In his capacity as a minister in the equally extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir has worked hard to translate his language into action. He has raided Al-Aqsa Mosque repeatedly, and implemented his starvation policies against Palestinian detainees, going as far as defending rape inside Israeli military detention camps and calling the soldiers accused of such a heinous crime “our best heroes”.

Moreover, his supporters have carried out hundreds of assaults and dozens of pogroms targeting Palestinian communities in the West Bank. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, at least 670 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since the start of the Gaza war last October. A large number among those killed and injured were victims of illegal Jewish settlers.

However, not all Israelis in the political or security establishments agree with Ben-Gvir’s behaviour or tactics. For example, on 22 August, Israel’s Shin Bet chief, Ronen Bar, warned against the damage to Israel caused by Ben-Gvir’s actions in East Jerusalem.

“The damage to the State of Israel, especially now… is indescribable: global delegitimisation, even among our greatest allies,” wrote Bar in a letter to several Israeli ministers.

His letter may seem odd. The Shin Bet has been instrumental in the killing of numerous Palestinians in the name of Israeli security. Bar himself is a strong supporter of the illegal settlements, and as hawkish as is required for the person who leads such a notorious organisation.

Bar’s conflict with Ben-Gvir, however, is not one of substance, but style.

This conflict is only an expression of a much greater ideological and political war among Israel’s top institutions. This “Zionism vs Zionism” war, however, began before the 7 October attack and the ongoing Israeli war and genocide in Gaza.

Seven months before the start of the current war in Gaza, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in a televised speech that, “Those who think that a real civil war… is a border we won’t cross, have no idea.”

The context of his comments was the “real, deep hate” among Israelis resulting from the attempts by Netanyahu and his extremist government coalition partners to undermine the power of the judiciary. The fight over the Supreme Court, however, was merely the tip of the iceberg. The fact that it took Israel five elections in four years to settle on a stable government in December 2022 was itself indicative of Israel’s unprecedented political conflict.

The new government may have been “stable” in terms of the parliamentary balances, but it destabilised the country on all fronts, leading to mass protests, involving the powerful, but increasingly marginalised military class.

“Extremism,” Digital, Dream/ Dreamland v3, 2024.

The 7 October attack took place at a time of social and political vulnerability, arguably unprecedented since the founding of Israel atop the ruins of historic Palestine in May 1948.

The war, and especially the failure to achieve any of its objectives, deepened that existing conflict. This led to warnings from politicians and military men that the country was collapsing.

The clearest of these warnings came from Yitzhak Brik, a former top Israeli military commander. He wrote in Haaretz on 22 August that the “country… is galloping towards the edge of an abyss,” and that it “will collapse within no more than a year.”

Although Brik was, among other things, blaming Netanyahu’s losing war in Gaza, the anti-Netanyahu political class believes that the crisis lies mainly in the government itself. The solution, according to recent comments made by Herzog, is that

Kahanism needs to be removed from the government.

Kahanism refers to the Kach Party of Rabbi Meir Kahane. Although now banned, Kach has resurfaced in numerous forms, including in Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party. As a disciple of Kahane, Ben-Gvir is set to achieve the vision of the extremist rabbi: the complete ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.

Ben-Gvir and his ilk are fully aware of the historic opportunity that is now available to them as they hope to ignite the much-coveted religious war. They also know that if the war in Gaza ends without advancing their main plan of colonising the rest of the occupied territories, the opportunity may never present itself again.

The far-right Ben-Gvir’s rush to fulfil the religious Zionist agenda contradicts the traditional form of Israeli colonialism, predicated on the “incremental genocide” of Palestinians and the slow ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities from East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The Israeli military believes that illegal settlements are essential, but they perceive these colonies in strategic language as a “security” buffer for Israel.

The winners and losers of Israel’s ideological and political war are most likely to emerge following the end of the Gaza war, the outcomes of which will determine other factors, including the very future of the state of Israel, as per the estimation of General Yitzhak Brik himself.

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On 17 August, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a seven-day ceasefire to allow children in Gaza to be vaccinated against polio. “I am appealing to all parties to provide concrete assurances right away, guaranteeing humanitarian pauses for the campaign,” he said.

The first such case of the devastating disease was discovered in the town of Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. “It is scientifically known that for every 200 virus infections, only one will show the full symptoms of polio, while the remaining cases may present mild symptoms such as a cold or a slight fever,” said Palestinian Health Minister Majed Abu Ramadan on the same day.

This means that the virus may have spread to all parts of the Gaza Strip, where the entire healthcare system has been largely destroyed by the Israeli bombardment. And yet, the ten-month-old Palestinian baby who was first to contract the poliovirus, like hundreds of thousands of other children in the enclave, was not vaccinated against the disease.

