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NETANYAHU BREAKS CEASEFIRE TO SAVE POLITICAL CAREER  
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Interview of Muhammad Shehada by Amy Goodman
March 19, 2025
Democracy Now
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_ “When you’re in crisis, nothing would unite your government,
nothing would suppress any sort of protest or opposition, more than
killing Palestinians.” _

Bodies of Palestinians killed in renewed Israeli airstrikes., Saher
Alghorra/The New York Times

 

The nearly two-month ceasefire in Gaza has been shattered as Israel
carries out a second day of intense airstrikes. At least 27
Palestinians were killed in overnight strikes Tuesday night. This
comes a day after Israel killed over 400 Palestinians, including at
least 174 children. The bombing is “the most savage attack that Gaza
has witnessed in over a year,” says Muhammad Shehada, a writer and
analyst from Gaza. He says the renewed assault in Gaza is linked to
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal and political
challenges at home. “When you’re in crisis, nothing would unite
your government, nothing would suppress any sort of protest or
opposition, more than killing Palestinians.”

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Gaza, where the nearly
two-month ceasefire has been shattered by Israel as it carries out a
second day of intense airstrikes. At least 27 Palestinians were killed
in overnight strikes. This comes a day after Israel killed over 400
Palestinians, including at least 174 children. The group Defense for
Children said it was, quote, “one of the largest one-day child death
tolls” in Gaza’s history. On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu said, quote, “This is just the beginning,”
unquote. The attacks come as Israel continues to block food, aid and
fuel into the Gaza Strip.

We go now to Muhammad Shehada in Copenhagen. He’s a writer and
analyst from Gaza, visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign
Relations.

Muhammad, thanks so much for joining us. Can you describe what’s
happening right now in Gaza?

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Thanks so much for having me, Amy.

It’s basically the most unprecedented, most savage attack that Gaza
has witnessed in over a year. You have about 200 kids whose lives were
extinguished in a matter of seconds. And now you have about 700
wounded civilians that are languishing in hospitals that are
dysfunctional because of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. There’s, for
example, a girl that is about 6 years old, Eileen Abu Zouz, who has an
apple-sized shrapnel stuck in her chest, and doctors are trying to
race against time to remove it to save her life. Doctors are saying
that Palestinians that were wounded in those airstrikes in critical
condition are under a death sentence because there’s no capacity
whatsoever.

You have entire families that were extinguished completely, a whole
bloodline that vanished from the civil registry. So, I have a
colleague whose sister, her husband, their kids, their in-laws and
their grandchildren were killed in a single airstrike.

And the viciousness of all of this is compounded by the fact that
there was not a single Hamas militant that was hit in that airstrike.
Not a single Hamas militant was declared dead. The most prominent
figures that were killed in those airstrikes were basically four
government officials: the acting prime minister, the acting minister
of interior, the acting minister of justice and the head of the
Internal Security Agency. What Israel is doing there has nothing to do
with Hamas whatsoever. It’s been made clear by Israeli officials
yesterday, who said that, basically, whoever thinks that those attacks
will make Hamas more flexible is completely blind, is missing the
point.

The attack was completely predictable. You had the Israeli journalist
Ori Misgav in _Haaretz_ saying a couple of hours before Israel
killed those 460 people in Gaza — he said that Netanyahu is about
to attack Gaza because the walls are closing in on him. He had a bunch
of crises: a national crisis having to do with his attempt to fire the
attorney general, the head of the Shin Bet; a crisis in terms of
passing the budget — it was about to falter; there was a crisis
about his corruption trial testimony that was scheduled yesterday, and
he was trying to get it canceled; and there was another crisis about,
basically, the demonstrations that were scheduled in Jerusalem
yesterday in protest of all of this. So, the Israeli right-wing
government always goes through the same dynamic: When you’re in
crisis, nothing would unite your government, nothing would suppress
any sort of protest or opposition, more than killing Palestinians,
than destroying Palestinians and sort of parading their pain and
misery on TV.

There was another dimension. So, as soon as the airstrikes unfolded in
Gaza, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the extremist, far-right Israeli former
minister of police, he rejoined Netanyahu’s government in convenient
time to pass the budget.

The other dimension is that Netanyahu is trying to kill the
Egyptian-Arab plan for Gaza’s early recovery and reconstruction
without any mass transfer of the population there. There was an
Egyptian major conference, international conference for Gaza’s
reconstruction, scheduled in April. And there were reports that Trump
gave sort of an initial approval to the Egyptian plan, with a lot of
inquiries and questions about it. So, by resuming the genocide in
Gaza, you get all these things off the table.

