[[link removed]]

EXTERMINATE, EXPEL, RESETTLE: ISRAEL’S ENDGAME IN NORTHERN GAZA  
[[link removed]]


 

Idan Landau
November 1, 2024
972 Magazine
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_ Debates over the details of the ‘Generals’ Plan’ distract
from the true brutality of Israel’s latest operation — one that
drops the veneer of humanitarian considerations and lays the
groundwork for settlements. _

Israeli soldiers operating in Gaza Ciety, July 28, 2024, Erik
Marmor/Flash90

 

Look at these two photos, which were both taken on Oct. 21, 2024. On
the right, we see a long line of displaced people — or, more
accurately, women and children — in the ruins of Jabalia refugee
camp, in the northern Gaza Strip. Men over the age of 16 are
separated, waving a white flag and holding up their ID cards. They are
on their way out. 

On the left, we see a camp built by the settler organization Nachala
just outside Gaza, as part of an event celebrating the festival of
Sukkot. The event was attended by 21 right-wing ministers and Knesset
members [[link removed]] and several
hundred other participants, all of whom were there to discuss plans
for building new Jewish settlements in Gaza. They are on their way in.

Left: Israeli settlers gather at an event celebrating Sukkot near the
Gaza Strip, calling for annexation and resettlement, October 21, 2024.
(Oren Ziv) Right: Displaced Palestinians line up at gunpoint in the
ruins of Jabalia refugee camp. (Used in accordance with Clause 27a of
the Copyright Law)

These photos tell a story that is unfolding so rapidly that its
harrowing details are already on the brink of being forgotten. Yet
this story could start from any point during the past 76 years:
the Nakba [[link removed]] of 1948, the
“Siyag Plan [[link removed]]”
that followed it, the Naksa
[[link removed]] of 1967. On one side,
displaced Palestinians with all the belongings they can carry, hungry,
wounded, and exhausted; on the other, joyful Jewish settlers,
sanctifying the new land that the army has cleared for them. 

But the story of what is happening right now, on either side of the
Gaza fence, revolves around what has come to be known as the
“Generals’ Plan” — and what it conceals.

The blueprint

The “Generals’ Plan,” published in early September, has a very
simple goal: to empty the northern Gaza Strip
[[link removed]] of
its Palestinian population. The plan itself
[[link removed]] estimated
that about 300,000 people were still living north of the Netzarim
Corridor — the Israeli-occupied zone that bisects Gaza — although
the UN put the number closer to 400,000. 

During the first phase of the plan, the Israeli army would inform all
of those people that they have a week to evacuate to the south through
two “humanitarian corridors.” In the second phase, at the end of
that week, the army would declare the whole area a closed military
zone. Anyone who remained would  be considered an enemy combatant,
and be killed if they didn’t surrender. A complete siege would be
imposed on the territory, intensifying the hunger and health crisis
— creating, as Prof. Uzi Rabi, a senior researcher at Tel Aviv
University, put it
[[link removed]], “a
process of starvation or extermination.”

According to the plan, providing the civilian population advance
warning to evacuate guarantees compliance with the requirements of
international humanitarian law. This is a lie. The first protocol of
the Geneva Conventions clearly states
[[link removed]] that
warning civilians to flee does not negate the protected status of
those who remain, and therefore does not permit military forces to
harm them; nor does a military siege negate the army’s obligation to
allow the passage of humanitarian aid to civilians.

Besides, the lip service to humanitarian law falls flat when
considering that the man spearheading the plan, Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora
Eiland, has spent the past year calling for collective punishment
[[link removed]] against
the entire population of Gaza, for treating
[[link removed]] the enclave as if it were Nazi
Germany, and for allowing disease to spread
[[link removed]] as a step that
will “bring victory closer and reduce harm to IDF soldiers.” After
rattling off like that for 10 months, he recognized
[[link removed]] an opportunity
— in consultation with a number of shadow advisors, to whom we will
return — to pilot an extermination plan in northern Gaza. He
diligently delivered it to politicians and the media, disguised in a
mask of lies about adhering to international law. 

The media and the politicians did what they always do: manufactured a
distraction. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
[[link removed]] and
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant
[[link removed]] hastened to deny, anonymous
officials
[[link removed]] and soldiers
in the field
[[link removed]] were
already briefing the media that the plan was starting to be
implemented.

