{"id":246291,"date":"2023-10-23T12:01:46","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T11:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=246291"},"modified":"2023-10-17T08:36:13","modified_gmt":"2023-10-17T07:36:13","slug":"the-roots-of-israels-ethnic-cleansing-in-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/10\/the-roots-of-israels-ethnic-cleansing-in-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"The Roots of Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Gaza – (Photo by Ahmad Hasaballah\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Israel has always chosen occupation and supremacy over peace and security.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

15 Oct 2023<\/em> – \u201cIn a few days,\u201d writes Amira Hass<\/a>, the veteran Israeli correspondent who has reported for decades from the Occupied Territories, \u201cIsraelis went through what Palestinians have experienced as a matter of routine for decades, and are still experiencing,\u201d including \u201cmilitary incursions, death, cruelty, slain children, bodies piled up in the road, siege, fear, anxiety over loved ones, captivity… and searing humiliation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hamas-led operation against Israeli military bases and civilian neighborhoods killed more than 1,300 Israelis, along with at least 120 taken hostage. While enduring that type of violence may be routine for Palestinians, Gaza is now facing the most calamitous Israeli military assault to date.<\/p>\n

In less than one week, as of this writing, Israel has killed more than 2,300 people, including 724 children. Israeli strikes have hit residential buildings, mosques, schools, hospitals, universities, and fleeing civilians. Israel has intensified its already crippling blockade by cutting off all food, water, and electricity. It has ordered the expulsion of 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza, \u201ca death sentence for the sick and injured,\u201d the World Health Organization warns. If Israel does not restore Gaza\u2019s water supply, the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency says, \u201cpeople will start dying of severe dehydration.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a ground invasion looming, Israel is threatening atrocities on an even larger scale, all while espousing rhetoric that calls for ethnic cleansing or even genocide.<\/p>\n

Justifying what he called the \u201ccomplete siege\u201d of Gaza, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant declared that his government is \u201cfighting against human animals.\u201d According to former Israeli Deputy Foreign minister Danny Ayalon, the Israeli plan is to force Palestinians into the \u201calmost endless space in the Sinai desert, just on the other side of Gaza,\u201d where they can live in \u201ctent cities.\u201d Israeli president Isaac Herzog effectively declared that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, home to \u201can entire nation\u2026 that is responsible.\u201d Invoking the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians before and after Israel\u2019s founding in May 1948, known as the Nakba (\u201ccatastrophe\u201d), Ariel Kallner, an Israeli parliamentarian, said that Israel has \u201cone goal\u201d: a \u201cNakba that will overshadow the Nakba of \u201848.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even as the threat of regional escalation<\/a> grows, the Biden administration fully endorses Israel\u2019s blood lust. Calls for a ceasefire, the White House press secretary declared, are \u201crepugnant.\u201d State Department employees have even been instructed to avoid mentioning<\/a> the terms \u201cde-escalation\/ceasefire,\u201d \u201cend to violence\/bloodshed\u201d and \u201crestoring calm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s stance is shared across both political parties, with only a handful of lawmakers demanding a ceasefire. As the US backs Israel\u2019s assault, \u201cwe may be about to see massive ethnic cleansing\u201d in Gaza, one European Union official has warned<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As in previous cases, the Western media and political establishment justifies the prevailing support for attacking Gaza by asserting that Israel has \u201cthe right to defend itself\u201d, and has no other option against Palestinian militants who refuse to accept its existence.<\/p>\n

As a legal matter, the former assertion is false: while Israel has an internationally recognized right to defend itself from an attack, it does not have the right to commit war crimes against a besieged civilian population. Moreover, Israel is not \u201cdefending itself\u201d against an external aggressor, but an imprisoned internal population that also has a recognized right to resist military occupation (but not, as is evident, to kill and kidnap Israeli civilians). To adopt the Israeli-US narrative, therefore, requires \u201cignoring Israel\u2019s structural violence and cruelty,\u201d Amira Hass writes, \u201cand the context of the Palestinian people\u2019s ongoing dispossession from their land.\u201d<\/p>\n

