A few weeks ago the media office of the Gaza government issued a statement declaring that the Israeli Defense Forces now control over 77 percent of the territory in the Gaza Strip, much of it in ruins from the continuing Israeli Air Force attacks on suspected Hamas sites. Many of the known Hamas leadership at the time of its October 7, 2023, surprise attack on Israel have been killed or have fled Gaza. But the organization has survived and now there are as many as 20,000 Hamas members. Young recruits today try to control the delivery of relief food and other goods to Gaza along with the black market that dominates what is left of its economy.
Israel has not won its war against Hamas—a war that at one time was promised to be ended within a span of four or five months. The Israeli leadership responded to that failure by taking the war to the people of Gaza, though Israelis were assured that the terrifying and around-the-clock Israeli air force bombing attacks in Gaza would stop when Hamas was driven from its fortified tunnels.
A few weeks ago the Associated Press reported from Tel Aviv that the areas in Gaza bordering Israel have been razed by the IDF to “the point of uninhabitability.” Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor of Middle East studies at the Sciences Po in Paris, recently published an account of a trip to Gaza. A revised and updated version of his book Un Historien à Gaza was recently reviewed in Arab Digest:
“Driving along the Salaheden road [in Gaza], he explains why they have to drive slowly: people on foot are so traumatized by pain and the constant bombings that they don’t even hear cars. Along the lunar landscape he meets an old man who tells him that his fate is that of sheep, who are fed just enough to be sacrificed for the annual Eid feast. Among his old acquaintances, the average ‘displaced’ person has one and a half square meters to live—the Palestinians are ‘shipwrecked.’
“The stench from tons of rubbish, smashed sewage treatment plants and lack of water is overwhelming. He reminds us how Pope Francis summed up the situation: ‘It is cruelty, it is not war.’ Hospitals are systematically bombed, babies dying of hypothermia, dehydration and disease, doctors and nurses targeted, schools and universities destroyed, books and academic documents willfully destroyed by Israeli soldiers. The Palestinians are suffering ‘a violence worthy of the Last Judgment.’ So many buildings, so many landmarks have been destroyed that Filiu loses track of where he is. Nothing he has witnessed in Afghanistan, Syria, or Ukraine prepared him for Gaza. This explains why ‘Israel does not allow the international press access to such a shocking scene.’ . . . Filiu is staggered at the lack of empathy in the West for the civilian victims of these killing fields.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing criminal charges, threw in with the far right religious zealots in Israel. They are still the controlling political coalition, and they talk openly of turning parts of Gaza into abodes for Israeli settlers. Bibi, as he is known, has defied the West and remains the major supporter and spokesman for the continuing IDF war in Gaza, which has involved continuing Israel air force attacks in the effort to defeat Hamas. Netanyahu still talks about winning the war but there is no longer any talk from the Israeli leadership about reconstructing Gaza. Netanyahu recently announced a new plan to move the two million surviving Palestinians of Gaza into three large settlements—each would contain hundreds of thousands of refugees—under IDF control. The IDF would be responsible for the supply of food and humanitarian necessities.
It did not take long for some Israelis and Americans I spoke to think of the Warsaw ghetto.
The immediate goal, Netanyahu said, would be to eliminate the influence of Hamas over the delivery of food and other relief necessities to the Palestinians. In Gaza since October 7 there are said to be more than 55,000 dead and 127,000 wounded, most of them women and children. Those numbers have been repeatedly challenged as being minimal; a true count of casualties cannot be made until the debris from the constant Israeli bombing attacks throughout Gaza is cleared away.
The change in Israeli policy has attracted little media attention in the West, although it came with the announcement that there would be a massive call-up of IDF reservists. The renewed end-the-war campaign will involve no less than six Israeli combat divisions against Hamas.
Netanyahu’s right-wing cabinet, led by religious extremists, unanimously approved the aggressive new campaign. A United Nations spokesman said that Secretary General António Guterres was “alarmed” by the Netanyahu plan. It would “inevitably lead to countless more civilians killed and the further destruction of Gaza.” The spokesman said that “Gaza is and must remain an integral part of a future Palestinian state.”
Scant notice has been paid to the fact that the new Israeli plan will put the survivors of the war in the hands of those who have been bombing and killing them. I asked one friend who has been involved in peace-keeping efforts in the Middle East for the past decade what he thought of the coming escalation of the war and the relocation of the surviving Palestinians. His reply was stunning in its cynicism: “Everyone knows the plot. Gaza is done and half of Lebanon is done. Unfortunately, Israel seems fine for now.”
I got a slightly less cynical answer when I asked a retired senior IDF general whether Israel would ever get the debacle of Gaza behind it. His answer: “Not as long as Bibi is our supreme leader. He has more authority than Trump and [Iranian Ayatollah] Khamenei together. The answer is cutting our losses, leaving Gaza in exchange for the [remaining] hostages, agreeing with Trump [about] what we can do to Hamas once we withdraw if they breach the agreement, and doing exactly what we are now doing in Beirut”—continuing to bomb suspected Hezbollah sites.
Even more cynicism came from a highly decorated Israeli combat veteran who served in the same secret Israeli special forces unit as Netanyahu did decades ago. He told me that “Bibi and his evil non-functioning government that is trying hard to turn Israeli’s vibrant democracy into a messianic fascist political system have no plan for the day after the war” with Hamas. Some like [Finance Minister] Bezalel Smotrich use the slogan “Eternal War” while Bibi talks about Total Victory, an old Goebbels slogan. They are motivated by hatred, ignorance, and disrespect for anything not Jewish. Future plans? “You must be kidding. God and Torah learning will save us. Camps? Food supplies? Just a PR show. Who cares about other human beings?
“We won the war with Hezbollah that we planned for ten years. We are losing on all other fronts because the IDF is not a fighting force but a colonial police force. We lost the war with Hamas on October 7, 2023. What we have done since is a campaign of revenge.”
The last act of revenge may be the Israeli government’s implementation of its program for a final place to live in safety for the surviving Palestinians. I have been given a confidential report by an international humanitarian agency about the three new camps that are now under construction in central and southern Gaza. The migration of the surviving Palestinians from five separate areas was expected to begin in early June, and the report makes clear that the trips will be fraught with danger. Some of the warnings are ominous:
—“Expect . . . increased military presence along corridors.”
—“Humanitarian organizations should prepare for emergent needs from newly uprooted populations.”
—“clearance [of bomb damage] could take several weeks and slow progress due to booby traps, sniper ambushes, and complex tunnel re-emergence.”
—“Expect recurring ground incursions and wide-area demolitions.”
—“Humanitarian corridors will be increasingly militarized. Civilian oversight mechanisms may be minimal.”
Readers of this column will remember earlier migrations: the Gazans were moved from north to south, carrying their possession on carts or on their backs. Even the aged were walking under the watch of the IDF, who showed little empathy, even for the struggles of the old and infirm.
There is less reason today to expect any more concern as the coming march to a new form of imprisonment awaits the battered Gazan, who do not and never will view the IDF as their guardians.
With the migration complete, Gaza will be open for the religious zealots who now run Israel to claim as their religious heritage. What, then, will be the fate of the millions of Gazans huddled in their new ghettos?
This article was originally published on SeymourHersh.substack.com.