To prevent an even greater disaster in war-stricken Gaza, the World Health Organisation (WHO), along with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said that they have to vaccinate 640,000 children throughout Gaza very quickly.

This is a difficult task, as the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza are crammed into unsafe refugee camps, massive tent encampments.

These are mostly in central Gaza, with no access to clean water or electricity. They are surrounded by over 330,000 tons of waste, which has further contaminated already undrinkable water. It is this, say the experts, that may be the cause of the poliovirus.

The challenge of saving Gaza’s children is complicated by the fact that Israeli bombs continue to be dropped on every part of the Palestinian territory, including the so-called “safe zones”, which were declared by the occupation state soon after the start of the war and a number of occasions since.

The other problem is that Gaza has, for months, subsisted without electricity. Without an efficiently-cooled storage system, the majority of the vaccines could become unusable.

Israel’s bombs are leaving Gaza’s children with life-changing injuries – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/Middle East Monitor

However, there is more to the suffering of Gaza’s children than the lack of vaccinations. As of 19 August, at least 16,480 children had been killed as a direct result of the war, in addition to thousands more who remain missing, presumed dead, under the rubble of their homes and other civilian infrastructure destroyed by Israel. Those killed, according to the Palestinian Minister of Health in Gaza, include 115 babies.

Many Palestinian children have starved to death.

“At least 3,500 children in Gaza are facing [the same fate] amid a lack of food and malnutrition under Israeli restrictions on the delivery of food,” explained a ministry spokesman. Moreover, more than 17,000 children in Gaza have lost either one or both parents since the start of the war last October.

One of the main reasons why Gaza’s children account for a major segment of the victims of the war is that homes, schools and displacement shelters have been the main targets of the relentless Israeli bombardment. According to UN experts in April, “More than 80 per cent of schools in Gaza [have been] damaged or destroyed.” They added that, “It may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as ‘scholasticide’.”

The trend of targeting schools continues. On 18 August, Palestine’s Education Minister, Amjad Barham, said that over 90 per cent of all Gaza schools have been destroyed, the official Palestinian news agency, WAFA, reported. Of the 309 schools in the territory, 290 have been destroyed as a result of Israeli bombing. This has left 630,000 students with no access to education.

While homes and schools can be rebuilt, the precious lives of children who have been killed cannot be restored. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Education, as of 2 July, 8,572 students in Gaza and 100 in the occupied West Bank had been killed by the Israeli army, with 14,089 students in Gaza and 494 in the West Bank wounded.

These are the worst losses suffered by Palestinian children within a relatively brief period of time since the Nakba, the destruction of the Palestinian homeland in 1948.

And the tragedy worsens by the day.

No child, let alone a whole generation of children, should endure this much suffering, regardless of the political reasoning or context. International and humanitarian law has designated a “special respect and protection” for children during times of armed conflict, the international humanitarian law databases of the Red Cross resolve. These laws may apply to Palestinian children in theory, but certainly not in practice.

The betrayal of the children of Palestine by the international community shall stain the collective consciousness of humankind for decades to come. This is indeed a war on Palestinian children, a war that must stop before a whole generation of Palestinian children is completely erased.

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In the interview, Erdan expressed his wish to become the head of Likud, the right-wing party of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His choice of words could have been his way of appealing to the right and far-right constituencies that feed on such aggressive rhetoric.

However, there is more to Erdan’s hatred for the UN than the mere frustration of a disappointed diplomat. Israel has had a long and troubled history with the UN and its associated institutions. According to Israel’s political discourse and victim narrative, the UN is an “anti-Semitic” organisation, a label often invoked when Israel faced even the slightest criticism.

Israel’s relationship with the UN is particularly odd because the occupation state was created by a UN resolution.

That resolution itself was a direct outcome of UN political intrigues and western pressure. On 29 November, 1947, the UN passed Resolution 181, calling for the partition of historic Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. It assigned most of the land, 56 per cent, to the Jewish population, then a minority, and the rest to the Palestinian Arab indigenous people. Shortly afterwards, the Jewish Zionist leadership began a military campaign that saw the nascent state occupy most of Palestine and ethnically cleanse most of its population.

Israel was admitted as a full UN member on 11 May, 1949, while Palestinians native to the land remain stateless. Although Israel’s admission to the international body was conditional upon the acceptance of Resolutions 181 and 194 — covering the status of Jerusalem as an international body, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees — Israel’s violations of these and other resolutions have not been punished thanks to strong backing from Washington and other western powers.

In June 1967, the rest of historic Palestine was conquered. Again, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were ethnically cleansed and, ever since, the Palestinians remaining in their land as either “Arab Israelis” or refugees have lived under a draconian system of military occupation, apartheid, siege and a constant state of war.

The ongoing Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip is the culmination of all the injustices inflicted on the Palestinian people over the past eight decades and more. The war did not start on 7 October, 2023, nor will it end when a ceasefire is finally declared.