That Israel is \u201cdefending itself\u201d from a people that it has colonized has long been acknowledged at the highest levels. At a 1956 funeral for an Israeli soldier killed by Palestinians in Gaza, Gen. Moshe Dayan, one of Israel\u2019s most famed military leaders, advised the following:<\/p>\n

Let us not cast the blame on the murderers today. Why should we deplore their burning hatred for us? For eight years they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have been transforming the lands and villages, where they and their fathers dwelt, into our estate.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Dayan, having led Israeli forces in the military campaign during Israel\u2019s founding in 1948, recognized that his country originated with the dispossession of Palestinians and theft of their homes. Yet his acknowledgment was not an act of remorse. Rather than attempt to reverse or redress the forced expulsion of Palestinians, Dayan went on to decree that Israel should maintain the colonization with even more aggression:<\/p>\n

We are a generation that settles the land and without the steel helmet and the cannon’s maw, we will not be able to plant a tree and build a home… Let us not fear to look squarely at the hatred that consumes and fills the lives of hundreds of Arabs who live around us. Let us not drop our gaze, lest our arms weaken. That is the fate of our generation. That is our choice \u2013 to be ready and armed, tough and hard \u2013 or else the sword shall fall from our hands and our lives will be cut short.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Gen. Moshe Dayan on eulogy for slain Israeli soldier Roi Rutenberg
April 19, 1956<\/p><\/div>\n

In the nearly 70 years since Dayan spoke those words, Israel has heeded them by expanding its theft of Palestinian land and creating new generations of refugees. As B\u2019Tselem, the leading Israeli human rights group, acknowledged in 2021, this has turned Israel into \u201can apartheid regime\u201d that \u201cpromotes and perpetuates Jewish supremacy between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.\u201d<\/p>\n

A foundational moment for Israel\u2019s apartheid regime was its 1967 conquest of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which brought millions of Palestinians under Israeli military occupation. As he did in 1956, Dayan candidly articulated what became the guiding policy: \u201cYou Palestinians, as a nation, don\u2019t want us today, but we\u2019ll change your attitude by forcing our presence on you.\u201d Under Israeli rule, the Israeli general said, occupied Palestinians will \u201clive like dogs, and whoever will leave, will leave.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Gaza, one of the world\u2019s most densely populated areas, this forced Israeli occupation has confined a population of 2.3 million, more than half of them children, to what former UK Prime Minister David Cameron has described as \u201can open-air prison,\u201d or what Hebrew University Professor Baruch Kimmerling called \u201cthe largest concentration camp ever to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s famed 2005 \u201cdisengagement\u201d has been falsely described as an end to the occupation of Gaza when, in fact, it only deepened the torment. After years of de-facto blockades, Israel imposed a full siege in 2007. This was Israel and Washington\u2019s response to Hamas\u2019 surprise victory in Palestinian legislative elections the previous year, when voters shunned the corrupt and inept Western-backed Palestinian Authority. Hamas then took full control of Gaza in a preemptive operation against a US-backed coup plot<\/a> that sought undermine its electoral gains. Hillary Clinton later lamented that the US failed to rig the Palestinian vote. \u201cIf we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win,\u201d she said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Because it failed to thwart Palestinian democracy, Israel, again with US backing, turned to punishing Gazan civilians for voting the wrong way. Controlling the flow of goods and energy to Gaza, Israel restricted food imports based on a calculation of the precise number of calories that would be needed to ravage them without triggering a full-blown malnutrition crisis. \u201cThe idea,\u201d Israeli advisor Dov Weisglass explained, \u201cis to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under Israeli control, over 90% of Gaza’s water became unfit for human consumption<\/a>. In 2018, the United Nations declared conditions to be so dire that the territory could become \u201cuninhabitable\u201d within years. The Israeli siege has been accompanied by periodic military assaults that killed, wounded, and displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s commitment to enforcing the dispossession and occupation of Palestinians has also led it to undermine any prospect of the two-state solution that it claimed to support.<\/p>\n

