It is difficult to explain in phrases the ache of witnessing your individuals being destroyed for greater than 670 days. It’s much more unfathomable to ponder one other Israeli escalation, after witnessing a lot struggling and so many crimes dedicated in opposition to the Palestinian individuals within the Gaza Strip. How can this be allowed in full view of the world for therefore lengthy? Will the world stand by?
Israel’s safety cupboard declared this escalation when it accepted a plan to “fully occupy” the Gaza Strip and assault concentrations of inhabitants, beginning with Gaza Metropolis itself. The implications of this latest army onslaught are foreseeable and predictable. In Might 2024, Israel attacked Rafah regardless of worldwide warnings and in defiance of a world court docket of justice order – Rafah now not exists. In November and December 2024, Israel attacked the northern cities of Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya, and destroyed them in a marketing campaign that former minister of defence Moshe Ya’alon described as “ethnic cleansing”. Extra just lately, Israel unilaterally violated the ceasefire settlement, imposed hunger on the two million survivors and destroyed the southern metropolis of Khan Younis.
All these actions are in violation of the three rulings on genocide by the worldwide court docket of justice (ICJ) in January, March and Might 2024. The ICJ recognized a threat of genocide in January 2024 and stipulated measures that Israel wanted to observe to stop the committing of genocide, together with the limitless provision of humanitarian help. By all accounts, Israel has been violating these measures. An assault on Gaza Metropolis would be the newest section of Israel’s genocidal marketing campaign in Gaza.
Instantly after 7 October, Israeli leaders, politicians, commanders and troopers repeatedly mentioned that they’d destroy, burn and flatten Gaza. And so they proceeded to just do that: Israel has successfully destroyed 90% of the Gaza Strip, turned it right into a wasteland, and crammed the inhabitants into 12% of the territory, throwing them into dire humanitarian situations which can be unfit for human survival. By besieging and bombarding the territory, Israel has left no secure place for civilians and no means out of Gaza. An assault on the remaining concentrations of inhabitants in Gaza Metropolis or Deir al-Balah or al-Mawasi will imply extra massacres, extra mass displacement, and inflicting on the remaining determined and ravenous inhabitants situations that may result in their bodily destruction.
What’s Israel’s finish recreation? Israel says that the occupation of Gaza shall be “temporary”. However by now we’re conversant in the Orwellian rhetoric that conceals actuality and true intentions. We all know that earlier than, in 1967, Israel began a “temporary occupation” of Palestinian and Syrian lands. It has change into everlasting. For this reason the ICJ declared in July 2024 that Israel’s occupation of the West Financial institution and Gaza is illegitimate and violates fundamental and basic norms in worldwide legislation, together with the prohibition of acquisition of territory via power, the Palestinian individuals’s proper to self-determination and the prohibition on apartheid or racial segregation.
In line with the ICJ, Israel already occupied Gaza even earlier than 7 October 2023, thereby depriving Palestinians of freedom in their very own homeland. Which means intent to “fully occupy” Gaza in August 2025 can solely be a euphemism for one thing else within the context of this genocide.
It means Israel is pursuing the messianic fantasy and the legal enterprise of a “Greater Israel”, with the objective of “maximum land, and minimum Arabs”. This objective can also be clear within the persevering with forcible displacements within the West Financial institution and the calls to “resettle” Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu just isn’t looking for to free Gaza from Hamas, he’s looking for to empty Gaza of its Palestinian inhabitants. Already in early January 2024, the UN mentioned that Gaza has change into uninhabitable. In early November 2024, Israel’s former minister of defence, Yoav Gallant, who is needed by the worldwide legal court docket, reportedly mentioned that there was nothing left for the military to do in Gaza. In that case, what has the Israeli military been doing in Gaza since then?
Israel’s intentions are clear. In January 2024, Netanyahu, one other fugitive of worldwide justice, doubled down on his longstanding rejection of Palestinian statehood, and an amazing majority within the Knesset supported his place in July 2024. In April 2024, the UN rebuked Israel for increasing the “buffer zones” in Gaza as a result of it meant the everlasting elimination of the inhabitants.
In Might 2025, based on the Occasions of Israel, Netanyahu mentioned that Israel was destroying properties in Gaza in order that Palestinians would have nowhere to return to and can be compelled to depart their homeland. In July 2025, the present minister of defence, Israel Katz, introduced a plan for the ruins of Rafah that was in comparison with a “concentration camp” by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert. In current months, the principle Israeli exercise in Gaza has been the systematic demolition of buildings by well-paid civilian contractors.
In gentle of this, you perceive the true that means of Netanyahu’s assertion that “Gaza” (reasonably than Hamas) “will not be a threat”, and why the current cupboard determination would reject a job for the compliant Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority in Gaza. This isn’t about Hamas, nor about army targets, nor in regards to the hostages whose launch Netanyahu has systematically sabotaged. Fairly, it is a genocidal marketing campaign that continues the denial of Palestinian freedom and seeks to impose Jewish supremacy, from the river to the ocean.
As Israel guarantees additional escalation, it’s fulfilling Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich’s, monstrous promise in April 2024 of “total annihilation”. For many years, the west has failed the take a look at of human rights and worldwide legislation, as Israel has elevated the brutality of its occupation and consolidated its apartheid regime over the Palestinian individuals. Western states such because the UK will be unable to clean their arms from complicity in Israel’s mass atrocities up to now two years. By granting Israel impunity from accountability and by arming this rogue state, the west has enabled these atrocities. Latest declarations about recognition of a Palestinian state are a publicity stunt and a distraction that conceals this impunity however highlights the shortage of motion.
It’s past pressing, and legally and morally required, that each one states take quick and significant actions to cease Israel, together with sanctions, arms embargos, the suspension of commerce and diplomatic relations, and assist the worldwide courts to convey Israeli criminals to justice. Except motion is taken, Gaza – as Smotrich monstrously put it in Might 2025 – “will be destroyed”. Will the world proceed to face by and watch an unfolding genocide?