Aside from the November 1917 Balfour Declaration, wherein Britain pledged support for a “Jewish national home” in historic Palestine, UN Resolution 181, which allowed the establishment of Israel, could arguably be considered the genesis of ongoing Palestinian suffering.

Throughout this bloody, unjust history, the UN has neither penalised Israel for its violations of UN resolutions and other pillars of international law, nor granted Palestinians their long overdue justice. It has failed to implement or enforce any of its resolutions recognising the illegality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Nevertheless, Palestinians continue to resort to the UN, since it is their only international platform that could constantly remind Israel, and the world, that Tel Aviv is an Occupying Power, and that international and humanitarian laws must apply to Palestinians as an occupied people. Such reminders were made frequently in the past, at the UN General Assembly and even at the Security Council, always to the annoyance of Israel and its western benefactors, especially the United States.

“UNO,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024

The latest solid legal position was articulated through an Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 19 July. After the testimonies and interventions made by at least 52 countries and countless experts, the ICJ resolved that

Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful, along with the associated settlement regime, annexation and use of natural resources.

Although the UN has not made any difference in forcing Israel to end its occupation, dismantle illegal settlements or respect the basic human rights of Palestinians, the international institution remains a source of frustration for the occupation state.

Ever since its establishment on the ruins of Palestinian homes, Israel has worked to change the status of Palestine and Palestinian refugees, and constantly challenged the very term “occupation”. It has done its utmost to rewrite history, illegally annex Palestinian and Arab land, and build illegal settlements to establish permanent “facts on the ground”.

In 2017, it looked as if Israel was succeeding in its quest to cancel the Palestinian cause altogether when Washington recognised Israel’s fraudulent claims to Occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The international community, though, did not follow suit, as demonstrated in the ICJ’s recent legal ruling. As far as the UN is concerned, Israel remains an Occupying Power, bound to international laws and norms.

For Palestinians, however, such facts remain devoid of practical meaning, while for Israel, the UN position is a major obstacle in the face of its blatant settler-colonial project. And this is why Erdan wants the UN “wiped off from the face of the earth”. Even if the angry Israeli diplomat gets his wish, nothing will alter this historic truth: Israel is and will remain a settler-colonial regime, and Palestine and its people will continue to resist, until justice is finally served.

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The explanation of why Benjamin Netanyahu is pursuing a losing war in Gaza has been largely confined to the prime minister’s personal interests, not least the avoidance of corruption trials, preserving his extremist government coalition and avoiding an early general election. Still, none of these rationales explain the absurdity of continuing with a war which, in the words of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, is “The worst failure in Israel’s history.”

What else could explain Netanyahu’s motive for the war? And why are his most crucial government allies, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, determined to prolong it? The answer may not lie in Gaza, but in the occupied West Bank.

While Israel is extending its failed military campaign in the Strip with no clear strategic objectives, its war on the West Bank is driven by very clear motives indeed: the annexation of the occupied Palestinian territory and the ethnic cleansing of large sectors of the Palestinian population. This is not only obvious through Israel’s daily actions in the West Bank, but also because of the clear statements made by Israel’s extreme far right government officials, including a commitment by Netanyahu’s own Likud party to “advance and develop settlement in all parts of the land of Israel – in the Galilee, Negev, Golan Heights and Judea and Samaria.” The latter, of course, is what Zionists call the West Bank.

An audio recording obtained by the Israeli group Peace Now conveyed the following remarks by Smotrich at a June 9 conference: “My goal is to settle the land, to build it, and to prevent, for God’s sake, its division… and the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

To do so, the far-right politician has assigned himself the job of “change(ing) the DNA of the system.” This “system” was put in place decades ago, following Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank in 1967. It began a slow but determined process of illegal annexation of Palestinian territories. The process included the establishment, in 1981, of the so-called Civil Administration.

This was and remains essentially a branch of the Israeli military.

However, it was described as “civil” as part of a government effort to convert a temporary military occupation into the permanent colonisation of Palestine. This entailed the practical annexation and continued expansion of the illegal Israeli Jewish settlements built on Palestinian land after the June 1967 Six-Day War.

The Oslo Accords in 1993-94 gave Palestinians nominal administrative control over small areas in the West Bank, designated as areas A and B. This necessitated the transfer of some of the Civil Administration’s responsibility to the newly-formed Palestinian Authority, based on the understanding that the PA will always prioritise Israel’s security. The arrangement allowed Israel to expand, unhindered, its illegal settlements in most of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, tripling both the size and population of the settlements between 1993 and 2023.

As Israel’s colonial plan in the West Bank reached its zenith, Netanyahu sought in 2020 to reinforce Israeli gains with the annexation of more than 30 per cent of the West Bank. Due to international pressure and growing Palestinian resistance, however, Netanyahu postponed his plan, albeit with the understanding that “annexation remains on the table”.

