By Mike Whitney
“If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper. It’s an ugly solution, but it is the only solution. And it is far less ugly than the prospect of bloody conflict ad infinitum….. It’s time to stop being squeamish. Jews are not Nazis. Transfer is not genocide. And anything else isn’t a solution.”— Ben Shapiro, Transfer is not a Dirty Word, Orlando Sentinel
“Israel is expediting its action now to complete its original purpose of the ethnic purging of Gaza, which is part of the larger project that started in 1947…. They are also expediting their effort at ethnic purges in the West Bank and East Jerusalem…. This is a historic moment in which Israel wants to make as much dark progress as it possibly can to consolidate their ethno-nationalist settler-colonial project…. They’re getting away with it because of the complicity of the United States, the United Kingdom, and a number of countries in Europe.”— Craig Mokhiber, former Director of the New York Office of the UN’s High Commissioner of Human Rights, Mondoweiss
A recent survey of Middle East scholars shows that a “large majority believe that the war in… Gaza is likely to lead to new large-scale… displacement of Palestinians from Gaza and/or the West Bank. (Ethnic cleansing) The findings of the survey confirm what many have known from the very beginning, that the stated goal of “defeating Hamas” is a largely a fraud used by Israel to conceal its real objective which is the expulsion of the Arab population. Here’s a brief excerpt from the survey posted at Brookings:
The nature of the war in Gaza and Israeli aims
Nearly three-quarters of the scholars surveyed, about 72%, (of the 750 mostly U.S.-based respondents) expect the war to result in new mass displacements of Palestinians outside of Gaza and the West Bank. This expectation seems partly based on the scholars’ gloomy assessment of Israel’s motives: A majority, about 57%, see making Gaza uninhabitable in order to force Palestinian removal as a primary Israeli objective of the war. About 15% each see Israel’s primary objective to be keeping the current Israeli government in office or destroying Hamas. Few (about 4%) say Israel’s operation is justified by the right of self-defense. Gloom about the ‘day after’ the Gaza war pervasive among Mideast scholars, Brookings
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Tent villages in Gaza turned into rubble from Israeli airstrikes (Source)
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We should emphasize that the participants in this survey are either political scientists or experts in their fields who have a keen grasp of the history and issues related to the conflict. The fact that the vast majority of them reject the idea that Israel’s massive military campaign is aimed at “defeating Hamas” underscores the improbability of the theory. The primary goal of the Israeli campaign is to remove the Palestinians from their historic homeland. Here’s more from the survey:
Their assessment of the resultant reality is equally dark: Respondents describe Israeli actions in damning terms, with 41% saying they constitute major war crimes akin to genocide, nearly 34% saying they constitute genocide, and 16% saying they are not akin to genocide, but are still major war crimes. While these views may seem surprising, they are not markedly different from the views of some segments of the American public, especially Democrats, with one recent poll showing a majority of Democrats saying Israeli actions amounted to genocide…..
These scholars’ views should not be dismissed as just another set of political opinions, even as they are not immune to professional biases. Many of them have spent years working on Israeli-Palestinian issues, have conducted research on the ground, and have large networks of contacts among Israelis and Palestinians. Their views are grounded in a far less mediated version of reality than is available to most Americans weighing in on the topic. Brookings
The survey should put to rest the idea that Israel’s stated objectives accurately reflect their real goals. They don’t, and this fact needs to be understood to make sense of events taking place today.
What events are we talking about?
We’ll get to that, but, first, let’s recap:
In the last 11 months, the IDF has gone from North to South obliterating 80 percent of Gaza’s housing stock and virtually all of its vital infrastructure. Many people assumed that these actions indicated that Israel wanted to make the area uninhabitable so the Palestinians would be forced to flee to Egypt. That theory has been reinforced by the numerous pronouncements of Israeli political and military leaders who have stated their genocidal intent with alarming frequency. The only logical conclusion one can draw from these statements is that is a clear majority of Israeli Jews support the expulsion of the native population.
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Palestinians line up to fetch some water in a refugee camp in Gaza. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)
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That doesn’t mean that the implementation of the plan has gone smoothly. It hasn’t. And the reason it hasn’t is because Egypt fortified its northern border with thousands of troops and armored vehicles blocking any potential attempt by Israel to drive the Palestinians into the Sinai Desert. (Apparently, Israel did not anticipate this obvious obstacle.) With its lone exit-point blocked, Israel’s expulsion strategy collapsed leaving the IDF with little to do but force the Palestinians from one “safe zone” to the next and then back again. This charade has dragged on for more than four months now with the clear intention of hoodwinking the Israeli public into believing that the IDF is performing some vital national security function rather than overseeing the collective starvation of a deeply traumatized civilian population.
In the last week, the government has concocted a new strategy that is designed to draw attention away from their earlier failure. This is from CNN:
….the government “is considering a plan to force all Palestinian civilians out of northern Gaza, including Gaza City, in order to lay siege to Hamas and force the release of hostages.”
The idea comes from a group of retired Israeli military generals, who have formally presented it to the Israeli cabinet and a powerful parliamentary committee. The goal, they say, is to use siege tactics to starve Hamas fighters and force them to release 101 hostages still held in the territory. …
Israeli national broadcaster Kan, a CNN affiliate, reported on Sunday that Netanyahu, in a closed-door meeting with the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that the plan “makes a lot of sense.”
“It is one of the plans being considered, but there are several others,” he said, according to Kan. “We are committed to dismantling the civilian control of Hamas.” Netanyahu considering plan to force all Palestinian civilians out of northern Gaza to besiege Hamas, CNN
Repeat: “It is one of the plans being considered, but there are several others.”
