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A PALESTINIAN YEAR IN REVIEW: GENOCIDE, RESISTANCE AND UNANSWERED
QUESTIONS  
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Ramzy Baroud
December 30, 2024
Counterpunch
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_ The story of the Israeli war on Gaza can be epitomized in the story
of the Israeli war on Beit Lahia, a small Palestinian town in the
northern part of the Strip. _

A Palestinian flag hanging from a civilian drone flies over Jerusalem
during the Israeli 'flag march' to mark 'Jerusalem Day' on 29 May 2022
, AFP

 

When Israel launched its ground operations in Gaza, Beit Lahia was
already largely destroyed due to many days of relentless Israeli
bombardment which killed thousands.

Still, the border Gaza town resisted, leading to a hermetic Israeli
siege, which was never lifted, even when the Israeli military
redeployed out of much of northern Gaza in January 2024.

Beit Lahia is largely an isolated town, a short distance away from the
fence separating besieged Gaza from Israel. It is surrounded mostly by
agricultural areas that make it nearly impossible to defend.

Yet, a year of grisly Israeli war and genocide in Gaza did not end the
fighting there. To the contrary, 2024 has ended where it started, with
intense fighting on all fronts in Gaza, with Beit Lahia, a town that
was supposedly ‘conquered’ earlier, still leading the fight.

Beit Lahia is a microcosm of Israel’s failed war in the Strip, a
bloody grind that has led nowhere, despite the massive destruction,
the repeated ethnic cleansing of the population, the starvation and
the genocide. Every day of Israel’s terrible war on the Palestinians
serves as a reminder that there are no military solutions and that the
Palestinian will cannot be broken, no matter the cost or the
sacrifice.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, remains
unconvinced. He entered the new year with more promises of ‘total
victory’, and ended it as a wanted criminal
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by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The issuing of an arrest warrant for the Israeli leader was a
reiteration of a similar position taken by the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) at the start of 2024.

The ICJ’s position, however, was hardly as strong as many had hoped
or wanted to believe. The world’s highest court had, on January 26,
ordered
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Israel “to take action to prevent acts of genocide”, but stopped
short of ordering Israel to halt its war.

The Israeli objectives of the war remained unclear, although Israeli
politicians provided clues as to what the war on Gaza was really all
about. Last January, several Israeli ministers, including 12 from
Netanyahu’s Likud party, took part in a conference
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calling for the resettlement of Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians. “Without settlements, there is no security,”
extremist Israeli minister of finance, Bezalel Smotrich, said.

For that to happen, the Palestinian people themselves, not merely
those fighting on the ground, had to be tamed, broken and defeated.
Thus, the ‘flour massacres
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a new Israeli war tactic that was centered around killing as many
Palestinians as possible while waiting for the few aid trucks that
were allowed to reach northern Gaza.

On February 29, more than 100 Gazans were killed while queueing
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for aid. They were mowed down by Israeli soldiers, as they desperately
tried to lay their hands on a loaf of bread, baby milk or a bottle of
water. This scene was repeated, again and again in the north, but also
in other parts of the Gaza Strip throughout the year.

The aim was to starve the Palestinians in the north so that they would
be forced to flee to other parts of the Strip. Famine actualized
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as early as January, and many of those who tried to flee south were
killed
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anyway.

From the early days of the war, Israel understood that to ethnically
cleanse Palestinians, they must target all aspects of life in the
Strip. This includes hospitals, bakeries, markets, electric grids,
water stations, and the like.

The Gaza hospitals, of course, received a large share of Israeli
attacks. In March, once more, Israel attacked
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the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City with greater ferocity than
before. When it finally withdrew
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on April 1, the Israeli army destroyed the entire compound, leaving
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behind mass graves with hundreds of bodies, mostly medical staff,
women and children. They even executed
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several patients.

Aside from a few statements of concern by western leaders, little was
done to bring the genocide to an end. Only when seven international
aid workers with the charity, the World Central Kitchen, were killed
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followed, leading to the first and only Israeli apology
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in the entire war.

Desperate to distract from its failure in Gaza, but also Lebanon, and
keen on presenting the Israeli public with any kind of victory, the
Israeli military began escalating its war beyond Gaza. This included
the strike [[link removed]] on
the Iranian Embassy in Syria on April 1. Despite repeated attempts,
which included
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the assassination in Iran of the head of Hamas’s Political Bureau,
Ismail Haniyeh, on July 31, an all-out regional war has not yet come
to pass.