Giora Eiland testifies during a hearing of the civil investigative
committee on the October 7 massacres, Tel Aviv, August 8, 2024.
(Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

The reality, however, is even more appalling. What the army has been
implementing in northern Gaza since early October is not quite the
“Generals’ Plan,” but an even more sinister and brutal version
of it within a more concentrated area. One could even say that the
plan itself and the intense international media and diplomatic storm
it has created has helped keep everyone in the dark as to what is
actually going on, and obscure the two ways in which the plan has
already been redefined. 

The first, most immediate distinction is the abandoning of provisions
for reducing harm to civilians, i.e. giving residents of northern Gaza
a week to evacuate southward. The second departure concerns the real
purpose of emptying the area: while portraying the military operation
as a security necessity, it was, in fact, an embodiment of the spirit
of ethnic cleansing and resettlement from day one. 

Attention diverted

The catastrophe in northern Gaza is growing by the minute, and the
confluence of circumstances means that the unimaginable —
extermination of thousands of people inside the besieged area — is
no longer beyond the realm of possibility.

The current military operation began in the early hours of 
[[link removed]]Oct. 6
[[link removed]]. Residents
of Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya, and Jabalia — the three localities
north of Gaza City — were ordered to flee to the Al-Mawasi area in
the south of the Strip through two “humanitarian corridors.”
Israel presented
[[link removed]] the
attack as a means to dismantle Hamas infrastructure after the group
had reestablished itself in the area, and to prepare for the
possibility of Israel taking over responsibility for acquiring,
moving, and distributing humanitarian aid around the Strip — in
other words, for the return of the Israeli Civil Administration that
governed Gaza until the “disengagement” of 2005. The first cause
was only partially true, and the second was no more than a
smokescreen.

For Palestinians in those areas, things looked rather different. The
army attacked residents in their homes and in shelters
with airstrikes, artillery, and drones
[[link removed]], while soldiers moved
from street to street demolishing and setting fire
[[link removed]] to entire
buildings
[[link removed]] to prevent
residents [[link removed]] from
returning. Within a matter of days, Jabalia had turned into a vision
of the apocalypse
[[link removed]].

As opposed to the picture painted by the army, implying that residents
in the northern areas were free to move south and get out of the
danger zone, local testimonies presented a frightening reality: anyone
who so much as stepped out of their home risked being shot
[[link removed]] by Israeli
snipers or drones, including young children
[[link removed]] and
those holding white flags
[[link removed]].
Rescue crews trying to help the wounded also came under attack
[[link removed]], as well
as journalists trying to document
[[link removed]] the
events.

One particularly harrowing video, verified by The Washington Post
[[link removed]],
shows a child on the ground pleading for help after being wounded by
an airstrike; when a crowd gathers to help him, they are suddenly hit
by another airstrike, killing one and wounding more than 20 others.
This is the reality amid which the people of northern Gaza were
supposed to walk, starved and exhausted, into the “humanitarian
zone.”

An IDF drone shows displaced Palestinians forced to evacuate Jabalia,
October 21, 2024. (X/Avichay Adraee/used in accordance with Clause 27a
of the Copyright Law)

In view of this brutality, the Israeli propaganda machine spurred into
action to offer a slew of excuses as to why civilians were not
evacuating — primarily that Hamas was “beating with sticks
[[link removed]]”
those who tried to leave. If Hamas did indeed stop civilians from
evacuating, how can the army then claim that those who chose not to
evacuate are terrorists condemned to be killed? But listening to the
residents themselves, one could hear the same desperate
[[link removed]] cry repeatedly
[[link removed]]:
“We cannot evacuate because the Israeli army is shooting at us.” 

On Oct. 20, the army circulated
[[link removed]] a photo of a long
line of displaced Palestinians, beside a caption worded as mundanely
and numbingly as a weather forecast: “The movement of Palestinian
residents continues from the Jabalia area in the northern Gaza Strip.
So far, more than 5,000 Palestinians have evacuated from the
area.” 

Observant viewers would have noticed that all of the heads in the
picture were covered: it is a line of women and children, who were not
“evacuated” but forcibly uprooted. Where are the men? Taken away
to unknown locations. We may yet hear of their time in Israeli
detention camps a few months from now, describing the torture and
abuse
[[link removed]] that
have killed at least 60
[[link removed]] Gazan
prisoners since October 7. 

Unlike what was stated in the “Generals’ Plan,” civilians were
not given a week to evacuate, as Eiland later acknowledged
[[link removed]]; from the
get-go, the army treated the northern areas as a military zone in
which any movement is met with deadly fire. This is the first way in
which the plan has been used as a lightning rod to divert attention
and criticism from a much more brutal reality than what it proffers.

