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ISRAELI ETHNIC CLEANSING NEARS COMPLETION IN NORTHERN GAZA  
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Paul R. Pillar
November 11, 2024
Responsible Statecraft
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_ An IDF general admitted that their goal was to expel residents and
provide no options for return. Netanyahu’s cabinet changes means he
is content to remain reliant not only on the ultra-Orthodox parties,
but also extremists, such as Itamar Ben-Gvir. _

Displaced Palestinians ordered by the Israeli military to evacuate
their neighborhoods make their way as they flee amid an Israeli
military operation, in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, October
22., Photo: Stringe/REUTERS // Responsible Statecraft

 

The Israeli effort to eliminate or expel Palestinian residents of the
Gaza Strip — an effort that has been apparent since early
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Israel’s year-long military assault on the territory — is close to
achieving its goal in the northernmost portion of the Strip.

Israeli officials have also let slip more indications that this is
indeed their goal. Last week a brigadier general in the Israeli
Defense Forces told
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journalists that in expelling residents from this area, which includes
the city of Beit Lahiya and the Jabaliya refugee camp, the IDF had no
intention of ever letting them return. The general added that Israel
would allow no humanitarian aid into this portion of the Strip because
“there are no more civilians left.”

An IDF spokesperson later tried to walk back
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general’s comments, and the Israeli government has repeatedly denied
conducting forced expulsions. But reports of what is happening on the
ground, despite Israeli measures to impede press reporting
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the conflict zone, are consistent with an ethnic cleansing campaign.
Reporters from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz were able to confirm
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has confirmed an absence of aid
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northern Gaza, with the resulting prospect of famine
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The dominant images from northern Gaza are partly the ones that became
familiar a year ago, of buildings reduced to rubble
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and pictures of residents walking
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from their homes with what few possessions they can carry. The latter
images resemble those from an earlier Israeli ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians—the _Nakba_
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1948.

Despite Israeli denials, what is happening appears to be a version of
the “generals’ plan
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a proposal presented to Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in September
and subsequently leaked. That proposal calls for cutting off supplies
to the portion of the Gaza Strip in question and telling all who live
there that they must leave or be considered combatants subject to
attack.

Although the current focus of Israeli operations is in the north, much
of what the Israeli military has been doing throughout the Gaza Strip
during the past year has been consistent with ethnic cleansing. Those
residents who are not killed outright — and the actual death toll
amid the rubble is probably far higher
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the running official count that is now at about 43,000 — are left
with an unlivable wasteland. The Israeli assault has destroyed health
care
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and facilities, emergency services
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and most other infrastructure needed for a community to exist.

Leaders of the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank are eager
to extend [[link removed]] the
settlements to the Gaza Strip. The generals’ plan has more of a
security focus, with the idea of turning the part of the Strip from
which Hamas launched its attack
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southern Israel last year into an IDF-controlled buffer. With the
Netanyahu government still subject to domestic criticism for allowing
that attack, such an arrangement would be an “accomplishment” to
point to despite the impossibility
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ever achieving the declared goal of “destroying” Hamas, and
despite that arrangement doing little or nothing to prevent other
possible forms of Palestinian violence against Israel that are not
duplicates of the October 7 Hamas attack.

Recent political changes within Israel have made Netanyahu’s
government all the more inclined to press forward with the ethnic
cleansing in Gaza. Netanyahu fired
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Minister Yoav Gallant, who had favored a ceasefire that would include
the return of remaining Israeli hostages and had said that there was
“nothing left
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for the Israeli military to do in Gaza. Netanyahu replaced him with
Foreign Minister Israel Katz, widely considered
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be a yes-man under Netanyahu’s thumb.

Netanyahu’s cabinet changes means he is content to remain reliant
not only on the ultra-Orthodox parties who favor preserving a draft
exemption that Gallant opposed, but also on extremists, such as
national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who have been explicit
in calling for
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Gaza with Jewish settlers and no Palestinians.

A political development in the United States — the election
returning Donald Trump to power — also has given Netanyahu increased
free rein to continue the ethnic cleansing. Trump’s record in his
first term of giving
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Netanyahu government almost anything it wanted made his win this month
popular in Israel. Especially ecstatic
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Trump’s victory were Ben-Gvir and fellow extremist minister Bezalel
Smotrich, with Ben-Gvir declaring
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given Trump’s return to office, “this is the time for sovereignty,
this is the time for complete victory.”

Those trying to put a different and more peace-oriented spin on the
implications of Trump’s win for Gaza, including some of the Arab
Americans in Michigan
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supported him, place hope in Trump’s repeated but vague claims
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he will somehow end the current war in the Middle East. There is no
doubt that Trump, like any other incoming president, would like to see
this mess removed from his foreign policy plate as early in his term
as possible. But seeking an end or partial end to the warfare says
nothing about _how_ it would end.

The other side of Trump’s first-term Middle East policy, besides
extreme deference to Netanyahu, was uniform hostility to the
Palestinians, ranging from closing
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Palestinian diplomatic office in Washington to eliminating funding
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the United Nations agency responsible for humanitarian aid to the
Palestinians. During the presidential campaign, Trump used the term
“Palestinian” as a slur
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applying it to his then-opponent Joe Biden.

Trump will press Netanyahu to wrap up Israel’s assault on Gaza (as
well as its offensive in Lebanon) sooner rather than later, but he
will do so while saying and doing nothing on behalf of the
Palestinians who live there. Trump’s publicly expressed preference
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for Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza. The ethnic cleansing is a
major part of “the job” in which Israel is currently engaged.
Finishing it means completing the ethnic cleansing in the northern end
of the Gaza Strip, even if that means putting off to another day the
realization of more ambitious Israeli plans
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empty the rest of the Strip of its Palestinian residents.

In addition to the obvious moral and legal issues involved, Israel’s
ethnic cleansing in Gaza has other consequences for regional stability
and U.S. interests. Violent Palestinian resistance to Israel will not
end, even if it is conducted largely in exile. The extreme Israeli
measures will only add to the anger and desire to strike back.

Given how Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinians has been the
biggest single source of instability
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violence in the Middle East — as demonstrated anew by how the
current warfare in Lebanon and exchanges of fire between Israel and
Iran grew out of the situation in Gaza — the extreme form of
subjugation that is ethnic cleansing will sustain that larger
instability.

Israel will become more of an international pariah as its actions
become ever farther removed from anything that can plausibly be
considered a just and appropriate response to the attack by Hamas last
year. To the extent that the United States associates itself with
those actions, through continued provision of arms and diplomatic
cover, it will increasingly be a target of the international
opprobrium. Specific consequences range from boycotts of U.S.
businesses
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terrorism against U.S. interests and citizens.

_[PAUL R. PILLAR is Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for
Security Studies of Georgetown University and a non-resident fellow at
the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is also an
Associate Fellow of the Geneva Center for Security Policy.]_

* ethnic cleansing
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* Israel
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* Gaza
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* West Bank
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* Palestine
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* Palestinians
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* Israel-Gaza War
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* Benjamin Netanyahu
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* Itamar Ben-Gvir
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* apartheid
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* Genocide
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* Nabka
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* refugees
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* Right of Return
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* Oct. 7
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* Hostages
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* Hamas
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* Jewish settlements
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* Occupied Territories
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