Without much fanfare, though, Israel swapped its hope for a sweeping de jure annexation of the West Bank with de facto control, through rapid seizures of Palestinian land and the expansion of its settlements, all of which are illegal under international law.

Although the Israeli military is faltering in Gaza, the genocide is being used as a smokescreen to finalise Israel’s settler-colonial plans in the West Bank.

This process was dubbed by Smotrich in 2017 as a “victory by settlement”. Now in a position of power and with access to a massive budget, he is making his life’s goal a reality.

For Smotrich’s dream to be realised, he needed to revitalise the once central role of the Civil Administration. In May, he invented a new position called “deputy head” of the administration, granting the position to his close associate Hillel Roth.

Now both men have unparalleled and sweeping rights to expand the settlements. Since coming to power in December 2022, Netanyahu’s latest government has approved 12,000 new housing units for illegal settlements, while ordering the demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes and other civilian infrastructure.

In the first three months of 2024, Israel declared nearly 6,000 acres of the West Bank to be “state-owned land”, and therefore made it eligible for settlement construction. The decision was described by the Israeli watchdog Peace Now as the “largest West Bank land grab in 30 years.”

The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is already under way. According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, in the first half of 2024 alone, at least 1,000 Palestinians were forcefully displaced while nearly 160,000 were affected by home demolitions.

The Israeli war on the West Bank has come at a high price in Palestinian blood. As of 12 August, at least 632 Palestinians had been killed with 5,400 wounded in the West Bank alone, according to the Ministry of Health. When the war on Gaza is over, the war on the West Bank will grow more intense and bloodier, but with the clear strategic goal of annexing the whole territory, even though the International Court of Justice resolved on 19 July that Israel’s “annexation and… assertion of permanent control” in the West Bank is illegal.

To avoid an even greater war and genocide than that which is taking place before our eyes in Gaza, the international community must use all available means to enforce international law and bring to an end Israel’s brutal, genocidal occupation of Palestine.

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Featured Image: “Tank on the Moon,” Digital, Dream, Dreamworld v.3, 2024..

For the merchants of war, the collective pain and misery of whole nations is dwarfed by the lucrative deals of billions of dollars generated from weapons sales.

The great irony is that some of the loudest advocates of human rights are, in fact, the ones who are facilitating the global arms trade. Without it, human rights would not be violated with such impunity.

The Geneva Academy, a legal research organisation, says that it currently monitors about 110 active armed conflicts worldwide. Most of these conflicts are taking place in the Global South, though many of these cases are either exacerbated, funded or managed by western powers or western multinational corporations.

Of the 110, 45 armed conflicts are taking place in the Middle East and North Africa region, 35 in the rest of Africa, 21 in Asia and six in Latin America, according to the academy.

The worst and bloodiest of these armed conflicts is currently taking place in Gaza, one of the poorest and most isolated regions in the world.

To estimate the future death toll resulting from the war in Gaza, one of the world’s most respected medical journals, the Lancet, undertook a thorough research entitled “Counting the dead in Gaza: Difficult but essential“.

The approximation was based on the death toll figure produced as of 19 June, when Israel had then reportedly killed 37,396 Palestinians.

The Lancet’s new number was horrifying, even though the medical journal said that its conclusions were based on conservative estimates of indirect deaths vs direct deaths that often result from such wars.

Should the war have ended on 19 June, 7.9 per cent of the population of the Gaza Strip would die because of the war and its aftermath. That’s “up to 186,000 or even more deaths,” according to the medical journal.

Palestinians in Gaza are not dying because of an untraceable virus or a natural disaster, but in a merciless war that can only be sustained through massive shipments of arms, which continue to flow to Israel despite the international outcry.

On 26 January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) resolved that it had enough evidence to suggest that genocide was being committed in Gaza. On 20 May, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, added his voice, this time speaking of deliberate acts of “extermination” of Palestinians.

Yet, weapons continued to flow, mostly coming from western government. The main source of weapons is, unsurprisingly, the United States, followed by Germany, Italy and Britain.

Despite announcements by some European countries that they are curtailing or even freezing their weapons supplies to Israel, these governments continue to find legal caveats to delay the outright ban. Italy, for example, insists on respecting “previously signed orders” and the UK has suspended the processing of arms export licenses “pending a wider review”.

Washington, however, remains the main supplier of arms to Tel Aviv. In 2016, both countries signed another Memorandum of Understanding that would allow Israel to receive $38 billion of US military aid. That was the third MoU signed between the two countries, and it was intended to cover the period between 2018 to 2028.

The war, however, prompted US policymakers to go even beyond their original commitment, by assigning yet another $26 billion ($17 billion in military aid), knowing full well that the majority of Gaza victims, per United Nations estimates, are civilians, mostly women and children.

