them with Israeli settlers was only openly espoused by extreme ethno-nationalist right-wing parties. But open expression of such an aim has now become normalised without facing much international opposition.
The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem says that Israel “has been blocking the entry of food and humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, deliberately starving over two million people, including more than one million children”. Two weeks ago, the World Food Programme said that its food warehouses in Gaza were empty.
“This deadly siege is enabled by the international community in an abdication of its responsibility to protect human lives,” says B’Tselem. “The Israeli government and other decision-makers continue to deliberately and openly order the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity that exacerbate the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.”
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In Gaza, we are seeing the normalisation of evil
Read MoreIsraeli military reservists are already beginning to receive their call-up notices. “It is time to launch the concluding moves,” Netanyahu says Israeli officers told him, claiming that it could help bring home surviving hostages. However, many families of the hostages believe it will inevitably lead to their deaths, as they are killed by Israeli bombs and shells, or by their captors, if Israeli forces get close to rescuing them. “We are not done,” Netanyahu is quoted as saying. “We are before the finish line.”
Meanwhile, Hamas says it will no longer take part in ceasefire negotiations with Israel, because it sees no point in doing so “as long as the hunger war and extermination war” continues on the Gaza Strip, according to one of the group’s senior officials, Basem Naim.
Netanyahu’s opponents in Israel say the expanded military campaign would not fundamentally alter the balance of force between Israel and the Palestinians. But this is not really the case, because Israel won a number of decisive military and political successes in 2024. Backed unwaveringly by president Joe Biden’s administration, it defeated Hezbollah in Lebanon and saw president Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s main ally in the Middle East, overthrown in Syria. Despite Biden’s support for Israel in the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s far-right government was pleased to see him replaced by Trump and the Republicans, who are even more committed to Israel.
Over the past week, Israeli bombers have struck Sanaa airport in Yemen and closed it, as well as the main Yemeni port of Hodeidah. It has also attacked buildings in the centre of Damascus and said that no Syrian army units will be allowed to operate south of the Syrian capital.
Israel is now very much a Middle East superpower, with its aircraft bombing Lebanon, Syria and Yemen at will. Arab states that once might have put up some military resistance to Israel – Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Libya – have either disintegrated entirely or are much weaker than was once the case.
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