The war is lost – But why is Netanyahu killing civilians in Rafah?
Palestinians search through burning debris after an Israeli strike on a displacement camp in Rafah on 27 May 2024
Ramzy Baroud writes in The Palestine Chronicle on 1 June 2024:
Just hours after Israel carried out a gruesome massacre of displaced Palestinians in the Tel Al-Sultan area west of Rafah in the Gaza Strip on 26 May, it carried out yet another massacre in the Al-Mawasi area. The first is now known as the “Tents Massacre”.
It took place shortly after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) finally issued a stern demand that, “Israel must immediately halt its military offensive and any other action in Rafah which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The killing of 50 Palestinians in their own displacement tents was the answer given by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist government to the ICJ and the rest of the international community. The successive Israeli massacres in Rafah demonstrate the degree of intransigence of Israel’s genocidal regime.
Netanyahu and his Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant, who could both be on the official “wanted” list of the International Criminal Court (ICC) within weeks, could easily have chosen a different path, even for mere political maneuvering. They could, for example, have delayed their Rafah operation or changed strategies, just to avoid further ICJ rulings on the matter.
Their 2000lb bunker-busting bombs dismembered and beheaded children as they lay beside their mothers in makeshift camps that have no water, no electricity and no food. While the Israeli army offered the world a clearly concocted version of what happened, blaming “militants” and such, Netanyahu’s office described the attack as a mistake.
Both versions, of course, were lies.