Twenty-five
shekels for a T-shirt declaring “Gaza is part of the Land of Israel.” Ten for a
phone case. Fifty shekels for a 48-piece jigsaw puzzle of a territory being cleaved
apart. Also for sale: baby onesies branded “Yishai,” the name of a settler camp
planned for the ruins of Beit Hanoun, a town in northern Gaza, in case you want
to dress your child in the uniform of a movement cheering the murder of several
thousand other children.
It was Sukkot, the Jewish festival, not far
from kibbutz Be’eri, on the eastern side of the border fence. Israel’s powerful
messianist cause had convened a conference called “Preparing
to Settle Gaza”—the sequel to a jubilant
convention held in Jerusalem last January. As kids played safely in the sand, a ring of bored
soldiers slumped in white plastic chairs guarded the
camp and several members of Israel’s legislature. Punctuating the speeches
was the low periodic thud of artillery, a crackling ripple of demolition
charges, and, if you listened closely, the italic whistle of bombs. A few miles
away: the entrance to the Netzarim Corridor—the three-mile-wide zone bisecting
the Strip, built by the Israeli army to enable its continued clearance of the land.
The settler movement’s plans to reconquer the Strip
and build on the ruins of Palestinian lives align neatly with those of the state that is
today clearing the desired real estate. What was a crude dream in early 2024 is
now, as the year comes to an end, being made with bulldozers and blasting caps
a cruder reality. South of Netzarim there is starvation,
disease, occasional airstrikes, and above all a sense of suspension—stasis,
waiting. North of Netzarim, the army is snapping tight its noose. Everything
above Gaza City is a
free-fire zone. The operation there is the blueprint for what will follow
again in the south, in the center, and everywhere else until the land and its
people are no more.
There is a word, better than the ubiquitous
genocide, to distill the monstrous totality of what is underway in the north of Gaza, and the clarity of
the mission: extermination. And this rampage might be the first example
of a modern war where its butchers tell you what they’re doing while they’re
doing it. “What is happening there?” asks
Moshe Ya’alon, former chief of the Israel Defense Forces, referring to Gaza’s
northernmost towns. The army is
“essentially cleansing the area of Arabs.” Starting in early
October, the enclave was sealed. No aid allowed in, only
people allowed out. Not for the first time were Palestinians, some 200,000 of
them, commanded to leave. Their exodus—to where? No place is safe—became a death march, as they were exposed above to the bomber
pilots and operators of drones; Salah Al Din Road was and is a shooting
gallery. Into November the air campaign thumped on. Hospitals were blasted repeatedly. Individual strikes killed 20, 30, 80 people at a time. On October
29, in the suburb of Beit Lahia, bombs flattened a five-story apartment block, burying
under it 93 Palestinians. Perhaps as many as 75,000 people remain in this
closing circle. Every last one of them, according to the Israeli army, is a
fair target.
“It’s permissible and even recommended to
starve an enemy to death,” according
to Giora Eiland, ex-head of Israel’s National Security Council. “The only ones
who will be left in that area will be terrorists who will surrender or die of
starvation.” Eiland is one of
the authors of the now-notorious “General’s Plan,” a ruthless strategy put forward
in September by a group of retired military officers frustrated that Hamas
fighters keep reappearing in places thought to be cleared. Its methods are
simple: Isolate an area, amputate the aid, then squeeze. While Eiland might complain
within earshot of Benjamin Netanyahu that his schemes have not been formally
adopted, the plan’s spirit pervades the army. A better name for it might be the
“Hunger Plan”; the “Annihilation Plan.” In Eiland’s judgment, it is only the
beginning. “Israel’s government sees the ability to win in northern Gaza as a
first stage that will lead to a permanent Israeli military government,” Eiland explained.
“In the next stage maybe also to renewed settlement.”
Eiland likes to pose as a hardened
paratrooper: a no-bullshit blusterer, ignorant of political chicanery, who is merely
applying cold analytical logic to a military problem. But his problem—Israel’s
problem—is not military alone. An occupying power is obliged to preserve the
lives of the people under its control, to give them aid, to not dynamite their
homes. But Eiland sees no distinction between citizen and combatant. He does not discriminate. “The
people of Gaza are like the people of Nazi Germany,” the general has said.
He means the people are complicit. He means they are guilty. He means they
deserve to die. And doesn’t that attitude run through the entire upper rank of
the Israeli government? “North Gaza is more beautiful than ever,” claims Amichai
Eliyahu, the heritage minister. “Blowing up and flattening everything is
beautiful.” To the troops, the ex–defense boss Yoav Gallant says, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting
accordingly.” And the troops reply:
“There are no uninvolved civilians.”