The 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) were \u201cfounded on a neo-colonialist basis,\u201d in the words of former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami. \u201cOne of the meanings of Oslo,\u201d Ben Ami explained, \u201cwas that the PLO was eventually Israel’s collaborator in the task of stifling the intifada,\u201d \u2013 a grassroots and largely non-violent uprising against Israeli occupation \u2013 thereby \u201ccutting short what was clearly an authentically democratic struggle for Palestinian independence.\u201d Oslo\u2019s Israeli architects, including Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, never \u201cwanted the autonomy to usher in a Palestinian state.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a neo-colonial endeavor disguised as a \u201cpeace process,\u201d the Oslo era saw a doubling of the Israeli settlement population in its first eight years. Israel\u2019s so-called \u201cgenerous peace offer<\/a>\u201d at Camp David in July 2000 \u2013 widely cited by Israeli officials and Western pundits as proof of an Israeli willingness to \u201ccompromise,\u201d and a Palestinian refusal to \u201cco-exist\u201d \u2013 was in fact a perpetuation of Oslo\u2019s neo-colonial ruse. As Ben-Ami, who took part in the summit as a top Israeli negotiator, himself acknowledged<\/a> years later: \u201cIf I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2002, the Arab League offered Israel<\/a> full normalization in return for a withdrawal from all Arab territories (Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian) that it occupied in 1967; the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital; and a \u201cjust resolution\u201d to the refugee issue. The initiative was subsequently endorsed by Iran, which signed on<\/a> to a December 2017 declaration<\/a> calling for a \u201ctwo-state solution with east Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The proposal would require Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank and abandon the illegal settlement blocs, which carve up Palestinian land and disproportionately consume precious water reserves. Later on, the Arab League signaled<\/a> that it would accept mutually agreed land swaps, as the Palestinian Authority had already done<\/a>, that could keep some settlement areas under Israeli control. But even the most far-reaching Israeli offer, presented by lame-duck Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008, rejected parity in any territorial exchange. As veteran Israeli negotiator Michael Herzog wrote in 2011<\/a>: \u201cNo Israeli government to date has accepted the Palestinian stipulation that land swaps be fully equal in size and \u2018quality.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel has repeatedly rejected<\/a> the Arab League\u2019s diplomatic initiative and even refused to accept it as a basis<\/a> for further negotiations. In shunning the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, Israel has shown a less accommodating position than even what Hamas, at one point, claimed to support.<\/p>\n

In a March 2008 interview, Khalid Mishal, head of Hamas\u2019s political bureau, stated that \u201cmost Palestinian forces, including Hamas, accept a state on the 1967 borders.\u201d In 2013, Ghazi Hamad, Hamas\u2019 deputy foreign minister, reaffirmed this stance<\/a>: \u201cWe agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, within the 1967 borders, and that this would include a solution to the refugee problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Hamas explicitly rejected any recognition of Israel, its acceptance of a Palestinian state within the boundaries the Occupied Territories \u2013 about 22% of historic Palestine — constituted a tacit recognition of Israel\u2019s internationally recognized borders on the other side. This contrasted with Israel\u2019s position, which nominally accepted the notion of a Palestinian state, but remained committed to keeping the large West Bank settlement blocs that would make such a state non-contiguous and therefore untenable.<\/p>\n

Having thwarted the prospect of a two-state solution, Israel has also violently crushed any hope of non-violent Palestinian resistance. In March 2018, tens of thousands of Palestinians launched the Great March of Return, a campaign to break the Gaza siege. \u201cGaza is a ghetto and what\u2019s happening… is a ghetto uprising,\u201d veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote<\/a>. Israel responded to the ghetto uprising by gunning down at least 214 Palestinians, including 46 children, and wounding over 36,000. Western pundits who had loudly implored Palestinians to take up Gandhian non-violence fell resoundingly silent.<\/p>\n