Another escalation was taking place, this time not by Netanyahu but by
millions of people around the world, demanding an end to the Israeli
war. A focal point of the protests were student movements that spread
across US campuses and, ultimately, worldwide. Instead of allowing
free speech to flourish, however, America’s largest academic
institutions resorted
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to the police, who violently shut down many of the protests, arresting
hundreds of students, many of whom were not allowed to return to their
colleges.

Meanwhile, the US continued to block international efforts aimed at
producing a ceasefire resolution at the United Nations Security
Council. Ultimately, on May 31, US President Joe Biden delivered
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a speech conveying what he termed an “Israeli proposal” to end the
war. After some delay, Hamas accepted
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the proposal, but Israel rejected
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it. In his rejection, Netanyahu referred
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to Biden’s speech as “incorrect” and “incomplete”.
Strangely, but also unsurprisingly, the White House blamed
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the Palestinians for the failed initiative.

Losing faith in the American leadership, some European countries began
changing their foreign policy doctrines on Palestine, with Ireland,
Norway and Spain recognizing
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the State of Palestine on May 28. The decisions were largely symbolic
but indicated that western unity around Israel was faltering.

Israel remained unfazed and, despite international warnings, invaded
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the Rafah area in southern Gaza on May 7, seizing control of the
Philadelphi Corridor – a buffer zone between Gaza and the Egyptian
border that extends for 14 kilometers.

Netanyahu’s government insisted that only war can bring their
captives back. There was very little success in that strategy,
however. On June 8, Israel, with logistical support from the US and
other western countries managed to rescue four of its captives held in
the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. To do so, Israel killed
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and wounded 800 more.

In August, another heart-wrenching massacre
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took place, this time in the Al-Tabaeen school in Gaza City, where 93
people, mostly women and children, were murdered in a single Israeli
strike. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights, women and children were the main victims of the Israeli
genocide, accounting
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for 70 percent by November 8.

An earlier report by the Lancet Medical Journal said
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that if the war stopped in July, “186,000 or even more”
Palestinians would have been killed. The war, however, went on. The
rate of genocide in Gaza seemed to maintain the same killing ratio,
despite the major regional developments including the mutual
Iranian-Israeli tit-for-tat strikes and the major Israeli ground
operation in Lebanon.

In October, Israel returned to the policies of targeting or besieging
hospitals, killing doctors and other medical staff, and targeting aid
and civil defense workers. Still, Israel would not achieve any of its
strategic goals of the war. Even the killing
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of Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar, in battle on October 16 would not,
in any way, alter the course of the war.

Israel’s frustration grew by leaps and bounds throughout the year.
Its desperate attempt to control the global narrative on the Gaza
genocide largely failed. On July 19, and after listening to the
testimonies of over 50 countries, the ICJ issued
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“Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
is illegal.”

That ruling, which expressed international consensus on the matter,
was translated [[link removed]] on
September 17 to a UN General Assembly resolution “demanding an end
to Israel’s occupation of Palestine within the next twelve
months”.

All of this effectively meant that Israel’s attempt at normalizing
its occupation of Palestine, and its quest to illegally annex the West
Bank was considered null and void by the international community.
Israel, however, doubled down, taking its rage against West Bank
Palestinians, who, too, were experiencing one of the worst Israeli
pogroms in many years. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry,
by November 21, at least 777 Palestinians have been killed
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since October 7, 2023, while thousands more were wounded and over
11,700 arrested.

To make matters worse, Smotrich called
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on November 11, for the full annexation of the West Bank. The call was
made soon after the election of Donald Trump as the next US President,
an event that initially inspired optimism amongst Israeli leaders, but
later concerns that Trump may not serve the role of the savior for
Israel after all.

On November 21, the ICC issued
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its historic ruling to arrest Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav
Gallant. The decision represented a measure of hope, however faint,
that the world is finally ready to hold Israel accountable for its
many crimes.

2025 could, indeed, represent that watershed moment. This remains to
be seen. However, as far as Palestinians are concerned, even with the
failure of the international community to stop the genocide and reign
in Israel, their steadfastness, sumoud, will remain strong until
freedom is finally attained.

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_Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine
Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “__These
Chains Will Be Broken_
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Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons”
(Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research
Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul
Zaim University (IZU). His website is __www.ramzybaroud.net_
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* Israeli war on Gaza; Beit Lahia; International Community;
Genocide;
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