Here comes the new Israeli plan

…same as the old Israeli plan.

The health ministry in Gaza on Sunday reported more than 500 deaths over the past three days, as the genocidal Israeli military announced the start of a new operation it has named Gideon’s Chariots. The launch of the new operation is accompanied by the typical boastful Israeli language about attacking “Hamas terror targets throughout Gaza” and how their troops “eliminated dozens of terrorists, dismantled terrorist infrastructure sites above and below ground.” The new spokesman of the Israeli genocidal forces made remarks as if he were saying things that haven’t been said ad nauseam by the Israelis since October 7: “Unlike previously, we are now concentrating on offensive effort in the Gaza Strip, and carrying out an offensive until the defeat [of Hamas] in the areas we will operate.”

Over the past week of intensified Israeli bombardments amid an ongoing months-long starvation siege, fatalities have steadily climbed up. More than a hundred are being killed every day. Tents are melting away and their scrawny inhabitants are burrowing deep into the sands of Gaza as thousand-pound bombs rip through them with alarming regularity. Dozens of bunker-buster bombs in and around the European Hospital in Khan Yunis have completely put it out of service. The Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia and Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia have come under heavy bombardment and are functioning with drastically reduced capacity. More children have been blown to pieces and yet more families have been erased entirely from the civilian registry. Four journalists along with their families were wiped out in just one night. More academics have been slaughtered with their families. Hospitals have made familiar appeals about the urgent need for essentials. The Palestinian Journalists Protection Centre has raised alarm about the consistent targeting of journalists in Gaza.

Yet none of this is new.

We have been seeing the same script playing out for the last 19 months. The same carnage. The same beheaded babies. The same charred remains. The same incinerated tents. The same targeting of the intellectuals, poets, journalists, engineers, doctors, paramedics, and civilian defence crews. Even the Israelis, it appears, are surprised by how merrily they have gone about the business of exterminating the Palestinians in full view of the world with barely any pushback from the so-called international institutions. As one Israeli minister said on TV on Friday, “Tonight, we killed nearly 100 people in Gaza and no one cares because everyone has got used to the fact that 100 Palestinians can be killed in a single night during war, and the world doesn’t care.”

The banality of evil, as Hannah Arendt called it, is on full display.

Even this scale of violence that devours over a hundred defenceless Palestinians every day is not new. We have seen multiple times even the staunchly Zionist Western press, reporting “one of deadliest nights of bombings” time and again and again and again. Over a hundred have been killed in single attacks earlier. A staggering 174 children were wiped off the face of the earth in just one night as the overall death toll climbed over 400 just a couple of months ago.

The entirety of northern Gaza was under months-long brutal siege last year as the Israelis attempted to implement the so-called General’s Plan, which involved forcing the Palestinians to evacuate the north and then kill everyone who didn’t obey the orders. Nearly 400,000 people never left and were subjected to months-long relentless bombardments on top of a blockade. Now the entirety of Gaza is under an unofficial General’s Plan.

The plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza were out in the open in the very first week of the genocide. A leaked policy paper from October 13, 2023 showed the Israelis discussing plans to force the Palestinians into the Sinai in Egypt. The Egyptians were even reported to be building “shelters” for the ethnically cleansed Palestinians fleeing into Egypt. Variously, there have been plans to push them into the Congo, Indonesia, Somalia, and Somaliland. Now they are planning to deport a million of them to Libya.

Even the Israeli rhetoric of increasing pressure on Hamas in negotiations by ramping up the violence is nothing new. Remember when they killed Ismail Haniyeh nearly a year ago because he was supposedly obstinate during negotiations? Well, they are now claiming to have killed Muhammad Sinwar because now he was being obstinate during negotiations. Rest assured, if Sinwar has indeed been killed, his replacement will also be obstinate during negotiations, because when you control the media narrative, you can broadcast as many lies as you want with zero pushback.

Also read: How to negotiate ceasefire deals like Israel

As they play their grotesque games with the ultimate intent of securing a land without its people, the Israelis are treating the two million Palestinians — or however many are left of them — as an inanimate football, to be kicked from one part of their besieged land to another on an empty stomach and under constant threat of death either from a bomb or a sniper shot or a tank shell, if not by thirst and hunger.

The besieged Palestinians have been living this morbid reality for nearly two years now. Only the names have changed — whether they call it Operation Might and Sword, the General’s Plan, or Gideon’s Chariot, the end result is the same: more dead Palestinians. To quote that despicable Israeli, indeed, “Everyone has got used to the fact that 100 Palestinians can be killed in a single night, and the world doesn’t care.”

We are not doing anything new either — and those in Gaza know it. They are done beseeching us from their grim reality. They are no longer writing pleas. They are writing farewells.

It is hard to quantify or describe such evil with mere words. Those not in Gaza should be thankful for never having experienced such horror — at least not yet. But bearing witness to this inhumane suffering comes at a great cost — and so does turning away from it. For as long as this evil continues, we are all complicit unless we are doing everything within our means to bring it to an end.

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