A policy of extermination

Since the Israeli army began its operation in northern Gaza, it has
killed over 1,000
[[link removed]] Palestinians.
The Israeli Air Force usually bombs at night while the victims are
sleeping, slaughtering entire families
[[link removed]] in their homes and
making it more difficult to evacuate the wounded. And on Oct. 24,
rescue services announced
[[link removed]] that
the intensity of the bombardment left them with no choice but to cease
all operations in the besieged areas.

Some of the most notable attacks include the bombing
[[link removed]] of a home in the
Al-Fallujah area of Jabalia camp on Oct. 14, killing a family of 11
along with the doctor who came to treat them; an attack
[[link removed]] on the Abu Hussein
School in Jabalia camp on Oct. 17 that killed 22 displaced people who
were sheltering there; the killing
[[link removed]] of 33 people in
three houses in Jabalia camp, among them 21 women, on Oct. 19;
the leveling
[[link removed]] of
several residential buildings in Beit Lahiya on the same day, killing
87 people; airstrikes
[[link removed]] on
five residential buildings in Beit Lahiya on Oct. 26, which killed 40
people; and the massacre
[[link removed]] of 93 people in the
bombing of a five-storey residential building in Beit Lahiya on Oct.
29.

The extermination operation that is currently underway in northern
Gaza should not come as a surprise to anyone who has paid attention to
Israel’s war crimes over the past year, and the
[[link removed]] countless
[[link removed]] investigative
[[link removed]] reports
[[link removed]] that
[[link removed]] the
[[link removed]] world’s
[[link removed]] most
[[link removed]] respected
[[link removed]] media
[[link removed]] outlets
[[link removed]] have
[[link removed]] written
[[link removed]] about
[[link removed]] them
[[link removed]].
From dropping 2,000-pound bombs
[[link removed]] where
there are no military targets nearby to the regular killing of
children
[[link removed]] by
sniper fire to the head — these past atrocities show us what the
Israeli army will continue to do if they’re not stopped. 

Northern Gaza is being annihilated before the eyes of the world.
Continuous bombardment is striking every corner, with martyrs falling
in every street. The sound of explosions never stops, and there is no
safe place for civilians. Hospitals are overwhelmed, unable to treat
the… pic.twitter.com/S5SIQkXUQv [[link removed]]

— Mahmoud Bassam محمود بسام (@Mahmoud_Bassam8) October 18,
2024
[[link removed]]

There are only three major medical facilities within the encircled
area of northern Gaza, to which the hundreds of casualties of the past
few weeks have been directed: the Indonesian Hospital and Kamal Adwan
Hospital in Beit Lahiya, and Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia. Yet the
Israeli army has also subjected these hospitals to attacks, rendering
them unable to treat
[[link removed]] the
wounded. Reports by Doctors Without Borders
[[link removed]] and
the UN
[[link removed]] have
defined the situation as “immediately life threatening.”

At the start of the operation, the Israeli army ordered
[[link removed]] the
three hospitals to evacuate within 24 hours, threatening to capture or
kill anyone found inside them — not quite the “week of grace”
stated in the “Generals’ Plan.” The army bombed Kamal Adwan and
its surroundings in the early stages of the operation, before
subjecting it to a three-day raid
[[link removed]] which removed it
from service entirely and saw most of the doctors detained. 

The army has also repeatedly bombed
[[link removed]] both
the Indonesian Hospital and Al-Awda. Two patients in the former died
due to the resulting power outage, before the hospital stopped
functioning altogether. This is the reason why even mild
injuries often end
[[link removed]] in death —
because medical teams simply do not have the resources necessary to
treat them.   

Israel, of course, deems every house and every alley in Gaza a
potential threat and a legitimate target. And what will be the excuse
for denying
[[link removed]] six
medical aid groups that work with the World Health Organization from
entering Gaza? Most likely, it is a punishment for sending Western
doctors to the Strip who later published testimonies
[[link removed]] about
Israeli snipers targeting children. A UN report published shortly
beforehand concluded
[[link removed]] that
Israel is carrying out “a concerted policy to destroy the
health-care system of Gaza” as part of “the crime against humanity
of extermination.” 

A policy of starvation

These attacks have been accompanied by a complete siege
[[link removed]] that has blocked all
food and medical supplies from entering northern Gaza, which appears
[[link removed]] to
have been an intentional starvation
[[link removed]] policy.
According to the UN’s World Food Program, Israel began cutting off
food on Oct. 1
[[link removed]] —
five days before the military operation.

