It appears Palestinians in Gaza are not dying quickly enough to satisfy the real estate development timetables of some Israelis. So eight members of the Knesset sent a letter to Benjamin Netanyahu and Chair of Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Yuli Edelstein, pressing them to pick up the genocide tempo by making more comprehensive efforts to deny the remaining Gazas entirely of food, water, and power, and also drone-executing “anyone that moves” not exiting areas to be cleared while waving a white flag.
We thank Mondoweiss for reporting this appalling story and for readers guurst and Stacey B for calling it to our attention. We are reproducing Mondoweiss’ translation below. It makes a weak attempt to depict this Final Solution for Gazans as something other than what it is by pretending there will be humanitarian evacuation. As anyone who has been following the horrors in Gaza knows well by now, Israel has taken to herding Palestinians into purported safe zones and then killing them either en route or attacking the designated arrival area.
It was obvious where Israeli officials wanted their campaign to go within weeks of October 7. From an October 21, 2023 post, Israel Intends to Make Gaza Uninhabitable by Cutting Power Permanently:
It is striking to see how politicians, pundits, the press, and even key figures discuss the obvious trajectory of what Israel is doing to Gaza and its population. “Humanitarian crisis” winds up being inadequate since it averts attention from the deliberate steps Israel is taking to make living in Gaza untenable. “Genocide” is more apt but without describing the clear program Israel is launching, it can be depicted as overwrought.
Israel will reduce Gaza to a place where it is impossible to live, at least until if and when Israel decides to decides to repossess it bit by bit and rebuild. It is indifferent to the question of whether neighboring countries will relent in the face of escalating starvation, dehydration, and disease and take Palestinians in. It just wants them dispatched by whatever means necessary.
Israel plans first to reduce Gaza to rubble, as anyone could see when it started bombing apartment buildings on an indiscriminate basis. The excuse is it needs to do that as a preliminary to a ground operation to rout Hamas from the underground tunnels that survive the bombing campaign. Note military experts such as Scott Ritter have said that any clearing operation in Gaza would be a dangerous and high-casualty enterprise even for a military with the right equipment and equipment, and the IDF is not that. More important, Ritter and others have argued that the destruction of the buildings is likely to make any effort to wipe out the Hamas forces in Gaza more difficult….
The latest Seymour Hersh article describes the current Israel plan, which again could be inferred from actions and other statements. But Hersh usefully gets on the record the malignant intent, per the boldfaced section:
Netanyahu’s attitude, as assessed by the intelligence analysts, I was told, amounts to a determination “to wipe out Hamas.” One knowledgeable official told me that “Gaza City is in the process of being turned into Hiroshima with no nuclear weapons used.” At some point, he said, American-made bombs in the Israeli arsenal, including those known as “bunker busters,” may be targeted on the underground tunnel systems where Hamas manufactured the weapons and conducted planning for the horrific attacks in southern Israel on October 7.
If you have any doubts, see the additional detail today from the BBC, in Israel aims to cut Gaza ties after war with Hamas….
In other words, the elimination of Hamas from Gaza is the fig leaf for clearing Gaza of all Palestinians permanently. It would be impossible to resume water supplies or operate a hospital with no electricity. It’s been obvious this is the plan. The Israelis are now making it explicit. So why are officials and pundits mincing words?
Again, the destruction of hospitals and the targeting of medical personnel made it indisputable that Israel was intent on slaughtering all Gazans. Aside from the words of Israeli leaders, pundits and citizens, some of them captured in ICJ filings, we have acts like the choking off of food relief, gunning of people running to aid trucks, and videos of sacks of grain being emptied and filled with sand.
So why the ratcheting up now? Did someone have Nazi death camp like estimates of how long it ought to take before the Palestinians succumbed from starvation, disease, and exposure, and they’ve collectively managed to outlive forecasts, to much annoyance? Or is it that Israeli officials feel emboldened by the collapse of Syria and the just-around-the-corner arrival of the unconcerned-about-appearances Trump Administration? The worst is one can’t even see this missive as the product of hardliners; the co-signers skew to right wingers but are still broadly representative.
Needless to say, some things speak for themselves, and the document below is an example. The key bit is in the section numbered (1) to (3).
Concerning: the operational plan in the Gaza Strip
We approach you, as members of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, so that you re-examine the military operations in the Gaza Strip, due to its harsh results until now and prospects for the future. We shall thus specify:
- The military operation in the Gaza Strip, as it was presented to us at the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee by the former Defense Minister even before the beginning of the ground operation on October 27, 2023, and as it has been conducted since, on the ground, does not allow for the objectives as determined by the governmental echelon: Toppling the governance and military capabilities of Hamas, and they are indeed not materializing until today, despite dealing with a small territory and an enemy that does not possess tools or capabilities of a modern army.
- As was mentioned by the [IDF] Chief of Staff publicly, IDF operates with the method of local raids, a method which lacks the central component of a guerilla war of this kind: control. Effective control of the territory and the population is the only means towards cleansing enemy lines from the strip, and naturally towards decisive victory, rather than treading [water] in a war of attrition, where the side that is most worn is Israel. Therefore we end up inserting our soldiers again and again into neighborhoods and alleys that were already conquered by them many times, places which IDF leaders have declared as such, where Hamas divisions were dismantled and toppled, [declared] cleansed of enemies. (And in these same places we pay a dear and intolerable price in blood).
- From the date October 6, 2024, in the north of the Gaza Strip, south of the Mefalsim [Jabalia] corridor, a one-way operation ensued, one which included encirclement and evacuation of the population southwards. We all hoped that this was the beginning of military actions that would bring the required change, yet it seems that this operation is not being conducted properly: that is, after the encirclement and humanitarian evacuation, the IDF does not regard, as is custom in international law and all western armies, those who remain, as enemies. And is again risking the lives of our soldiers by entering the dense residential territory.
- After encirclement and evacuation of the population, the instructions to IDF need to be clear:
(1) Remote elimination of all energy sources, that is fuel, solar panels and any relevant means (pipes, cables, generators etc.)
(2) Elimination of all food sources including warehouses, water and all relevant means (water pumps etc.)
(3) Remote elimination of anyone who moves in the area and does not exit with a white flag during the days of the effective siege.
After these actions and the days of siege upon those who remain, IDF must enter gradually and conduct a full cleansing of the enemy nests.
- This should be done in the northern Gaza Strip, and similarly in any other territory: encirclement, evacuation of the population to a humanitarian zone, and effective siege until surrender or full elimination of the enemy. This is how every army acts, and so must the IDF act.
Despite repeated questions and requests at the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, until today we have not received satisfactory answers from IDF representatives at the committee, concerning why they do not act as is required, to determine victory over Hamas as an ‘end of operations state’ concerning the fighting, and what the plans are for the future. Therefore we ask for your immediate intervention in response to these questions, as well as the issuance of suitable instructions to IDF in order to reach a decisive victory and a cessation of unnecessary risking of our soldiers’ lives.
Copy: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Chair of Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Yuli Edelstein.
[Signatories]: Amit Halevy [Likud], Nissim Vattori [Likud], Ariel Kellner [Likud], Osher Shekalim [Likud], Zvi Sukkot [Religious Zionism], Ohad Tal [Religious Zionism], Limor Son Har-Melech [Jewish Power], Avraham Bezalel [Shas].