A plan to liquidate northern Gaza is gaining steam
Israeli soldiers operating in Gaza city, 28 July 2024
Meron Rapoport writes in +972 on 17 September 2024:
The date is October, November, or December 2024, or maybe early 2025. The Israeli military has just launched a new operation throughout northern Gaza — “Operation Order and Clean-up,” we’ll call it. The army orders the temporary evacuation of all Palestinian residents north of the Netzarim Corridor “for their personal safety,” explaining that “the IDF is expected to take significant action in Gaza City in the coming days, and wants to avoid harming civilians.”
The order is similar to the one the military issued on October 13, 2023 to the more than 1 million Palestinians living in Gaza City and its environs at the time. But it’s clear to everyone that this time, Israel is planning something else entirely.
Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant remain tight-lipped about the real goals of the operation, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, as well as other ministers on the far right, declare them openly. Here, they cite a program that the “Forum of Reserve Commanders and Fighters,” spearheaded by Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, proposed just a few weeks ago: ordering all residents of northern Gaza to leave within a week, before imposing a full siege on the area, including shutting off all supplies of water, food, and fuel, until those who remain surrender or die of starvation.
Other prominent Israelis, in recent months, have also called on the military to carry out mass extermination in northern Gaza. “Remove the entire civilian population from the north, and whoever remains there will be lawfully sentenced as a terrorist and subjected to a process of starvation or extermination,” Prof. Uzi Rabi, a senior researcher at Tel Aviv University, elaborated in a radio interview on Sept. 15. And in August, according to a report in Ynet, government ministers had already started pressuring Netanyahu to “cleanse” northern Gaza of its inhabitants.
The Rabi-Eiland plan also aligns with a proposal written in July by several Israeli academics, titled “From a murderous regime to a moderate society: The transformation and reconstruction of Gaza after Hamas.” According to that plan, which was submitted to Israeli decision-makers, “total defeat” of Hamas is a precondition for starting a process of “deradicalization” of Palestinians in Gaza. “It is important that the Palestinian public also has a broad perception of Hamas’ defeat,” its authors argued, adding: “‘First aid’ can begin in areas purged of Hamas.” One of the proposal’s authors, Dr. Harel Chorev, a senior researcher at the Moshe Dayan Center where Rabi also works, expressed full support for Eiland’s starvation plan.