IDF ground forces began the most sensless war in the hisory of Israel. Two conscript divisions with Merkava tanks, APCs and artilley supported in the skies by the air force are now engaged in the battle to conquer Gaza City. In their tracks, they are seizeing what remains of the asphalt roads in Gaza. Artillery and Air Force planes bomb and destroy more houses — about 70% of the buildings in Gaza have already been destroyed by the IDF in this a senseless war. Defense Minister Israel Katz will continue, with childish delight, to tweet that the gates of hell have opened and will post pictures of collapsing high-rises.
This is the most political war in Israel’s history. Israel fought three no-choice wars against regular armies — the War of Independence in 1948, the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973. All the others were wars of choice and operations of choice. But even in those, political motives were mixed with security considerations and their purpose was strategic — to secure a political arrangement at the end of hostilities.
Any reasonable person understands that the war in Gaza — whose ugly conduct will soon reach two years — has only two non-substantive goals: the personal survival of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the political survival of the government and the coalition.
Although officially PM Netanyahu and his ministers still pay lip service to their constant mantra, that they adhere to the original objectives for which Israel, rightly, went to war after October 7 — the eradication of Hamas and the return of the hostages. However, Hamas as a military force was neutralized more than a year ago, perhaps longer. About 70% of its fighting force has been killed or is held in prisons in Israel. Almost 100% of the rockets were destroyed, as were most of the workshops and arms depots.
This is war for the sake of war, which also has a hidden aim: to make the lives of the two million two hundred thousand Gazans miserable and to render their lives inhuman. Israel, with the help of the IDF and the Shin Bet, is turning them into human dust, in the hope of many in Israel that they will leave Gaza and emigrate to other countries. The goal is transfer.
The extreme ministers in the government and Knesset have been saying this out loud since October 7. Netanyahu, who always speaks with double talk to different publics at home and abroad, did distance himself from ministers who talk about destroying Gaza, but his historical and associative world is not far from them. He demands from Hamas “unconditional surrender,” a stance borrowed from the Allied powers that set that as a condition for ending the WW2 against Hitler and Emperor Hirohito.
Netanyahu knows that even if Hamas surrenders — the organization has already made clear that with its culture of shahids it will fight to the bitter end and will not surrender — the extremists in his government will begin to establish settlements, dispossess Palestinians and expropriate land. This was exactly the process after the Six-Day War that has continued to this day in the West Bank. It is the messianic vision of ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir — conquest, dispossession, takeover, creeping annexation and transfer.
In truth, the idea of transfer is not foreign to Zionism and the State of Israel. As early as 1940 Yosef Weitz, one of the leaders of the Jewish National Fund, wrote in his diary: “… there is no place in the country for the two peoples together… The only solution is Eretz Israel without Arabs. There is no room here for compromises! Move everyone. Leave not a single village, not a single tribe. Only in this way, transfer of the Arabs of Israel, will redemption come.”
*In the heat of the battles of the War of Independence some 700,000 Arabs of Palestine were expelled or left voluntarily. The best-known expulsions were those of the Arabs of Lod and Ramle. A new book reveals for the first time Israel’s efforts at the end of the war to encourage the emigration of the Arabs who remained in the country. “From the Foreign Office to the Mossad: The Early Years of the Israeli Mossad 1949–1963,” by Ori Rost and Shay Raz, is based on official Mossad documents and was published at its initiative. *
The person appointed to deal with the subject was Yitzhak Navon (later president of the state), who was sent on behalf of the intelligence body of the Foreign Ministry, a predecessoe of the Mossad. “From the Israeli mission in Uruguay where he was posted,” the book states, “he tried to promote the idea that the Palestinian refugees from Israel should settle in those countries (South America — Y.M.) … after a short time he realized that the idea had no prospects.”
Nevertheless, the Mossad did not give up, and after the Six-Day War it was again involved in an attempt to encourage and fund the emigration of Palestinians to South America. That program also failed at the outset.
And now, once again, Mossad chief Dedi Barnea and his operatives are being sent to various countries — including Ethiopia, Indonesia, Somalia and Uganda — to try to persuade their leaders to accept Gazans, under a “voluntary migration” plan approved by the cabinet. It is an idea that even U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration have toyed with. Of course, this will not happen. Egypt, which fears Gazans will break through its borders, and other Arab states have already made clear that they would view such attempts harshly.
*So all that remains for the Israeli government, which has no strategic plan, and is not seeking an alternative to the Hamas control of Gaza, is to continue the war. This is a war that will endanger the 48 hostages, will continue to exact a heavy toll of Gazan lives (already now nearly a hundred are killed each day), and will bring about the deaths of IDF soldiers. *
**The Chief of Staff General Eyal Zamifr wo opposed the ground incursion but follow the cabint decision that entering the city if a “death trap”. Hr also estimated that dozen IDF troops will die and hundreds will suffer. This week the Defense Ministry published that it expects some 50,000 people to be treated for PTSD by 2028. This is a bleak vision for Israelis and Palestinians. And if its not depressing enough. Netanyahu warned that Israeis must adjust to the notion that “our country is like Sparta”. By the way, at the end Sparta was defeted.
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