Palestinians queue for bread at the only open bakery in Khan Younis,
southern Gaza Strip, October 24, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

This fact received official, albeit indirect, acknowledgement in the
form of a U.S. ultimatum
[[link removed]] on Oct. 15,
demanding that Israel allow aid shipments to enter northern Gaza
within 30 days or face a halt in U.S. weapons deliveries to Israel.
This indicates, as humanitarian groups had warned
[[link removed]], that no such aid
was being allowed in before then. The 30-day grace period is
laughable; as the EU’s foreign policy chief stated
[[link removed]],
within 30 days thousands of people might die of starvation.

Moreover, an exposé
[[link removed]] by
Politico strengthened the feeling that like previous such
“threats,” the latest demand from Washington was but an empty
ceremonial gesture to reassure liberal consciences. Already in August,
the top U.S. official working on the humanitarian situation in Gaza
told aid organizations in an internal meeting that the United States
would not countenance delaying or stopping weapon shipments to Israel
to pressure it on humanitarian aid. As for the breaking of
international humanitarian law, the sentiment expressed by the
representative, according to one of the attendees, was that “the
rules do not apply to Israel.”

Israel’s starvation policy in northern Gaza has not been limited to
preventing the entry of food. On Oct. 10, the army bombed
[[link removed]] the only flour
store in the area — as clear a war crime as you’ll find, forming a
significant part of the genocide case against Israel at the
International Court of Justice. Four days later, the army bombed
[[link removed]] a UN food
distribution center in Jabalia, killing 10 people. 

Aid agencies have provided urgent
[[link removed]] warnings
[[link removed]] about
this escalating disaster, alerting as to their inability to fulfill
their basic functions amid the impossible conditions Israel has
created in northern Gaza. A new IPC report about hunger in
Gaza predicts
[[link removed]] “catastrophic
outcomes” of severe malnutrition, especially in the north.

On Oct. 16, Israeli media reported
[[link removed]] that following U.S.
pressure, 100 aid trucks had entered northern Gaza. But journalists
[[link removed]] in
the north
[[link removed]] were quick to
correct the record: nothing at all had entered the besieged areas. On
Oct. 20, Israel denied
[[link removed]] a further
request by UN agencies to bring in food, fuel, blood, and medicines.
Three days later, in response to a request for an interim order by the
Israeli human rights group Gisha, the state admitted
[[link removed]] to the High Court that no
humanitarian aid had been allowed into northern Gaza up to that point.
By this time, we are already talking about a three-week-long food
siege.

Since then, Israel claims
[[link removed]] to
have allowed a trickle of aid trucks into northern Gaza — but
without photographic evidence, it is very hard to know how many have
reached their stated destination.

Winking at the right, feigning security justifications to the left

From the very start, the military rationale for such a drastic
operation was questionable. Eiland spoke of “5,000 terrorists”
hiding in the north, but anyone following the situation on the ground
closely could see that encounters with Hamas operatives in these areas
were few and far between.

Indeed, as Haaretz’s Yaniv Kubovich
[[link removed]] revealed,
“commanders in the field … say that the decision to start
operating in northern Gaza was made without detailed deliberations,
and it seems that it was mainly intended to put pressure on the
population of Gaza.” Military forces were told to prepare for the
operation, the report continued, “even though there was no
intelligence to justify it.” 

Palestinians fleeing on the outskirts of Jabalia refugee camp, October
8, 2024. (Bilal Salem)

Furthermore, there was no unanimity among senior defense officials
regarding the necessity of the maneuver, and there were plenty in both
the army and the Shin Bet who thought it might endanger the lives of
hostages. Sources who spoke to Haaretz testified that the soldiers who
entered Jabalia “did not encounter terrorists face-to-face,”
though at least 12 soldiers
[[link removed]] have
since been killed in northern Gaza.

So what was the real motivation for the operation? To answer that
question, we need look no further than the Sukkot event organized by
settlers and their supporters on Oct. 21, titled “Preparing to
Settle Gaza.” There, they laid out a vision
[[link removed]] for
building Jewish settlements all across the Gaza Strip after cleansing
the enclave of Palestinians. Gaza City, for example, would become “a
Hebrew, technological, green city that would unite all parts of
Israeli society.” And in this, at least, they are telling the truth:
Israelis have always united around the displacement and dispossession
of Palestinians. 

That event was only the latest to call for annexation and settlement
of the Strip, coming after an ecstatic January conference
[[link removed]] in
Jerusalem that was attended by thousands, including no fewer than 26
coalition members. And while only a quarter of the Israeli public
supports resettling Gaza, the significant presence of ministers and
supporters from Netanyahu’s Likud party shows that at the political
level, it is growing increasingly mainstream.

