In Gaza, hope is a fantasy
Iwanted to be wrong, but it turns out that I was right. Since early October, I have been sure that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has had one aim all along: to erase Gaza.
Spurred on by a rabid cabinet that believes that Palestinians are worthless “vermin”, Netanyahu has done what I suspect he has always wanted to do: dispense with the incremental destruction of a people and a strip of land and, instead, engineer a genocide in Gaza with ruthless and oh so satisfying efficiency.
By now, this fact should be clear. That is the “victory” Netanyahu has and will continue to pursue until he has achieved it, to turn Gaza into dust and memory permanently. There will be no “pause in fighting”, no “lasting” ceasefire, no truce, no end to the genocide because Netanyahu has no reason or incentive to stop.
And Netanyahu knows that no one inside or outside Israel is prepared, willing or able to stop him. Hope has been extinguished. Every day, Palestinians hope, in vain, that the horrors and outrages will end.
Every day, we hope, in vain, for a faint sign that the murderous madness will end, that reason and diplomacy will prevail, that the captives, on both sides, will be reunited with their aching families.
Hope is a fantasy, snuffed out by men and forces who thrive on causing chaos and despair in their “killing rage”.
Netanyahu may be unpopular. Still, what he is doing and how he is going about doing it in defiance of proportionate scale, decency, and international law has the overwhelming support of Israelis who, apparently, would also be content to see Gaza reduced to dust and memory, permanently.
Polls show that most Israelis want Netanyahu to use more force, more “firepower” in Gaza and beyond. Damn decency, international law, and the mushrooming number of casualties day after dreadful day.
The pain and suffering of Palestinians is irrelevant. The right and duty of Israel to defend itself is the only thing that counts.
It’s hardly surprising then that polls show, as well, that despite the rampant hunger, disease, and desperate need, most Israelis want fellow Israelis to continue blocking
trucks carrying food, water, and medicine from reaching Gaza until the Hamas-held captives are released. Palestinians are expendable. Israelis are not.
As for the “future” of Gaza, 93 percent of Israelis reportedly agree with Netanyahu: the two-state “solution” is dead on arrival since all of the land between the
Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River belongs to them. The intent is to have Israeli settlers take the place of Palestinians in Gaza. Another Nakba is already afoot, literally.
I am convinced most of Israel’s confederates abroad, whether they admit it publicly or not, also embrace these egregious beliefs and subscribe, wholeheartedly, to Netanyahu’s modus operandi and definition of “victory”.
So, far from being “damaged” or “weakened”, Netanyahu has been emboldened as a “wartime” prime minister and by an “international community” that has encouraged him to do what he has done in Gaza and the occupied West Bank without remorse or restraint.
Netanyahu will survive as prime minister for as long as Israel goes about doing what it is doing in Gaza and perhaps longer. Ever the calculating Machiavellian, he has rebuffed predictions of his imminent political demise or forced exit by wishful-thinking columnists, “experts”, and former presidential candidates.
Again and again, the “international community” has said it is “concerned” by what their man in Tel Aviv is doing in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Again and again, these expressions of “concern” have proven to be hollow bits of performative nonsense.
On reliable cue, US President Joe Biden described what Israel is doing in Gaza as being “over the top”. “I’ve been pushing really hard, really hard, to get humanitarian assistance into Gaza.
There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying, and it’s gotta stop. Number one,” Biden told reporters earlier this week. It won’t stop.
How can it stop when Biden and his complicit allies in London, Paris, Berlin, and Ottawa keep arming Israel to the brim and refusing, even in the blatant face of Israel’s “over the top” onslaught and the deepening humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, to demand an immediate ceasefire?
The calamitous course was set when Biden and the other presidents, chancellors, and prime ministers rushed to Tel Aviv in “solidarity” pilgrimages to “stand firmly” by Netanyahu’s side. It’s too late to apply the stock, talkingpoint-ephemeral brake since Netanyahu isn’t listening.