Israel’s ‘Plan B’ for the Gaza Strip
Palestinians try to collect usable items under the rubble of a building bombarded by the Israeli army in Deir el-Balah, Gaza on 12 December 2023
Lorenzo Kamel writes in Al Jazeera:
It has been more than two months now since the Israeli authorities launched a war on Gaza in response to Hamas’s attack on its southern territories, which resulted in the killing of about 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians. Relentless Israeli bombardment and ground attacks have flattened entire neighbourhoods and killed close to 20,000 Palestinians, more than a third of them children.
The declared goal of the Israeli onslaught has been the “eradication” of Hamas from the enclave, but the viability of that being achieved has been increasingly questioned by foreign officials and analysts. Instead, the large-scale destruction wrought on Gaza as well as internal communications point to another aim the Israeli authorities may be pursuing.
A document produced by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence leaked to the Israeli press in late October outlined the forcible and permanent transfer of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
The document was reportedly created for an organisation called The Unit for Settlement – Gaza Strip, which seeks to recolonise the Gaza Strip 18 years after Israeli troops and settlers withdrew from it.
Yet, we are not living in 1948. Today, it is much more difficult to wipe out cities and villages as was done 75 years ago during the expulsion of a large percentage of the Palestinian population from its homeland by Israeli militias, when, among other things, the reach of the media was far less extensive than it is now. The Israeli authorities have therefore turned to what we might term “the plan B”: that is, to make the Gaza Strip unliveable, by dropping tens of thousands of tonnes of bombs.
The new strategy is implemented by targeting civilian infrastructure that supports life in the strip, including schools, universities, hospitals, bakeries, shops, farmland and greenhouses, water stations, sewage systems, power stations, solar panels, and generators.