Daniela Weiss’ Nachala movement has already drawn up the plans: six
settlement groups, with 700 families
[[link removed]] waiting
in line. All they need is a window of opportunity — one moment when
national attention is distracted (in Lebanon, the West Bank, Iran),
one moment of determination in Bezalel Smotrich’s “decisive”
style [[link removed]],
and the stake will be planted across the fence.

They will call it a “military outpost” or an “agricultural
farm,” a time-tested strategy of winking at the right while feigning
security justifications to the left. The army will never abandon them:
these are our “finest boys,” the military is their flesh and
blood. And so the return shall come to pass.

The brains behind the ‘Generals’ Plan’

The observant among us could see the way the wind was blowing from
the very first week
[[link removed]] of
the war. While most Israelis were still wrapping their heads around
the magnitude of the disaster of October 7, the settlers were already
drawing maps and sticking settlement pins on them.

The wound of the “disengagement,” when the military uprooted 8,000
settlers from the Strip, was left deliberately open, never allowed to
heal: a “trauma” being re-lived and passed down year after
year, bleeding [[link removed]] its poison into
the infamous Kohelet Policy Forum
[[link removed]] —
a right-wing think tank responsible for much of the current
government’s masterplans — and to a whole row of right-wing
politicians imbued with hatred and an insatiable desire for revenge. 

It was the reincarnation
[[link removed]] of
an old fundamental Israeli theme: the eternal victims can never sin.
It is the mindset that turned the trauma
[[link removed]] of October
7, in the words of Naomi Klein
[[link removed]],
into “a weapon of war,” seamlessly infusing
[[link removed]] the
Hamas attack with Holocaust imagery.

A Star of David is seen carved into a wall as Israeli soldiers operate
inside Al-Shati refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip, November 16, 2023.
(Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

And of course, far-right minister Orit Strook knew it before anyone
else, predicting
[[link removed]] in
May 2023: “About [resettling] Gaza — I don’t think that the
people of Israel are mentally there right now, so it won’t happen
today or tomorrow morning. In the long-term, I suppose there will be
no choice but to do it. It will happen when the people of Israel will
be ready for it, and sadly we will pay for it in blood.” How sad she
really was about it is hard to tell, since the very same Orit Strook,
in the midst of the war, rejoiced at the surge of new settlements and
outposts
[[link removed]] in
the West Bank and described
[[link removed]] it
as “a time of miracles.”

What is the connection between this overflowing cauldron of messianism
and the “Generals’ Plan”? That was revealed earlier this month,
when Omri Maniv of Channel 12 found
[[link removed]] that
although the military generals are the face of the plan, the brains
behind it is the right-wing organization Tzav 9 — the group
responsible for setting humanitarian aid trucks on fire
[[link removed]] before
they could enter Gaza, and which was consequently sanctioned
[[link removed]] by
the United States along with its founder, Shlomo Sarid.

According to Maniv’s report, it was Sarid who connected Eiland with
the Forum of Reserve Commanders and Fighters, which published the
plan. Among the founders of the Forum is Maj. Gen. (res.) Gabi Siboni
from the Misgav Institute, which was descended from the now defunct
Zionist Strategy Institute, a front organization for — surprise,
surprise — Kohelet.

Over the course of years, Kohelet has perfected the ability to
significantly influence the public agenda in Israel
through extensions and sub-branches
[[link removed]] operating under
seemingly innocuous names, with its researchers sometimes even denying
any relation to it. Sarid practically quoted Kohelet’s operating
manual when he explained in an internal Zoom meeting of Tzav 9
members: “We’ve come up with a clever strategy here: taking a
controversial core issue, and then as civilian organizations we come
and offer the solution to the government. We come from all sides.
We’ve offered solutions from both the right and the left.” 

Eiland was aware that Sarid and members of the Forum of Reserve
Commanders and Fighters were striving to reestablish settlements in
Gaza, but denied that his plan was intended to prepare the ground for
it. This is what a denial by a useful idiot sounds like. 

Like any good commander in the IDF Central Command, who is sent to
secure a religious celebration of settlers at Joseph’s Tomb in
Nablus, or to block the exits from the Palestinian villages of Kafr
Qaddum and Beita, he will keep claiming that he merely provides
“security” solutions that have nothing to do with the settlers’
agenda. “It’s not political,” they explain to us over and over
again, while the messianists rejoice, shedding an occasional tear over
“the bloody price to be paid.”

