The end game, according to the plan, is a permanently divided Gaza Strip, with Israel in indefinite control of the north until a new Palestinian administration could take over at some undefined time in the future.
LONDON: “Israel is acting out the logic of genocide and not obeying the laws of war.” Not my words, but those of the distinguished Israeli political scientist, Norman Finkelstein, speaking on the “India Global Left” YouTube channel last week. Debating Israel’s reaction to the October 7th slaughter of innocent Israelis by Hamas, he claimed “what Israel decided to do on October 8th was ‘no more mowing of the lawn,’” the metaphor used by Israel against Palestinian militants in Gaza to carry out short, sharp military operations to maintain a certain level of control over the Strip without committing to a long-term political solution.
Instead of mowing the lawn, Finkelstein believes that Israel decided on October 8th to once and for all “solve the Gaza problem.” He was convinced that the genocidal statements made by Israeli leaders immediately after Hamas’s atrocities, although later played down, are in fact currently unfolding in Gaza.
Finkelstein is a well know critic of Israel and its ruling class, calling the country a “Jewish supremacist state committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people”. In one of his many books he even compares the plight of the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation with the horrors of the Nazis. This is strong stuff, especially as his own parents were Jewish Holocaust survivors. His mother was born in Poland and lived in the Warsaw Ghetto before being sent to the notorious Majdanek extermination camp near the ancient city of Lublin. Finkelstein’s father also survived the Ghetto and Auschwitz, meeting his bride-to-be in a displaced persons camp in Austria after the war before settling in the United States.
The pressure building against Israel at the International Court of Justice appears to be supporting Finkelstein.
Almost a year after South Africa brought a case against Israel, arguing that the war in Gaza breached the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention (an accusation Israel strongly denies), Ireland’s foreign minister, Michael Martin, said his country would join Spain, Bolivia, Columbia, Mexico, Turkey, Chile and Libya in supporting South Africa’s allegations of genocide. Martin’s comments came as the Irish parliament passed a motion agreeing that “genocide is being perpetrated before our eyes by Israel in Gaza.” South Africa also announced last week that it had filed a so-called memorial with the ICJ claiming “evidence of genocide” committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip. The document cannot be made public but was “over 750 pages of text supported by exhibits and annexes of over 4,000 pages,” said the office of South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa.
In a landmark ruling on 19 July this year, the ICJ declared that “Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, as well as Israel’s numerous Israeli settlements in the West Bank, are all illegal,” adding that “Israel’s legislation and measures violate the international prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid.”
International order was “on a knife edge” warned the ICJ and urged nations to comply with the “ICJ Opinion”. Without mentioning the United States by name, the ICJ cautioned that the devastating attacks on Palestinians across the occupied Palestinian territory show that certain countries are continuing to turn a blind eye to the horrific plight of the Palestinian people and are “furthering genocidal violence.” The report also highlighted that “Gaza remains under siege and intense bombardment, with homes, schools, hospitals and densely populated displacement camps sheltering thousands of refugees who are routinely attacked by Israeli troops.”
This is certainly happening daily in Gaza as more and more Palestinian civilians are killed or wounded by Israeli bullets and missiles while their infrastructure is being completely destroyed. For example, just two weeks ago the UN Independent Commission reported that Israel has pursued a “concerted policy to wreck Gaza’s health care system”, calling it a “war crime”. The report claimed that “Israel security forces have deliberately killed, wounded, arrested, detained, mistreated and tortured health care workers,” clear evidence of war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination. Those few hospitals still remaining face critical shortages of medical supplies because aid trucks are being refused entry by Israeli border guards. Nizam Mamode, a London-based transplant surgeon who worked at Nasser Hospital in Gaza during August and September this year told Politico last week that the scene inside the hospital was “beyond comprehension” as the staff tried to cope with one or two mass-casualty incidents every day. Most of the victims he treated were women and children, a point confirmed last week by the UN’s Human Rights Office which said that its analysis shows close to 70 percent of verified victims over a six-month period were women and children. Four hundred and six days into the war, Palestinians in Gaza are not only being killed and injured by Israeli forces at a staggering rate—current estimates are 43,736 killed and 103,370 wounded since the start of the war—those remaining are now facing famine. All aid into Gaza is controlled by the Israeli military, which in October allowed only 57 trucks a day on average, far short of the 350 trucks a day demanded by Israel’s biggest ally, the US, and the 600 a day that aid agencies say are necessary to meet basic needs. The United Nations warned last week that “the entire population of Gaza now faces severe food insecurity,” and that “famine is imminent, or may already be unfolding.”
The most acute crisis is in the north of Gaza, where the towns of Jabaliya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya have been under a month-long siege. This region, home to hundreds of thousands of civilians nearly half of whom are believed to be children, has been surrounded by Israeli military checkpoints, unable to receive any help.
Ominously, all residents in the north have now been ordered to leave and move to the “relative safety” of the south. Some are unwilling to leave home, or what remains of their homes, afraid they will never be allowed to return. And they have good reason to think this way. Tightening the siege in the north and cutting off aid in order to force the remaining population to flee is outlined in a proposal known as the “general’s plan”, presented to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government last month. The plan recommends giving Palestinians in northern Gaza an ultimatum to leave and then declaring the area a closed military zone. Those who remain would be considered combatants and therefore legitimate targets, with their water, food, fuel and medical supplies completely cut. The end game, according to the plan, is a permanently divided Gaza Strip, with Israel in indefinite control of the north until a new Palestinian administration could take over at some undefined time in the future. But few believe that Palestinians would ever be allowed back, a view reinforced last week at a media briefing in Jerusalem, when IDF Brigadier General Itzik Cohen told Israeli reporters “there is no intention of ever allowing the residents of northern Gaza to return to their homes.” He added that aid would be allowed to “regularly” enter the south of Gaza but not the north, since there are “no more civilians left!” International humanitarian law experts have said that such actions would amount to genocidal war crimes of forcible transfer and the use of food as a weapon. Resettling or permanently reoccupying Gaza by Israelis is not official policy, but senior Israeli defence officials recently told the Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz, that with no other alternative on the table, the government is aiming to annex large parts of Gaza. In other words—carry out ethnic cleansing.By endlessly killing innocent Palestinians, rendering large parts of Gaza uninhabitable by intentionally destroying or severely damaging civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and religious institutions, Israel is breaking all legal obligations under international law and the Geneva Convention. Goaded by the extremist members of his coalition, whose stated aim is to remove all Palestinians from “Greater Israel”, Netanyahu and his government are undeniably guilty of crimes against humanity. Just as in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, which gave birth to the state of Israel and saw the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their home towns and villages, Israel is guilty of both genocide and ethnic cleansing. The world needs to “wake up and smell the coffee”!
* John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Plymouth.