Therefore, when the US urges an end to the war in Gaza while continuing to flood Israel with more weapons, the logic seems utterly flawed and entirely hypocritical.

The same hypocrisy applies to other, mostly western countries, which brazenly pose as defenders of human rights and international peace.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute  (SIPRI), the world’s top ten exporters of major arms between 2019 and 2023 include six western countries. The US alone has a 42 per cent share of global arms exports, followed by France at 11 per cent.

The total arms export of the top six western states amounts to nearly 70 per cent of the global share.

If we consider that the vast majority of armed conflicts are all taking place in the Global South, the obvious conclusion is that the very West that purportedly champions global peace, democracy and international law is the very entity that also fuels wars, armed conflicts and genocide.

For the Global South to take charge of its future, it must fight against this obvious injustice. They cannot allow their continents to continue to serve as mere markets for western arms. The blood of Arabs, Africans, Asians and South Americans should not be spilled to sustain the economies of western countries.

True, it will take much more than limiting the arms trade to end global conflicts, but the free flow of weapons to conflict zones will continue to feed the war machine, from Gaza to Sudan and from Congo to Burma and beyond.

One can continue to argue that Israel must respect international law, and that Burma must respect human rights. But what use are mere words when the West continues to provide the murder weapon, with no moral or legal accountability?

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—
Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Here’s what’s in the US’s $20 billion weapons package to Israel | Al Jazeera Newsfeed”

This conclusion, however, is too convenient and not entirely accurate. It assumes, wrongly, that the Israeli people oppose Netanyahu’s war in Gaza whereas, in reality, they have been quite approving of all tactics used by the Israeli army so far. For example, over 300 days into the war, 69 per cent of all Israelis support Netanyahu’s desperate assassinations, including the murder of the top political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in Tehran on 31 July. While Netanyahu’s decision to target a political leader reflects his own failure and desperation, how do we explain the Israeli people’s enthusiasm for the expansion of the circle of violence?

The answer does not lie in events on 7 October, namely the cross-border Palestinian incursion in the Gaza Envelope region and the unprecedented defeat of the Israeli army. Indeed, it is time to start thinking beyond the confines of the revenge theory, which has dominated our understanding and analysis of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

For years prior to the current war, Israel has been moving slowly to the political right and far right, the political extremism of which has surpassed that of any generation of Zionist leaders who have governed the occupation state since the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948. According to an Israeli Democracy Institute poll published in January last year, 73 per cent of Israeli Jews aged between 18 and 24, identify as “right wing”. Given that the likes of current Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and Orit Strook are also classified as “right-wing”, we can conclude that the majority of young Israelis identify in every practical sense as right-wing extremists.

It is these young people who form the core of the Israeli army and the settler movement.

They are the people carrying out the genocide in Gaza and the daily pogroms in the occupied West Bank, and serving as the foot soldiers for the widespread racism campaigns targeting the Palestinian Arab communities inside Israel.

A good number of analysts have tried to explain how Israel became a decidedly right-wing society and how young people, in particular, have emerged as the gatekeepers of Israel’s version of suicidal nationalism. The explanation, however, should be straightforward. Israel’s far-right extremism is simply the natural evolution of Zionist ideology which, even in its most “liberal” forms, was always predicated on ethnic hatred, a sense of racial supremacy and predictable violence.

Although ideological Zionism in all its manifestations has essentially followed the same trajectory of settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing, a conflict existed between the various strands of Israeli society. The so-called liberals – represented by the upper echelons of the military, business circles and some centrist and leftist political groups – worked to maintain the balance between a colonial, apartheid regime in occupied Palestine, and a selective liberal order that applies only to Jews inside Israel.

The far right had other ideas. For many years, the Israeli right-wing camp, led by Netanyahu himself, has perceived his ideological enemies within Israel as traitors for even daring to engage in a “peace process” with the Palestinians, even if that process was a facade from the beginning. The right wanted to ensure that the territorial contiguity between so-called “Israel proper” and the illegal Jewish settlements was not only physical, but also ideological. This is how the settlers moved slowly, over the years, from the margins of Israeli politics to the centre.

Between April 2019 and November 2022, Israel underwent five general elections. Although the focus of most remained fixated on Netanyahu’s role in dividing Israeli society, the elections, in reality, were a historic fight among Israel’s ideological groups to determine the future of the country and the direction of Zionism.

In the last election in 2022, the far-right extremists won, forming the most stable Israeli government in years. While the right was ready to reconfigure Israel permanently, including its political, educational, military and, most importantly, judicial institutions, 7 October happened.

Initially, the Hamas-led assault and its aftermath posed a challenge to all segments of Israeli society: the humiliated army, the degraded intelligence agencies, the humbled politicians, the confounded media and the angry masses. The greatest challenge was faced by the far-right, though, which was about to shape the future of Israel for generations. Thus, the Gaza war is not just important to Netanyahu, but to the very future of Israel’s far-right camp, whose entire political and ideological programme has been shattered, most likely beyond salvation.