The Israeli army rounds up Palestinians at gunpoint near the
Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip.
(X/AvichayAdraee)

But was he really a useful idiot? This week we learned
[[link removed]] that Israel’s
political leadership is pressuring the military to prevent the
residents of Jabalia from returning to their homes, “despite the
fact that the objectives of the operation … have mostly been
achieved.” Eiland now expects
[[link removed]] that
for Palestinians, northern Gaza “will slowly turn into a distant
dream. Like they have forgotten Ashkelon [Al-Majdal], they will forget
that area too.” This is no longer the voice of a mindless military
tactician but rather of a full-blown advocate of ethnic cleansing.

And so we have cut through all the layers of deception in the
“Generals’ Plan”: contrary to what was stated, the plan itself
is a war crime; the army did not provide any grace period for
evacuating civilians; the military justification is questionable, and
certainly in no way proportionate to the intensity of the drastic
operation; and the ultimate goal of the plan is not military but
political — resettling Gaza.

Israel’s window of opportunity

Right now, around 100,000 residents
[[link removed]] remain
besieged in Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, and Jabalia, starving and
thirsty. Entire families are being massacred and entire neighborhoods
flattened
[[link removed]] every
day. Israel’s destruction of healthcare infrastructure
[[link removed]] and
blocking of medical aid has rendered hospitals defunct, unable to care
for the wounded. All the while, a partial communications blackout and
the near total absence of journalists within the besieged areas keeps
us largely in the dark.

Is it possible to foresee what comes next? Some will inevitably look
to the United States for answers. In a few days, Americans will go to
the polls in what is sure to be a close race between Donald Trump and
Kamala Harris. If Trump wins, the Israeli leadership can breathe a
sigh of relief. He will not stop any Israeli plan, however brutal —
even for the simple reason that he is not clear
[[link removed]] on
what the difference between Gaza and Israel is.

Harris, for her part, will not risk the final days of her campaign by
making any strong statements. She certainly won’t jeopardize the
Democrats’ Jewish vote by issuing Israel a real ultimatum — in
fact she has already said so
[[link removed]].
And if she wins? There’s no rush. The new president will need to
study the situation. “We are closely following what is happening in
Gaza, and working with our allies toward a solution to this tragic
situation,” she’ll be sure to say.

Europe has no levers of influence on Israel in the immediate future,
and in any case the internal difference of opinions within the EU —
and, first and foremost, Germany’s resolute support for Israel —
thwart any drastic shift in policy. In The Hague
[[link removed]], the mills of justice grind
slowly. 

President Biden greets Vice President Harris as he arrives to deliver
his State of the Union address, Tuesday, February 7, 2023. (Adam
Schultz/Wikimedia Commons)

Salvation can only come from Washington, but Washington is busier
every passing day with Trump’s latest scandalous statement. The
poison machine of the American right, aided by Elon Musk, is already
in high gear in the production of disinformation and fake news. The
inevitable result will be that once again, no one will care about
Palestinian bodies piling up.

All this provides Israel with a window of opportunity of a month or
two, during which it can even intensify the extermination operation in
northern Gaza. As far as I can see, nothing will stop it during this
period, or probably even after. The intensifying war in Lebanon and
Israel’s north also acts as a further smokescreen.

How many Palestinians will Israel exterminate in northern Gaza before
then? The killing of over 1,000 in the four weeks since the current
operation began may not sound like a lot compared to the numbers we
saw at the beginning of the war, but we have to remember that the area
currently under siege contains less than a fifth of Gaza’s
population. Proportionally, then, this is equivalent to the record
numbers in the first two months of the war, when the army killed
[[link removed]] an
average of 250 people per day through incessant airstrikes. It is
therefore no wonder that the residents of northern Gaza say the last
few weeks have been the most difficult
[[link removed]] since
the beginning of the war. 

Forced out, never to return?

Barring the possibility of mass annihilation by means not yet seen,
Israel appears to be choosing something of a middle ground between
extermination and transfer. The extermination was intended as a form
of terror and intimidation, the army’s way of persuading the
residents of northern Gaza to evacuate “voluntarily.” But even
that was not enough. And so soldiers were sent to shelters to round up
the refugees at gunpoint and send them south, after the men were
separated and taken for questioning or arrest.

On Oct. 21, the Israeli public broadcaster, Kan, published
[[link removed]] drone
footage of Palestinians being rounded up and forced southward. Kan
titled it “Gazans leaving Jabalia.” They are “leaving” in the
same way the residents of Lyd
[[link removed]], Al-Majdal, and Manshiyya
“left” in 1948. Gazan residents themselves testify
[[link removed]]:
“Whoever does not follow orders is shot.” 

