In its genocidal war against the Palestinian enclave, Israel has waged more than two years of aggression against Gaza. More than 70, 000 Palestinians have been killed and the majority of Gaza’s population has been left with subpar food, medicine, and shelter as a result of it.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who the International Criminal Court has detained for crimes committed in Gaza, joined US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” which was established to oversee the reconstruction and governance of Gaza.
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It raises the question of what Netanyahu and Israel actually want from the Palestinian territory, whether they want the area to be rebuilt or just to keep the status quo.
According to observers, the road ahead of Netanyahu is a challenging one. He must appear to the world and the Israeli people as having US ambitions for Gaza as the election season draws nearer.
However, he also needs to keep his governing coalition, which rely on Bezalel Smotrich, his finance minister, to oppose the ceasefire in a region where he and his allies, as religious Zionists, believe they are divinely obligated to settle.
Things don’t seem to be going in Netanyahu’s favor entirely right now. Despite Hamas’s refusal to disarm, he has not prevented the transition to Trump’s three-phase ceasefire plan’s second phase. Next week, Gaza’s Rafah crossing will open in both directions, allowing residents to enter and leave the enclave, despite his objections. Additionally, it appears that the US has overruled his protests against Turkiye and Qatar joining the Board of Peace and possibly deploying forces to Gaza as part of a proposed International Stabilization Force.
Settlement or security
The Netanyahu government’s internal dialogue on Gaza continues. Smotrich called for the destruction of the US base in southern Israel on Monday, not only condemning the proposals as “bad for Israel,” but also calling for the destruction of the US base there. Despite this, other members of the Israeli parliament have primarily focused on the upcoming elections and have attempted to rally their political base regardless of ideology.
The Israeli military is attempting to raze territory along the Gaza border, creating a buffer zone deep into the coastal enclave, and Netanyahu insists that Hamas will be disarmed.
Hamas has been weak, and pushing Palestinians farther away from the Israeli border gives the Israeli government the opportunity to portray its population as secure.
The Israeli public, who is exhausted from the conflict for more than two years, largely hides the negative effects of Israel’s actions in national media.
American-Israeli pollster Dahlia Scheindlin claimed that the public is “deeply divided on Gaza and the Board of Peace.” The majority of Israeli society is splintered, despite the existence of a minority group opposed to resettling Gaza. The events of October 2023 are primarily responsible for the perception of Gaza with a mix of fear and a need for security in it. They don’t trust outsiders to handle it, and they want Israel to stay in Gaza in some way. There is also a sense of hope that US involvement will accomplish something that two years of conflict failed to.
However, Scheindlin said, “Almost everyone starts with the same idea: Anything is better than going back to war.”
According to Israel’s leaders, peace activist Gershon Baskin said, “They don’t have a strategy, and everything is chaos.” They only speak to their base while running for office. Yesterday, I visited the Knesset. It’s similar to watching lunatics scurry into a madness house. It’s a disaster, really.
Palestinians remain invisible to the majority of the population. They are indistinguishable. The majority of Israelis are ignorant of what is happening on the other side of the border, despite the fact that Israel has probably killed more than 100 000 people. Even so, Baskin claimed, “We even dispute that there is a border; it’s just ours.” “It’s not even on television,” he said. They only play old clips continuously. On social media, you can find images of Gaza, but you must go searching for it.
The majority of Israelis don’t, they say.
divided politics
There won’t be a Palestinian state, claim the leaders of Israel.
It is up to interpretation how to accomplish that goal, or the details that come with it, and how Gaza fits into it all.
Israel will continue to support a territory, Gaza, whose population it is accused of genocide, regardless of the outcome of the US-backed ceasefire process. According to analysts in Israel, there is currently only the unspoken suspicion that outside powers, particularly the US, are incompetent to determine how best to achieve coexistence.
Even Israel’s commitment to US plans is in doubt as Netanyahu frames the second phase of the ceasefire as a “declarative move” rather than the “definite sign of progress” that US envoy Steve Witkoff described as being “ascertain of progress.”
The genocide has continued, he said. According to Israeli lawmaker Ofer Cassif, “it’s continuing; it’s just moved from active to passive.” Israel is no longer bombing Gaza, but it is now starving and causing the area’s residents to die. This does not occur by itself. Government policy is used here.
Israeli leaders’ capacity for long-term planning was questioned by a large number of analysts, including political economist Shir Hever.
Hever claimed that domestic politics and overarching strategy were the primary factors in decisions like the ones about the attacks on Iran and Qatar. For instance, the June attack in Iran was a coincidence with a pending vote of no confidence in the government, and he claimed that the Qatari strike in September attempted to reshape Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial.
There isn’t a strategy, they say. According to those who have told Al Jazeera, Israeli governments do not operate on long-term planning. There is no long-term strategy for Smotrich and others, who want to settle Gaza and expel Palestinians. Everything is “short-term.”
Uncertainty in the future
A new factor in play is in play, he continued, referring to the US decision to override Israeli objections to entering phase two before Hamas’ disarmament, the inclusion of Qatar and Turkiye in the Board of Peace, and the decision to open the Rafah crossing. “Baskin, whose mediation between Israel and the PLO in the 1990s proved pivotal during the Oslo Accords,” he continued.
Cassif had a low sense of optimism. He said, “I don’t believe in this Board of Peace,” and I believe it is now government policy to continue thwarting and putting off plans to create a stabilization force, with the intention of letting people die while doing so.
He said, “I wish I didn’t have to say them at all, but I’m not supposed to for political cynical reasons, but that’s not true.”
He continued, “And it’s painful to me as a Jew and not just as a humanist and socialist.”
Source: Aljazeera
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