This should help explain the obvious contradictions in Israeli society. For example, the mistrust in Netanyahu’s motives, yet trust in the war itself; the widespread criticism of his overall failure, yet the approval of his actions; and so on. This seeming confusion cannot be explained simply based on Netanyahu’s ability to manipulate Israelis. Even if the Israeli right has lost all faith in Netanyahu, without him as a unifying figure the chances for the far-right camp to redeem itself are lost, as is the very future of Zionism.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

CNN: “Harrowing video shows bodies returned to Gaza”

Layers of censorship imposed on Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices in corporate and social media seem to have blurred the judgment of some. They continue to speak of a “conflict”, calling on “both sides” to use “restraint” and, partly, blaming the Palestinian resistance for the ongoing Israeli massacres.

Though such language is expected from the “sensible” few of mainstream media, there are those who are counted as “pro-Palestine” intellectuals, journalists and activists who often use similar language.

Throughout the years, the common wisdom is that, for a pro-Palestine voice to be published in mainstream US-western newspapers, he or she would have to adhere to a certain set of rules and avoid certain adjectives to describe Israel – even if such vocabulary is consistent with good sense, international law or the judgment of leading human rights organisations.

By “watering down the language”, one supposedly gains greater credibility, thus space to be heard or published.

Equally true, it is also practically forbidden to defend the Palestinian people’s internationally recognised rights to use all forms of resistance, or to support their democratic choices, because the outcomes of which are, maybe, not consistent with mainstream western thinking.

Some are even afraid to use the term “resistance” altogether. But if Palestinians are denied their most basic right to resist, they become deprived of any human agency, let alone relevance as political actors. The notion would then suggest that Palestinians can only serve the role of victims, and nothing else. Not only is this untrue, and condescending, it is outright bigoted, as well.

All this tiptoeing around what should have been a clear language on Palestine, comes at a price. When the truth is masked or hidden, the space becomes open for lies, deceptions and quasi-truths.

In this alternative space, Israel is, at best, equally culpable for the ‘war’ in Palestine as the Palestinians themselves; and, at worst, the Israeli army is merely engaging in a state of self-defense.

Additionally, by tightly controlling the discourse on Palestine, the West has harmed its own interests. Indeed, by marginalising authentic Palestinian voices, the West has lost its ability to understand the context behind the current Israeli war on Gaza, to accept or navigate its share of responsibility in the genocide and to play any meaningful role in bringing the atrocities to an end.

The outcome is an unavoidable cognitive dissonance – where western governments are violating the very rules they had created, opposing the laws they enshrined and investing in an Israeli genocide in Gaza, while criticising war elsewhere.

76 years on, Palestinians are still living the Nakba – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

I doubt that the West will ever succeed in claiming any moral authority, retrieve its lost credibility or build lasting trust with Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims or the Global South. The extermination of one’s people entitles a person to some degree of cynicism.

To further expose western duplicity in Gaza, however, we must learn to speak with no reservations, no matter the restrictions on the pro-Palestine voice or the censorship on social media.

Naturally, not all Palestinians and pro-Palestinian voices agree on everything. There are those willing to risk everything, and those who want to tell some kind of truth without risking the loss of their privileges, careers or standing in society.

It is those in the former group who deserve platforms and must be celebrated for their courage.

One of the most inspiring examples are young students in US and western universities who have risked their own futures – as in being expelled from universities or denied their degrees – for raising awareness about the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Those students are the true leaders of justice-based solidarity movements, now and in the future.

They have understood that, due to the unprecedented censorship of authentic Palestinian voices in all media platforms, their actions on campuses, in the streets and every available venue are critical.

The risks they have taken by speaking out for Gaza’s genocide victims will serve as a new threshold of courage that will inspire the youth of this and future generations.

Equally important is that these students have refused to compromise on their language, their demands and their priorities to simply fit in, to get published or use a genocide as an opportunity to build careers.

As for those who exploited the Palestinian suffering for their own benefit, neither history nor the rest of us will forgive their opportunism and intellectual timidity.

Those who are well-intentioned, but “water down” their language to circumvent censorship, ultimately make little difference, because there are certain truths that cannot be softened or diluted.

Indeed, there is no other honest way of phrasing what is taking place in Gaza but as a genocide, one for which only Israel – a military occupier and apartheid state – can be blamed.

The only Palestinians who deserve blame or condemnation are those who are collaborating with Israel to ensure the outcome of the war remains consistent with their interests, financial status and false titles. No amount of money or prestige will ever redeem the credibility or honour of such people.