And so it is: women and children in one line, separated from men over
the age of 16 holding up ID cards in another — a forced displacement
captured by the cameras of the displacing force. In years to come,
Israel will write in the history books: they left of their own accord.

Displaced Palestinians line up at gunpoint in the ruins of Jabalia
refugee camp. (Used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright
Law)

And just as Israeli TV broadcasted images of this “calm
departure,” journalists in Gaza reported
[[link removed]] on another
bombing of a shelter in the very same refugee camp, in which 10 people
were killed and 30 wounded. The testimony of a paramedic who was
there reveals
[[link removed]] the horror:
a drone announced from the air that residents of the compound had to
evacuate, and no more than 10 minutes later, before most people had
managed to leave, the site was blown up. 

The “Generals’ Plan,” is thus not only a deceit but also an
operational flop. The threatened population was not inclined to
voluntarily evacuate into the path of flying bullets and mortar
shells, preferring familiar to unfamiliar horrors as is human nature
(then again, who in the Israeli army is capable of perceiving
Palestinians as human?). Even extermination as an instrument of terror
was not enough to persuade the residents of northern Gaza to evacuate
“voluntarily.” And so infantry forces were sent to the shelters to
force the displaced, at gunpoint, to come out and start marching south
(after the men were separated and taken for questioning or arrest).

All the signs indicate
[[link removed]] that
Israel is not planning to let the displaced return. In this sense, the
destruction in northern Gaza is unlike anything we have seen before.
The army really does make sure to burn, destroy, and raze every
building after the Palestinians leave — and sometimes while
they’re still inside. Even the Americans and the Europeans can see
[[link removed]] the
writing on the wall this time.

How long will it take to totally cleanse northern Gaza of its
population? It is difficult to predict exactly, between the stamina of
local residents to remain, the maximum daily death toll that the army
allows itself based on its own considerations, and the international
reaction. Certainly, it appears that the current assault will continue
for weeks to come.

In the meantime, many of those displaced
[[link removed]] are
not settling south of the Netzarim Corridor but rather on the
outskirts of Gaza City, afraid that if they leave the north
altogether, they may never be able to return. If the army expels them
from there as well, this will be yet further evidence that the
cleansing operation is not being guided by operational considerations.

A fight for life

What is left for us to do? Inside Israel, we are few who see the
reality in front of us with clear eyes. But what little we can do, we
must.

First of all, we must tune out the heckles from the peanut gallery:
from “But what about Hamas’ charter?!” to “But, Iran!” and
“But they’re barbarians!” None of this is relevant in the face
of the genocide that our army is carrying out as you read these words
(and I don’t choose that term hastily; here are
[[link removed]] four
[[link removed]] Israeli
[[link removed]] historians
[[link removed]] that
reached this conclusion, who are greater experts than I). How,
exactly, does the massacre of October 7 justify the burning of schools
and bakeries? What does Hamas’ charter have to do with denying
medical equipment from entering Gaza, leading to wholesale death of
wounded people?

Palestinians displaced from Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun
shelter in tents at Al-Yarmouk Stadium in Gaza City, November 1, 2024.
(Omar Al-Qataa)

We must also ignore the caricature that is “the opposition.” The
“alternative” that Israel’s “center left” offers lies
between a “strategic occupation
[[link removed]]”
of more territory on the one hand, and a policy of “separation
[[link removed]]”
on the other that still allows the army complete freedom of action in
the occupied territories or even contemplates a revival of the
“Jordanian option.”

The incessant rambling about grand
[[link removed]] multilateral
[[link removed]] political arrangements
[[link removed]] only serves
one purpose: an evasion from the bloody reality. It is a refusal to
face our own actions, a refusal to claim responsibility for the
catastrophe — for which Hamas indeed carries considerable blame, but
we carry much more. And ultimately, a refusal to see Palestinians as
humans, just like us. 

I’ve spent countless hours reading testimonies from Gaza over the
past year, and one phenomenon that struck me as particularly
horrifying, even though it does not result in the most horrible
crimes, is the way Israeli soldiers treat the Palestinians as if they
were sheep or goats, herding them from one location to another. Like a
flock of animals, snipers and drones corral
[[link removed]] them,
firing live ammunition at anyone who refuses to move or takes too
long. Planes and drones deliver evacuation notices and then almost
immediately bomb
[[link removed]] those who
did not yet manage to escape. Such dehumanization cannot help but
trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews
into cattle cars.

