By Qassam Muaddi – Mondoweiss
The Israeli war cabinet unanimously approved on Sunday the expansion of Israel’s war on Gaza, which reportedly include plans to reoccupy the strip indefinitely.
The Israeli war cabinet unanimously approved on Sunday the expansion of Israel’s war on Gaza, according to news reports quoting Israeli officials. The aim of the war expansion plan is, according to officials, to reoccupy Gaza and maintain control of it for an unspecified period of time. The approval came days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that the primary goal of the war was to “defeat Hamas,” indicating that the release of Israeli captives was a secondary goal. The news was confirmed on Monday by the Associated Press, which spoke to two Israeli officials.
Quotes from government officials in recent weeks seem to indicate the expansion of operations will replicate Israel’s strategy in Rafah throughout all of Gaza. In Rafah, Israeli forces have reduced the city to rubble forcing all Palestinians out of the city. With this precedent set, the new plan can only be understood as the next step in Israel’s plans to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians from Gaza.
The reoccupation of Gaza
Three weeks ago, Israeli media revealed plans to divide the Gaza Strip into five areas by creating permanent military zones inside the Palestinian enclave. Since the resumption of the war by Israel in mid-March, Israeli forces have completely isolated the southern area of Rafah from the rest of the strip through carving out a new military corridor dubbed the ‘Morag corridor,’ which crosses the Gaza Strip from east to west, and cutting Rafah off from Khan Younis, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are currently taking shelter.
Despite the cabinet’s approval of the new plans, Netanyahu hasn’t announced them officially, which leaves the actual plans subject to speculation. According to the Israeli Kan radio, the Israeli expansion of operations in Gaza would mirror the Israeli army’s strategy in Rafah, since the resumption of the war. In addition to isolating Rafah, the Israeli army has been following a strategy of wiping out the city by demolishing or detonating large residential blocks, reducing all the city to rubble. The Israeli army also announced that it will make Rafah part of its new expanded militarized buffer zone.
In a televised statement, Israel’s war minister Israel Katz described the operation as “making Gaza smaller and more isolated.” This strategy began to take shape while Israel was still engaged in indirect talks, through Egypt and Qatar, to reach a new ceasefire deal with Hamas. Israel had set the condition of Hamas disarming, which the Palestinian side refused. Israel also refused to commit to ending the war.
On Sunday, the war cabinet meeting came amid renewed resistance by Palestinian factions, who attacked Israeli forces in Rafah and Beit Hanoun over the past week, leading Israel to admit the loss of four soldiers and the wounding of several others. Meanwhile, Israel continued its bombing of Palestinian towns and cities from the north to the south of the strip. On Monday morning alone, the daily death toll was at 20 Palestinians killed by Israeli strikes in Beit Lahia, Gaza City and Khan Younis.
The ‘Rafah strategy’ to ethnically cleanse Gaza
Beyond the full reoccupation in Gaza, however, looms Israel’s long-held objective of driving Palestinians out of the strip. Netanyahu’s allies in the cabinet, especially Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, in addition to Knesset members and settler movement leaders have been calling to expel Palestinians from Gaza and resettle the territory since October 7, 2023. Netanyahu himself has been repeatedly promoting his vision for “voluntary migration” of Palestinians, based on the proposal of US president Donald Trump to move Gazans out of the strip and turn their territory into a ‘riviera.’ In March, the Israeli government approved the creation of a special bureau to organize and promote the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza to other countries.
This final goal falls in line with the ‘Rafah strategy’ of wiping out all civilian infrastructure as to make the territory incapable of sustaining any community life, making life impossible for Palestinians and presenting their transfer out of Gaza as “voluntary.” Israel has already begun to implement such a strategy on a large scale, even before the ceasefire was reached in January. In November of last year, the Israeli army completely sealed off the territory north of Gaza City, preventing all humanitarian aid and goods from entering it while conducting large demolitions of residential blocks and forcibly evacuating the remaining hospitals and schools where families sheltered.
Now, the Israeli war cabinet’s decision to expand the war also comes at one of the most dire points of the humanitarian situation in Gaza, made more disastrous by the complete blockade of humanitarian aid and goods entry to Gaza by the Israeli army. On Saturday, a two-month-old Palestinian girl, Jenan al-Skafi, died of malnutrition in Gaza City. Her mother told Al Jazeera that her child was born during the ceasefire, when goods were allowed into Gaza, and that she began to lose weight after the blockade resumed and milk became difficult to find. According to the health ministry in Gaza, 51 Palestinian children have died of malnutrition since October 2023.
In the two months prior to reaching the ceasefire, Israel reduced the population of the north of Gaza from more than 800,000 to less than 100,000. Israel’s plan to depopulate northern Gaza ultimately failed when Palestinians returned in a massive, spontaneous, multiple-days march to the north during the ceasefire. The new plans to expand the war based on the current model followed in Rafah might be a new attempt by Israel to do the same, this time starting from Rafah. The carving of the new ‘Morag’ corridor could be a preparation for the eventual direction of Palestinians through it into the Egyptian border, or the sea.
Internal Israeli obstacles
However, the new plans of the Israeli war cabinet face a major obstacle presented by the lack of active manpower in the army’s ranks. The newly-appointed chief of staff of the Israeli army, Eyal Zamir, warned of the lack of soldiers since the beginning of his appointment into office. In mid-April, the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported that Zamir warned the war cabinet ministers that the Israeli army doesn’t have enough soldiers “to achieve all of their ambitions.”
Israel has been facing a growing deficit of soldiers for months, due to the exhaustion of reserve soldiers who have served multiple months-long rounds since October 7, 2023, in addition to the large number of wounded, amputees, and trauma-stricken soldiers in the longest war in Israel’s history. In April, thousands of Israeli soldiers, officers, and veterans signed consecutive letters calling for the end of the war if necessary to release the remaining Israeli captives in Gaza, accusing Netanyahu and his cabinet of prolonging the war for his personal political gain.
At the heart of the crisis are the religious Orthodox Haredi community, who have been exempt from military service since Israel’s creation in 1948. Haredi representatives in the Knesset and in the government have been demanding to pass their exemption into law. And although the Knesset passed the law in a first reading back in June, it still hasn’t entered into force. Meanwhile, the Israeli army’s chief of staff announced on Sunday issuing mobilization orders to tens of thousands of Israeli reserve soldiers to expand the war on Gaza.
Despite the approval, Israel’s new plans to expand its military operations wouldn’t be put into action until after the visit of U.S. President Donald Trump to the region in ten days, according to the Israeli ‘Walla’ news website, indicating Israel’s desire for U.S. approval for all its plans.
So far, these plans to expand military operations and reoccupy Gaza are being announced with little to no official reaction from Western governments. This lack of protest after almost two years of genocide with over 60,000 killed Palestinians proves that is not only the U.S. that is giving Israel a green light to exterminate Gaza. There are many more participants to this genocide, even if it comes in the form of silent complicity.
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