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act,” said George Orwell. Sadly, we live in these times. It is equally true that, in a time of genocide, not telling the truth is the most contemptible of all acts.

Please continue to speak out; be radical; be revolutionary and never equate between those carrying out the genocide and those resisting it – even if at the risk of not fitting in.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

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Between 7 October last year and 18 July, Israel has done precisely that, targeting with total impunity UN infrastructure in the besieged Gaza Strip, including schools and medical centres. According to the estimates of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), at least 561 internally displaced Palestinians sheltering in UNRWA buildings have been killed and 1,768 have been wounded since the start of Israel’s war. Within just ten days between 8 and 18 July, at least six UNRWA schools serving as makeshift shelters for displaced Palestinians were targeted by the Israeli army, resulting in the killing and wounding of hundreds.

Middle East Eye Video: “Israeli parliament passes bills to close Unrwa, labels it ‘terrorist organisation’”

Historically, UN-linked organisations have been more or less immune from the impact of wars. The privilege of being neutral outsiders to any conflict allowed those affiliated with such organisations to carry out their duties largely unhindered. The Israeli war on the Palestinians in Gaza, however, is the primary exception among all modern conflicts. According to UN sources, 274 aid workers and over 500 healthcare workers linked to the international organisation have been killed by the Israeli occupation forces.

These figures are consistent with all other statistics produced by the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. Indeed, not a single category of people has been spared: neither doctors nor civil defence workers, mayors or even traffic police, let alone the children, women and elderly.

It was obvious from the very start of the war that Israel wanted to criminalise all Palestinians.

Not only those affiliated with Hamas or other groups, but also the civilian population and any international organisation that came to their aid. Blaming and dehumanising all of Gaza was and remains part of Israel’s strategy that lets its army operate without any restraints, and without even the most minimal moral threshold or respect for international law.

However, the Israeli attacks on all UN institutions, in particular UNRWA, the agency responsible for the welfare of Gaza’s Palestinian refugees, serve a different purpose than that of mere “collective punishment”. Israel does not attempt to mask or justify its attacks on the agency as it did during previous Gaza wars. This time around, the Israeli war was accompanied, from the very beginning, with the outlandish accusation that UNRWA staff had participated in the 7 October cross-border incursion by Hamas and other Palestinian groups.

Without providing any evidence, Tel Aviv launched an international vilification campaign against the UN agency which has, for decades, provided essential educational, medical and humanitarian services to millions of Palestinian refugees, not only in occupied Palestine, but also in refugee camps in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Sadly, and tellingly, some Western, and even non-Western governments, answered the Israeli call to punish UNRWA by withholding badly-needed funds, the urgency of which did not only stem from the direct impact of the Israeli war, but also the acute famine resulting from the war. UNRWA depends almost entirely on such voluntary donations from UN member states.

True, a number of governments eventually resumed their funding of the agency, but such action was only taken when much damage had already been done. Moreover, most, if not all, Western governments have taken no action against Israel for its continued targeting of UNRWA facilities, and thus the killing of hundreds of innocent Palestinians in the process.

This non-committal attitude has emboldened Israel to the extent that, just this week, the Israeli Knesset (parliament) passed the first reading of a bill to designate UNRWA as a “terrorist organisation”. On 18 July, Israeli spokesman David Mencer accused the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, of being a “terrorist sympathiser”.

Israel’s hate for UNRWA, however, stretches back long before the current war.

For years, successive Israeli governments, not least with the aid of the Donald Trump administration in the US, have sought to shut down the agency altogether.

Jared Kushner, Trump’s former advisor on the Middle East, said in January 2018 that it was “important to have an honest and sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA.” For him, the dismantlement of the agency meant the eradication of the legitimate Right of Return for Palestinian refugees.

Indeed, the issue is not just about UNRWA, but rather the historic role the agency has played as a reminder of the plight of millions of Palestinian refugees in occupied Palestine, the Middle East and across the world.

UNRWA was established through General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December 1949. The founding of UNRWA came one year after the passing of UN Resolution 194, which granted Palestinian refugees the right to “return to their homes”. Although UNRWA’s mission has turned into a de facto permanent mandate (albeit one that has to be renewed periodically), since Palestinian refugees were not granted their right of return, the role of the agency has remained as critical as it was decades ago.

Since Kushner and others have failed to have UNRWA shut down, the Israeli government has taken advantage of its war on Gaza to try to do so. According to Israeli “logic”, without a UN agency specifically for Palestinian refugees, there must be no more Palestinian refugees, so the issue of their return would lose its main legal platform and would ultimately disappear. This would give Israel the space and leverage to “resolve” the problem of the refugees in any way it sees fit, especially if it has Washington’s full support.