The web of crimes described here is not so abstract — a vast part of
the Israeli public takes part in them. Hundreds if not
thousands recorded
[[link removed]] themselves
[[link removed]] in action
[[link removed]],
while many more called for extermination
[[link removed]] outright. The
majority, however, is not so explicit or smug. Most just serve the
military over hundreds of days of reserve duty “because we must
protect our country.” They commit crimes while giving it no thought,
or half a thought, or only a silenced, trampled-upon thought.

They can come up with myriad excuses, but each one crumbles in the
face of more than 16,000 dead children — over 3,000 of them
[[link removed]] under
the age of 5 — who have all been identified by their name and ID
numbers
[[link removed]]. And
they crumble in the face of the destruction of all civilian
infrastructure
[[link removed]],
which does not and cannot have a purely military purpose.

So we all bear the weight of responsibility for this, albeit some more
than others. The army
[[link removed]] refusal
[[link removed]] movement
[[link removed]] arose
too late and too slowly, yet it requires all encouragement and support
and any voice it can be lent. The consensus concerning the war of
extermination poisons Israeli society and blackens its future so
profoundly that even small pockets of resistance can proliferate
stamina and hope to those who have not yet been carried away by the
currents of madness.  

We can also look for partners in this fight abroad, where the critical
lever of pressure is the pipeline of American weapons. Since October
7, this pipeline has worked at an unprecedented rate
[[link removed]] (to
date, $17.9 billion worth of arms shipped
[[link removed]] to
Israel), facilitating a long list of war crimes
[[link removed]]. But something
else was also unprecedented: for the first time, that pipeline was
somewhat impeded, even if only temporarily, when a delivery of
2,000-pound bombs was delayed
[[link removed]] ahead
of the Rafah invasion. 

This is merely a drop in the ocean, but it points to what needs to be
done. And it would not have happened without the continuous pressure
that activists put on their representatives in the Democratic
establishment, which eventually percolated to the White House.
Petitions, letters to congresspeople, publishing testimonies — any
tool used to sway public opinion against the automatic support of
Israel can help.

The struggle to end this intensifying war of extermination and
transfer in Gaza, particularly in the north, is first and foremost a
human fight. It is a fight for life, both in Gaza and Israel: for the
very chance that life can continue to exist in this blood-soaked land.
Nothing could be more patriotic.

_A version of this article first appeared in Hebrew on __the
author’s blog_ [[link removed]]_. It was translated into
English for +972 by Gali Avatichi and Keren Hering._

_IDAN LANDAU is a professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University and
writes the political blog "Don't Die Stupid."_

_OUR AT 972 TEAM HAS BEEN DEVASTATED BY THE HORRIFIC EVENTS OF THIS
LATEST WAR. THE WORLD IS REELING FROM ISRAEL’S UNPRECEDENTED
ONSLAUGHT ON GAZA, INFLICTING MASS DEVASTATION AND DEATH UPON BESIEGED
PALESTINIANS, AS WELL AS THE ATROCIOUS ATTACK AND KIDNAPPINGS BY HAMAS
IN ISRAEL ON OCTOBER 7. OUR HEARTS ARE WITH ALL THE PEOPLE AND
COMMUNITIES FACING THIS VIOLENCE. _

_We are in an extraordinarily dangerous era in Israel-Palestine. The
bloodshed has reached extreme levels of brutality and threatens to
engulf the entire region. Emboldened settlers in the West Bank, backed
by the army, are seizing the opportunity to intensify their attacks on
Palestinians. The most far-right government in Israel’s history is
ramping up its policing of dissent, using the cover of war to silence
Palestinian citizens and left-wing Jews who object to its policies._

_This escalation has a very clear context, one that +972 has spent the
past 14 years covering: Israeli society’s growing racism and
militarism, entrenched occupation and apartheid, and a normalized
siege on Gaza._

_We are well positioned to cover this perilous moment – but we need
your help to do it. This terrible period will challenge the humanity
of all of those working for a better future in this land. Palestinians
and Israelis are already organizing and strategizing to put up the
fight of their lives._

_CAN WE COUNT ON YOUR SUPPORT 
[[link removed]]? +972 MAGAZINE IS A LEADING
MEDIA VOICE OF THIS MOVEMENT, A DESPERATELY NEEDED PLATFORM WHERE
PALESTINIAN AND ISRAELI JOURNALISTS, ACTIVISTS, AND THINKERS CAN
REPORT ON AND ANALYZE WHAT IS HAPPENING, GUIDED BY HUMANISM, EQUALITY,
AND JUSTICE. JOIN US._

_BECOME A +972 MEMBER TODAY [[link removed]]_

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