Yesterday, The Times of Israel reported that the Israeli cabinet had met and decided that not only were military operations against Hamas to be intensified in a planned ‘Operation Gideon’s Chariots’ but that Israel intended to retain all territory taken and basically occupy Gaza and put an end to it as an independent entity. That will involve removing all Palestinians who still remain in Gaza.
The announcement, which coincided with Israeli Independence Day, was immediately criticised by other state leaders including the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Harris. He described it as “despicable” and claimed that it would lead to a further increase in the number of casualties in Gaza where the Israeli onslaught since October 2023 has already taken more than 43,000 lives.
Harris and the others who commented are not without support from within Israel. Indeed, the Israeli media reported that, when Operation Gideon’s Chariots was presented to the Cabinet by the Israeli Defence Forces Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, that the Cabinet was also of the belief that the offensive will most likely lead to the loss of the remaining hostages.
Another report claimed that Zamir had also stressed to Netanyahu and his Ministers that the offensive will require a full call up of all reserve forces and that it must be accompanied by an immediate resumption of humanitarian aid. You would get the impression that the General is dealing with lads who do not much care for such things. His soldiers, of course, will do as they are told.
United States President Donald Trump is due to visit the region next week and the offensive is not expected to begin until after that. He will hardly tell them not to, and the Israelis can claim to have his approval, since he basically recommended such a conquest and resettlement of the more than 2 million Palestinians who live in Gaza.
It was Trump’s musings on perhaps sending all the Palestinians some place nice and replacing them with casinos and tourists that really meant that it was game-on for this craziness. He was not the originator, of course, and the notion of basically putting an end to the Palestinians as a people all living in the same place has gathered increasing support in Israel.
If the operation goes ahead then it also raises the prospect of an escalation in the “settlement” of the West Bank as well as Gaza. Another aspect to the conflict in which America, and Americans, are at the heart. It was something that I had meant to remark upon after watching Louis Theroux’s BBC documentary The Settlers last weekend.
One of the clips from that film showed Israeli National Security Minister Hamiv Ben-Guir, the leader of one of Netanyahu’s coalition partners Otzma Yehdit/Jewish Power, tell a festival of settlers that his government was committed to the removal of the more than two million Palestinians currently living in Gaza. And presumably support their replacement by his audience and their pals.
That audience had gathered where someone had helpfully placed picnic spots equipped with telescopes where tourists and day trippers like Ben-Guir’s audience could gaze happily on the smoke rising from the ruins of the place that some of Theroux’s interviewees were already planning to take over led by a Polish woman who was busily engaged in recon to spot nice places to move to. That land is already owned and farmed by others, and settlers brave enough to chance their arm already are armed to the teeth and backed by the full force of the IDF and frontier law.
At the moment there are something in the region of 750,000 settlers in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and other enclaves. In 2016, it was estimated that 15% were American citizens and that percentage has likely increased by now. Louis Theroux met some of them, including a chap from Texas who assured Theroux that there was no such thing as a Palestinian.
For the same chap, and for others who featured in the film, history is based firmly and solely in the Bible and its designation of the lands of Judah to their unlikely and very distant ancestors now living in Brooklyn or Carmel, California. What about the Palestinians? Are they in the Bible?
Some seem to believe that they are “Arabs” who wandered over from Egypt or Dubai or someplace but other Biblical and Jewish scholars concede that they probably were, inconveniently, around back in the days when they was much smiting of enemies and gnashing of teeth in the Old Testament times. Those times appear to be still with us in much of the conflict.
All that aside, the notion that the Old Testament should be taken as the authority for Israel to do as it pleases in the land and to the occupants of the land that is Palestine and lived in by millions of Palestinians who exist still whether that suits others or not is – let us face it – an abomination.
I doubt that I have ever before read something that Simon Harris has said and thought, “Yes, that is exactly what it is – despicable.”