The Netanyahu government, meanwhile, returned to a longtime policy of propping up Hamas\u2019 rule<\/a>, recognizing that the group\u2019s global isolation and internal divisions could be exploited to undermine the possibility of the Palestinian state that some Hamas leaders had claimed to accept. \u201cAnyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,\u201d Netanyahu explained to Likud Party members<\/a> in March 2019. \u201cThis is part of our strategy \u2013 to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having successfully deepened Palestinian isolation, Netanyahu\u2019s government has intensified the oppression. The guiding Israeli policy, Netanyahu\u2019s government declared in December 2022<\/a>, is that \u201cthe Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel.\u201d This included Gaza, Cabinet Minister Orit Strock explained<\/a> in March of this year. \u201cI believe that, at the end of the day, the sin of the [Gaza] disengagement will be reversed,\u201d Strock said. \u201cSadly, a return to the Gaza Strip will involve many casualties… But ultimately it is part of the Land of Israel, and a day will come when we will return to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tareq Bacouni, a former senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, summarizes<\/a> how Netanyahu\u2019s supremacist rule has recently trampled the inalienable rights of Palestinians:<\/p>\n

Under the most right-wing government in its history, Israel has carried out large-scale invasions of Palestinian refugee camps and towns in the West Bank, killing and wounding scores of people. Armed Israeli fighters have burst into Palestinian streets and homes on an almost nightly basis, often picking children out of their beds in the middle of the night to be taken into administrative detention\u2014acts of terror that have gone largely unreported in the Western press.<\/em><\/p>\n

The state has accelerated its expulsions of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem and the West Bank and expanded the construction of illegal settlements. Settlers have waged\u00a0weekly assaults<\/a>\u00a0on Palestinian villages, attacking and in some cases killing Palestinians, setting fire to their homes, and destroying their property, often under the protection of Israeli soldiers. The domestic secret police has facilitated and fomented violence against Palestinian citizens. Senior members of Israel\u2019s government and messianic Jewish extremists have been increasingly aggressive in their provocations in and around the Noble Sanctuary Mosque complex in occupied East Jerusalem. In the weeks leading to Hamas\u2019s offensive, the state tightened the blockade on Gaza by still further restricting movement in and out.<\/em><\/p>\n

Having always chosen occupation and supremacy over peace and security, Israel has now opted to further devastate, displace, and murder occupied Palestinians in retaliation against those who have fought back.<\/p>\n

Zaha Hassan and Daniel Levy, former advisers for their respective Palestinian and Israeli governments, offer three points of agreement<\/a> that could help end the current crisis:<\/p>\n

First, the militant attack on Israeli civilians was unconscionable, inhumane and in violation of international law. Second, Israel\u2019s collective punishment against Palestinian civilians and its actions in Gaza are unconscionable, inhumane and a violation of international law. And, third, one must address the context of occupation and apartheid in which this is unfolding if one is to maintain integrity and be able to plot a strategy going forward in which both Palestinians and Israelis can live in freedom and security. If we can hold these three truths, then it will be possible to prevent further casualties, secure the release of prisoners and step back from the precipice.<\/em><\/p>\n

Hassan and Levy condition their guidance on the principle that \u201cone accepts the humanity and equality of all people without discrimination or distinction.\u201d Israel has explicitly rejected this principle since its founding. And with Washington\u2019s support, Israel\u2019s determination to enforce the dispossession and subjugation of Palestinians is yielding a new ethnic cleansing campaign before our eyes.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Aaron Mat\u00e9 is a journalist with<\/em> The Grayzone, where he hosts<\/em> \u201cPushback.\u201d He is also a contributor to<\/em> Real Clear Investigations and the temporary co-host of<\/em> \u201cUseful Idiots.\u201d In 2019, Mat\u00e9 won the\u00a0Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media for Russiagate coverage in<\/em> The Nation.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 aaronmate.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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