What the excerpt confirms is that the government is desperately searching for a strategy a full-11 months after launching the initial invasion. They are improvising because they haven’t decided what it is they want to achieve.(or what they think they can achieve) If this sounds like an admission that they are flying-by-the-seat-of-their-pants, it’s because they are. It’s hard to believe that—after nearly a year—war-planners are “throwing sh** at the wall” to see what sticks. Normally, you would expect military leaders to follow von Clausewitz’s maxim: ‘War is the continuation of policy by other means’. But—in this case—the war preceded any clear idea of whether the objective was attainable. Here’s more from CNN:
In a letter obtained by CNN, 27 members of Knesset …have written to the government urging them to adopt it. The public face of the proposal is Eiland, who had an illustrious career rising to the rank of major general and serving as head of the prime minister’s National Security Council from 2004 to 2006.
….“The right thing to do is to inform the approximately 300,000 residents who remained in the northern Gaza Strip, citizen residents, of the following: Not that we are suggesting you leave the northern Gaza Strip, we are ordering you to leave the northern Gaza Strip.”
“In a week, the entire territory of the northern Gaza Strip will become military territory. And this military territory, as far as we are concerned, no supplies will enter it. That is why 5,000 terrorists who are in this situation, they can either surrender or starve.” CNN
So, in order to provide some proof that the failed Gaza campaign was ‘worth it’, Eiland wants to engineer a “mini” ethnic cleansing of an area roughly 5×5 miles-long in north Gaza. Is this what “winning the war” looks like to Eiland?
The real purpose of Eiland’s recommendation, is to substitute the original (ethnic cleansing) goal with one that is achievable so the government can claim “Victory” and move on. But while we understand the intention, Eiland seems to ignore the unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe that Israel’s rampage has created and that will have to be addressed sometime in the near future.
Imagine Gaza in Year 2 when the population of nearly 2 million displaced people living in squalid tent cities face recurrent outbreaks of diarrhea, giardiasis, dysentery, typhoid fever, E. Coli infection, typhus and tuberculosis. Who will be held responsible for the death and disease that sweep through the filthy encampments killing thousands and leaving tens of thousands more sick and bedridden? Does Israel think it can simply shrug off the inevitable blowback; the boycotts, the sanctions and the blistering criticism? Do they think the international community is going to look on passively while Israel creates an Auschwitz at the center of Gaza and surrounds it with military bases and settlements?
Israeli leaders seem to think they can withstand the universal contempt of humanity, but they might be mistaken. Widespread public revulsion eats away at a society like a cancerous tumor. No one wants to be an outcast.
The whole Gaza campaign has been a blood-soaked fiasco slapped together by ideological fanatics who clearly never had an operational strategy from the get-go. As Lavrov said, “They’re like kids playing with matches.” This is from an article at The Middle East Eye:
It has been evident since the early days of the war, and through leaked documents, that Israel aims to get rid of Palestinians in Gaza forever – either by forcing them into Egypt or killing them…. complete erasure…
Should a war break out in Lebanon, whatever is left of attention towards Gaza would be directed to Lebanon. This distraction will provide Israel with a perfect cover to continue its campaign of killing, injuring, starving, and displacing Palestinians in Gaza.…
The world has already stopped talking about the constant bombing of schools, the killing of aid workers, or preventing the delivery of aid. June saw the lowest number of aid trucks entering Gaza since October, a record surpassed by August…..
With a new front in Lebanon, this plan will be fully executed in Gaza. Israel’s goal of ethnically cleansing Gaza remains, and while light must undoubtedly be shed on Lebanon if a war breaks out, we must also prevent Israel from accelerating its genocidal agenda in Gaza. The Israeli war on Lebanon’s hidden goal: Gaza’s full erasure, Middle East Eye
The “leaked documents” of which the author speaks is explained in an article at CBC News. The documents align perfectly with the opinions of the Middle East scholars who think Netanyahu turned Gaza into a moonscape to drive the Palestinians off the land and into Egypt. Check out this short summary from CBC News:
An Israeli government document suggesting the mass relocation of Gaza’s 2.3 million people to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula is fueling concerns about the possible ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The leaked document, first reported in Israeli media, was compiled by an Israeli government research agency known as the Intelligence Ministry and was dated Oct. 13 — six days after …the Israeli government declared war against the Palestinian militant group, which controls Gaza…
A long-term plan… the evacuation of civilians in Gaza to Sinai, would “yield positive, long-term strategic outcomes for Israel,” the document stated…. “In the first stage, tent cities will be established in the area of Sinai,” it reads. “The next stage includes the establishment of a humanitarian zone to assist the civilian population of Gaza and the construction of cities in a resettled area in northern Sinai.”…
An Israeli think-tank, the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, released a paper inferring the situation presented “a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip in co-ordination with the Egyptian government.”…..
Israeli officials and other political figures have openly expressed similar sentiments, according to an article from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace…. Leaked document fuels concern Israel plans to push Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt, CBC News
A “rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip“.
Yep. That says it all.
While Israel’s military campaign has failed to force the Palestinians out of Gaza, Zionist leaders are no less determined to achieve that goal in the future. As Netanyahu said in January:
I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over all the territory west of the Jordan River… As long as I am prime minister, I will continue to firmly stand by this.
In short, Israel plans annex the occupied territories and integrate them into Greater Israel. The biggest glitch in this strategy is that “Jewish people make up less than 47 percent of all those living west of the Jordan River” while Arabs hold a slight numerical majority. In order to establish a Jewish majority in the ‘expanded state’, a sizable number of Arabs will have to be expelled from the territories earmarked for future annexation. Thus, we can be reasonably certain there will be other attempts to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians in the future, in fact, the conflagration with Hezbollah could be the smokescreen that Netanyahu has been looking for.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image is from TUR
