Protests, warnings of “catastrophic consequences” confront the Israeli plan to take control of Gaza City
Forced in the tents by the Mediterranean Sea or snuggle up in the rubble, the Palestinians ran for their lives for 22 months of war.
Building Israeli balls and air strikes while pursuing rare foods, some two million people are pressed in less than 100 square kilometers. And it seems that they are about to be tight again.
Najla Abu Jarad’s family crouching on the outskirts of Gaza City, the next target of Israel.
“They want to withdraw us, but where?” asked the 60 -year -old woman. “What’s left in Gaza?”
According to the United Nations, 86% of the territory is already in the Israeli-militarized area or subject to evacuation orders.
There are many uncertainties around the new plans of Israel to extend military occupation, even if its first step – take control of Gaza City – was approved by government ministers and reluctant generals during a meeting of the security firm which lasted 10 hours and dragged in the first hours of Friday.
The objectives indicated are to disarm Hamas and release the 20 remaining Israeli hostages which are considered alive – objectives that have escaped Israel despite its overwhelming military power.
In order to realize them now, Israel is heading for a complete Israeli occupation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alludes to it.
When asked in an interview with Fox News Channel on Thursday if Israel will take control of Gaza, Netanyahu replied: “We intend to do so.”
“We don’t want to keep it,” he continued, “we don’t want to govern it.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel intended to take full military control from Gaza and to push a new offensive, despite the fact that the turning point on the international criticism of the Human War and the growing crisis of hunger.
Instead, he said that Israel wanted to replace Hamas, the militant group that has governed Gaza since 2007, with “Arab forces that will go to it properly”, without threatening Israel, he said.
No Arab country has publicly agreed to play this role, and Israel has rejected Gaza’s control to the Palestinian group which manages parts of the occupied West Bank, the political rival of Hamas, the Palestinian authority controlled by Fatah. Israel also refused A proposal presented by Egypt In March, to create a government made up of “independent Palestinian technocrats”.
Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing nearly 1,200 Israelis and taking some 250 people hostage. Since then, the resulting terrestrial war and Israeli air strikes have left more than 61,000 Palestinian deaths, according to figures provided by the Gaza Ministry of Health. In both cases, the figures include fighters and civilians.
Opposition to the country and abroad
After almost two years of war, the Israeli army says that it currently controls 75% of Gaza, avoiding the areas where he thinks that the 20 remaining living hostages are held. The next step could be to take over the whole territory.
“We are setting up everything to enter,” said Israel’s foreign minister of foreign affairs, Sharren Haskel, at CBC News.
Haskel, who was born in Canada, said that the process would mean up to two weeks of moving from northern Israel to Gaza, followed by a “four to six months” military campaign to bring the hostages home and disarm the Hamas.
The plan has already encountered strong opposition, abroad and in Israel.
Germany immediately interrupted the exports of weapons “which could be used in the Gaza Strip until further notice”. The European Union said that the Israel’s plan to expand its military operation “must be reconsidered”. The Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, condemned this decision.
Earlier this week, the UN warned against “catastrophic consequences” for Israeli Gazans and hostages.
And even if the Israel security firm met, the demonstrators clashed with the police in Tel Aviv and shouted outside the Netanyahu office in Jerusalem, demanding a negotiated agreement that would end the fighting and bring the hostages home. Recent Opinion polls Suggest that 74% of Israelis share this point of view.
“Continuing war is a disaster for the Palestinians and for us the Israelis,” said demonstrator Naomi Granot.
The military and security establishments of Israel also oppose the climbing of war.
The military chief of staff Eyal Zamir clashed in Netanyahu several times this week during the widen mission of his strength, would have a meeting held three hours on Tuesday, and again last night.
Zamir warned the Prime Minister that taking the rest of Gaza could trap the military on the territory, from which he retired two decades ago. This could also risk harming the hostages held there, said government sources Reuters.
200,000 additional soldiers
If the government plans to move forward with a complete occupation, the next panel will be an order to call more reserve soldiers, said Janice Stein, specialist in the Middle East at the Mongk School of Global Affairs of the University of Toronto.
According to the Israel Journal Hayom Daily, 200,000 reservists are necessary for the operation in Gaza just.
“But when military leaders say that there are no other military objectives to achieve and other risks of military action unnecessary deaths of reserve soldiers and hostages, it is extremely difficult to call reserve soldiers,” said Stein.
On the other hand, there are political pressure from the far-right members of the Netanyahu coalition government to continue to fight until the “total victory” is reached, while the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir continues to remind the Prime Minister.
Netanyahu needs this support to stay in power.
Ben-Gvir and the Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich were labeled “extremists” for their links with the movement of the radical settlers of Israel, and Sanctioned by CanadaGreat Britain and other countries threaten “international peace and security” by promoting violence against the Palestinians in the West Bank.
They see Gaza as a mature territory for new colonies and have pushed policies promoting the “voluntary” migration of the Palestinians outside the enclave.
“It’s real,” said Smotrich to a conference last week marking the anniversary of the withdrawal of Israel in 2005 from Gaza. “For 20 years, we have called (restoring the colonies in Gaza) of pious wishes. It seems to me that it is now a real work plan.”
Many Palestinians say that is what is behind Netanyahu’s plans for the occupation.
“It will be accompanied by a push to get people out,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian Canadian lawyer who advised the Palestine Liberation Organization and lives in Haifa.
“The idea of the occupation is supposed to be temporary, but in the case of Israel, this is not the case. It becomes a permanent characteristic accompanied by the erasure of people in order to build only Israeli colonies.”
The Israeli government says it is not its policy in Gaza.
With a new warning that the “worst scenario” of the famine now takes place in Gaza, the National examines why the food distribution system fails and talks about a Canadian aid group with workers on the ground of what they see and what it needs.
Meanwhile, help groups also sound the alarm.
A wider war in the enclave will make the humanitarian crisis of Gaza even more disastrous, they say, and the delivery of food and medicine is more limited and dangerous.
Already, the UN said Nearly 1,400 Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops and private security entrepreneurs close to aid distribution sites operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an alternative group supported by Israel and the United States.
The GHF and Israel challenge the shots and that their system is ineffective, saying that the delivery of closely controlled aid is necessary for Hamas not diverting expeditions.
Netanyahu even denied Famine reports In the enclave.
“There is no famine policy in Gaza, and there is no famine in Gaza,” he told a Christian conference in Jerusalem two weeks ago, triggering a animated phone call with Donald Trump, where the American president challenged Netanayhu, NBC News reported.
Israel’s current aid system is the one that doctors without borders call a “militarized food distribution scheme that weapons famine”.
Sana Bég, executive director of the group’s Canadian operations, is concerned about the failure of the humanitarian crisis will be rooted if the war spreads.
“Are we at a tilting point today following this? All the points were lower,” she said. “Are we having a situation of doing or breaking? We are already beyond the rupture.”
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