Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Mahmoud Mujadala at the Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that the spokesman for the Israeli army, Effie Defrin, announced Monday night that the army is preparing to implement a new military operation in the Gaza Strip, called “Gideon’s Chariots.” It will, he said, inaugurate a broad attack and will displace most of the inhabitants of Gaza. This remark was a reference to the plan to implement further ethnic cleansing on a wide scale of residents of the Gaza Strip, even as the humanitarian conditions descend to catastrophic levels.
The announcement came after the war cabinet agreed to a new escalation of the war on Gaza that would involve expanding the direct Israeli military occupation to additional areas of the Strip and a new wave of expulsions of the civilian population from the north and center, in preparation for corralling the vast majority of the 2.2 million Palestinians there in the south. The pretext here is an attempt to divide the civilian population from the militants.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the extremist leader of the racist “Religious Zionism” bloc, insisted that Israelis must accept the term “occupation.” He bruited a plan for Israeli authorities to control all disbursement of aid in Gaza, a plan rejected by the NGOs attempting to distribute aid.
According to Arab 48, Defrin insisted that the primary aim of the new operation is to return the hostages and to put an end to Hamas.
(Juan says that no one in Israel believes this talking point by hardliners in the extremist government, since it is obvious that the some two dozen remaining living hostages are more likely to be killed than rescued in this way. Moreover, further ethnic cleansing of the Gaza population and the formal military occupation of the Strip — it was already occupied in the eyes of the law — is hardly likely to separate the masses from militants. It is estimated, in fact, that the militant resistance in Gaza has replenished its ranks precisely because Israel has made most civilians desperate, angry and vengeful.)
Defrin said that the new operation would involve further bombardment, the assassination of saboteurs, and the dismantling of infrastructure. He said that the army, which has completely leveled the southern city of Rafah, was looking at it as a model for treating the remaining urban areas of the Strip. Rafah, it might be mentioned, had a prewar population of 250,000, but there apparently isn’t a building left standing. That would be like pushing everyone out of Toledo, Ohio, or St. Petersburg, Fl., into the wilderness while denying them food and water, and then bombing all the buildings in the city to smithereens.
It is expected that this massive military occupation and further ethnic cleansing of Gaza will be launched after Trump’s upcoming visit to the Middle East.
Defrin said that virtually all reservists would be called up for this campaign.
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