It’s insane that they’re getting away with it. It’s even more
insane how mainstream media is covering it up and manufacturing
consent for the resumption of a genocide.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Muhammad, I wanted to ask you about the
reaction of the West on this. There was a U.N. Security Council
meeting where Britain, France and Russia all condemned the new
bombings, but no resolution, the United States representative
defending Israel, its attacks on Gaza.

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: The reaction was absolutely underwhelming. Four
hundred people killed in Gaza, that is Gaza’s own October 7th.
There’s been way more kids that were killed in Gaza, over 200,
compared to October 7th, where 36 were killed. The reaction of the
international community is absolutely disappointing and shameful.

But there’s another dimension to it. As you said, like, the most you
would get is basically expressions of concern or condemnation, without
any action whatsoever. And European Union leaders have made this to us
clear behind closed doors over the last year, where they said that 80%
of European governments are OK with Israel doing whatever it wants in
Gaza, are OK with giving this _carte blanche_.

The other dimension is that you have a Trump administration now
willing to give Israel the heaviest bombs in its arsenal, the
2,000-pound bombs, that as soon as it’s used, it creates a fireball
of 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit, and it kills people within the radius of
350 meters. And now Israel is raining those on Gaza again like candy,
with a White House that is willing to whitewash Israel’s genocide in
Gaza in real time.

It’s absolutely insane and shameful what’s going on in this
regard, and even more shameful how it’s being covered up, how Israel
is being given the benefit of the doubt. So, you see it in headlines
where basically it says that that number of people in Gaza were killed
despite the ceasefire. It does not call — actively call out Israel
for violating, destroying, obliterating the ceasefire.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And is it your sense that Netanyahu and the Trump
administration are now seriously continuing to entertain the idea of
removing Palestinians from Gaza?

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Yes, absolutely, especially for Netanyahu. It
immediately brought Ben-Gvir to the government, who’s been actively
calling for depopulating Gaza. You have other ministers on record,
like Bezalel Smotrich, calling for the same thing and even openly
saying that the IDF will create or is creating now a division that
is actively looking for countries to take Palestinians.

There is the other dimension: Israel never, never, never respects a
ceasefire with Palestinians whatsoever. It’s been the same dynamic
over and over again. My late friend Refaat Alareer put it best. He
said a ceasefire is basically when Palestinians cease and Israel
continues to fire. Israel’s defense minister and — former prime
minister and former defense minister, Ehud Barak, he put it — after
Operation Cast Lead, 2008, he said, “As soon as a ceasefire is
signed, nobody is going to bother with the details.”

So, as soon as the ceasefire in Gaza was signed, you had Israel
killing over 150 civilians in the course of over a month. You had
Israel — like, can you imagine if a single Israeli was scratched,
let alone killed, a soldier or a civilian, during the ceasefire, how
all hell would have broken loose on Palestinians? It shows how
Palestinians are basically the most self-restrained people on the face
of the Earth. That Israel has killed over now 700 people in the course
of the ceasefire without a single bullet being fired from Gaza shows
how Gazans are sort of desperate, keen, very much persistent to end
the war, whereas Israel is sort of salivating for a carnage.

Israel was allowing into Gaza about 10% of the tents that were allowed
to go — that were supposed to go in, 30% of the fuel that’s
necessary to run hospitals and sewage treatment plants and water
infrastructure. They were basically preventing people from leaving for
medical treatment, restricting the number of people that are allowed
to leave. They violated it in every single way along the way of the
last over 40 days or 50 days, in order to provoke a Palestinian
reaction that points a finger and says, “Look, Palestinians are the
ones that don’t want a ceasefire.” It’s insane.

But, like, Israel never even started the negotiations of phase two of
the ceasefire in the first place that was scheduled on February 6th.
And now what you have with the Israelis is, basically, you had a
channel between Trump’s envoy for hostage negotiations, Adam
Boehler, with Hamas that managed to produce a preliminary outline that
would see a truce in Gaza for five to 10 years, Hamas laying down
their arms, a new government in Gaza. You would see hostage
negotiations and hostage release. Israel’s reaction was to
immediately leak it to the media, torpedo the talks and get Adam
Boehler’s confirmation or nomination revoked before it was even
confirmed in the Senate. So, you see who is very desperate for this
war to go on forever.

* Israel-Gaza War
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* Genocide
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* Benjamin Netanyahu
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* political struggles
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