Israel must not be allowed to dismantle UNRWA or to dismiss the generational struggle of Palestinian refugees, which is the core of the Palestinian fight for justice and freedom. The international community must challenge Israel’s vilification of UNRWA and insist on the centrality of the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees. Without it, no real peace is possible.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

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What Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is trying to implement in Gaza is but a poor copy of previous strategies that were used in the past by other Israeli leaders. If these strategies had succeeded, Israel would not be in this position in the first place.

The main reason behind Netanyahu’s lack of clarity about his real objectives in Gaza is that neither he nor his generals can determine the outcomes of their futile war on the Strip, a war that has killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians.

And, no matter how hard he tries, Netanyahu will not be able to reproduce the past.

Following the Israeli occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem in June 1967, Israeli politicians and generals saw eye to eye on many things. The government wanted to translate its astounding military victory against Arab armies into a permanent occupation. The army wanted to use the newly acquired territories to create ‘buffer zones’, ‘security corridors’ and the like, to strangulate the Palestinians even further.

Both, government and military, found the establishment of new colonies to be the perfect answer to their shared vision. Indeed, today’s illegal settlements were originally planned as part of two massive security corridors projected by then-Labour Minister, Yigal Allon.

The Allon Plan was predicated on several elements. Among other ideas and designs, it called for the building of a security corridor along the Jordan River, and another along the so-called Green Line, Israel’s pre-1967 borders. The new demarcations were meant to expand the Israeli borders – which were never defined, to begin with – thus providing Israel with greater strategic depth. The plan was the original annexation scheme, which has been resurrected by Netanyahu in 2019, and is being advanced by current Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich.

Netanyahu is also sorting through previous governments’ archives with the hope of finding a solution to his disastrous war in Gaza. Here, too, the Allon Plan is relevant.

In 1971, then Israeli General, Ariel Sharon, attempted to implement Allon’s idea regarding complete control over Gaza, but with his own unique touch. He invented what became known as Sharon’s ‘five fingers’.

The ‘fingers’ were a reference to military zones and colonies, which were meant to divide the Gaza Strip into sections, and to separate the southern city of Rafah from the Sinai region.

To do so, thousands of Palestinian homes were destroyed throughout Gaza, particularly in the north. As for the south, thousands of Palestinian families, mostly Bedouin tribes, were ethnically cleansed to the Sinai desert.

Sharon’s plan, an extension of Allon’s plan, was never fully implemented, though many aspects of it were carried out, at the expense of the Palestinians, whose resistance continued for many years. It is that resistance, expressed through the collective defiance of the population of the Strip, which forced Sharon, then a prime minister, to abandon Gaza altogether. He called his 2005 military redeployment, and subsequent siege on Gaza, the ‘disengagement plan’.

The relatively new plan, which Netanyahu rejected back then, and is trying to revive now, seemed to be the rational answer to Israel’s unsuccessful occupation of Gaza. After 38 years of military occupation, the experienced Israeli General, known to Palestinians as the ‘bulldozer’, realised that Gaza simply cannot be subdued, let alone governed.

Al Jazeera English Video: “Why Israel ordered yet another evacuation of Gaza’s Khan Younis”

Instead of learning from Sharon’s experience, Netanyahu is trying to repeat the original mistake.

Though Netanyahu has revealed little details about his future plans in Gaza, he has spoken often of retaining ‘security control’ over the Strip and the West Bank, as well. Israel will “maintain operational freedom of action in the entire Gaza Strip”, he said last February.

Since then, his army began constructing what seemed to be a long-term military presence in central Gaza, known as the Netzarim Corridor – a large ‘finger’ of military routes and encampments that splits Gaza into two halves.

Netzarim, named after a previous settlement south-west of Gaza City evacuated in 2005, also gives Israel control over the area’s two main highways, Salah Al-Din Road and the coastal Rashid Road.

The Philadelphi Corridor, located between Rafah and the Egyptian border, was occupied by Israel on 7 May. It is meant to be another ‘finger’. Additional ‘buffer zones’ already exist in all of Gaza’s border regions, with the aim of fully suffocating Gaza and giving Israel total control over aid.

Netanyahu’s plan is doomed to fail, however.

The historical circumstances of the ’67 Israeli occupation of Gaza are entirely different from what is taking place now. The former emerged as an outcome of a major Arab defeat, while the latter is an outcome of Israel’s military and intelligence failure.

Moreover, the regional circumstances are working in Palestine’s favour, and the global knowledge of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza makes a permanent war nearly impossible.

Another important point to keep in mind is that the current generation of Gazans is empowered and fearless. Its ongoing resistance is only a reflection of a popular reawakening throughout Palestine.

Finally, the Israeli unity that followed the ’67 war is nowhere to be found, as Israel today is divided along many fault lines.

It behoves Netanyahu to revisit his foolish decision to maintain a permanent presence in Gaza, as defeating Gaza proved to be an impossible task even for far superior military men of his country.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Via Middle East Monitor

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