The “leaks” have followed one another in recent days in most of the Israeli media, seeming to prepare the ground. This Thursday, the Hebrew State security firm should approve of the government’s plan to “extend” the Israeli army operations area to the whole of Gaza, or even militarily occupy the entire Palestinian enclave. The Israeli staff would disappear the idea, as well as the political opposition to Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. But the decision seems to be made: even the general prosecutor Gali Baharav-Miara, officially dismissed a few days ago because she opposed the policy of the government, was asked to attend the meeting of the limited cabinet. What give a “legal” outline to the announcements that will be made.
The Israeli army will have to “execute” political decisions about the war in the Gaza Strip, the Defense Minister Israel Katz insisted on Wednesday at the risk of further aggravating these dissensions. In view of international law, repeated by the International Court of Justice in July 2024, Israel already “occupied” Gaza illegally, in the same way as the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In Gaza, the population is now crowded in 12 or 13% of the territory, according to the UN estimates, while the rest is now prohibited to Palestinians by the Israeli military presence. However, there remains this last “formalization” expected from Benyamin Netanyahu, even if, so far, the Prime Minister has always denied publicly that she would take place.
Hostage families opposed to intensive military operations
A simple bluffing intended to increase the pressure on Hamas, in order to get more at the negotiation table? After mentioning this hypothesis, the Israeli press no longer believes in it. The army chief, Eyal Zamir, no more, it seems: in statements revealed by the public media Kan 11, the soldier warned this week against the “trap” that a complete occupation of Gaza would represent. Appointed barely six months ago because of his convergences of views with the government, Eyal Zamir seems today in an ejection seat, several ministers claiming his resignation.
The military offensive would officially aim, by entering the last areas of the most populated Gaza, to release the hostages while reducing the last pockets of Hamas fighters. “It is necessary to completely overcome the enemy in Gaza, to release all our hostages and to ensure that Gaza will no longer constitute a threat to Israel,” said Benyamin Netanyahu on Tuesday.
General Zamir believes that “that a decision to intensify the fighting could lead to the death of the hostages”. Some 22 hostages would still be alive in Gaza. The recent and degrading images of two of them, emaciated, one forced to dig his own grave into a tunnel, caused a shock wave in the country. But the hostages of the hostages, too, expressed their opposition to intensive military operations that would seek to release them. Since Israel has rejected the terms of the ceasefire in force in March, and that he prohibited the arrival of humanitarian aid as the UN claim and the aid agencies, no hostage has been released by the army.
The extreme right and the Israeli colonists in force
The head of the opposition, Yaïr Lapid, joined critical votes after meeting the Prime Minister on Wednesday: “occupying Gaza is a very bad idea”, both on “the operational plan, the moral plan and on the economic level.”
While the Gaza Strip has reached the threshold of famine, threatening its 2 million inhabitants, this possible “occupation” of Gaza also responds to the increasingly determined movement of the extreme right and Israeli colonists. In recent hours, settlers have gathered at the passage of convoys to Gaza in order to block them. A few days earlier, hundreds of them organized a walk near Gaza to claim the creation of new colonies in Gush Katif, where they had been erected before the colonists were evacuated, in 2005, by order of the Prime Minister at the time, Ariel Sharon. “We are ready to go with our children and live under tents. This is the best way to bring calm, peace, and to put an end to Hamas, ”assured AFP one of their leaders, Daniella Weiss.
The Minister of Farm Finance Bezalel Smotrich is an ardent defender of the colonization of the Palestinian territory, both in Gaza and in the West Bank. However, his presence in the government is all the more necessary for the Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, that two ultra-Orthodox parties have already left the government.
Help as rare as dead
In the besieged and bombed Gaza Strip, where thousands of Palestinians are crowded every day around food distribution points, the civil defense announced on Wednesday the death of 20 people, killed when a truck loaded with food turned to the crowd. Made chaotic by the many Israeli blockages, aid becomes as rare as they are deadly.
The prospect of this new phase of war and a complete occupation of Gaza is an affront made to the States which seek to obtain a restart of a diplomatic process, and particularly to those who, behind France, proclaimed their intention to soon recognize the State of Palestine. Asked about such a perspective, US President Donald Trump responded with a simple sentence: “It is up to Israel to decide.”