On Sunday, forward of a deliberate Israeli invasion of Rafah, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an interview to ABC, a TV channel in the US. He addressed warnings by Western officers, together with People, that this might end in a excessive civilian demise toll.
“We’re going to do it whereas offering protected passage for the civilian inhabitants to allow them to depart,” Netanyahu stated.
Requested by host Jonathan Karl the place 1.4 million Palestinians are imagined to go, he responded: “The areas that we have now cleared north of Rafah, there are many areas there, however we’re figuring out an in depth plan to take action.”
Netanyahu sounded unconvinced by his personal phrases.
A day earlier, Israeli authorities spokesperson Eylon Levy spoke to London-based LBC radio and likewise sounded fairly unconvincing. When requested by host Matt Frei 4 occasions the place the Palestinians in Rafah are imagined to go, Levy couldn’t reply. All he might muster was: “Effectively, there are open areas within the Gaza Strip. And one possibility is for UN companies to work along with us on evacuating civilians to open areas.” The query the place these open areas are remained unanswered.
The rationale why Netanyahu and Levy can’t reply to a easy query is as a result of they each know the Israeli military doesn’t intend to guard Palestinians, because it hasn’t up till now. They know that nowhere has been protected for Palestinians and nowhere will likely be protected for them when the invasion of Rafah begins. In addition they know that in the end, Israel is aiming to expel the Palestinians from Gaza, to not preserve them there.
No protected place in Gaza
Because the begin of this Israeli warfare on Gaza, the Israeli authorities has upped the ante on misinformation. Nowhere has this been extra evident than in claims that the Israeli military is creating “protected passage” for the individuals of Gaza or is attempting to guard them.
The previous 4 lethal months present loads of proof.
First, Israel instructed the individuals of Gaza that the south can be protected. Once they began evacuating, they have been bombed on the best way of their civilian convoys. They have been additionally bombed once they arrived. When civilians weren’t bombed on “protected evacuation routes”, they have been shot at by snipers or detained and forcibly disappeared.
When the Israeli military invaded the earlier “protected zone” of Khan Younis, it instructed civilians to stay put in hospitals and shelters. Its snipers shot individuals attempting to succeed in hospitals and shelters after which bombed them.
When the Israeli military instructed Palestinians to depart Khan Younis, it focused them whereas they have been fleeing.
Some Palestinians made it to Rafah, one other “protected zone”, solely to be instructed that it’s not protected. Now persons are being instructed to flee Rafah to “open areas”. Different “open areas”, akin to Mawasi, the place individuals have been beforehand instructed to go have been repeatedly focused.
All through this technique of telling individuals to evacuate solely to kill them, the Israeli military and authorities stored making bulletins in English and giving interviews to Western media claiming it was taking measures to “shield civilians”. Whether or not it was unsafe “evacuation routes” or complicated “evacuation maps”, they did what they may to cowl up the reality that there aren’t any protected locations in Gaza.
They continued to hawk the lie even after United Nations companies and worldwide organisations – akin to Save the Youngsters, Medical doctors With out Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF), Amnesty Worldwide, and so forth – all agreed there is no such thing as a protected place in Gaza.
Even Western media – together with The New Yorker, Time journal and Deutsche Welle – began seeing by way of Israeli disinformation and reported the truth that there is no such thing as a protected place in Gaza.
Ought to the identical military that killed greater than 28,000 Palestinians and destroyed or broken greater than 60 p.c of properties in Gaza be trusted to supply “protected passage” now?
Schrodinger’s Hamas
Previously, as on this warfare, Israel has repeatedly blamed the killings of civilians on Hamas and different Palestinian armed teams. It has repeatedly claimed that Palestinian fighters and their commanders use the civilian inhabitants as “human shields”.
However these claims don’t fairly add up with the information that the Israeli army itself has launched. In January, Israel claimed that it had killed 10,000 Palestinian fighters (9,000 in Gaza and 1,000 inside Israel), wounded 8,000, arrested 2,300 and eradicated two-thirds of Hamas’s regiments. It has additionally stated it has “struck” 30,000 targets in Gaza.
If the Israeli military – probably the most ethical on the planet per its personal analysis – “strikes” solely army targets, one would have thought that not less than 30,000 fighters would have been killed or wounded.
And if we go by Netanyahu’s declare that for one Palestinian civilian killed, one Palestinian fighter has been eradicated, then we get a demise toll that the Israeli intelligence would reject. (The latter apparently has been utilizing internally the Gaza Ministry of Well being’s numbers, which the Israeli authorities repeatedly has referred to as to query.)
In different phrases, Israeli military knowledge verify that it’s putting civilian targets and Netanyahu is mendacity concerning the civilian-military demise ratio in Gaza.
However there may be one other contradiction within the official Israeli narrative that these knowledge are revealing.
Hamas, by Israeli estimates, had not less than 30,000 fighters earlier than the warfare. If we’re to imagine the Israeli military claims that it has cleared Hamas from the areas it has invaded within the Gaza Strip and that Rafah is the “final Hamas stronghold”, which means not less than 10,000 have been in Rafah in January when Palestinians have been nonetheless being instructed this metropolis was a protected zone.
If, as Israel likes to say, Hamas makes use of human shields, then Israel is solely admitting that it’s pushing the civilian inhabitants into areas the place they are going to be focused as a result of Hamas is there.
It seems, on this warfare on actuality, that Israel can concurrently say that they’re evacuating civilians to security whereas saying Hamas makes use of them as human shields. One way or the other, Hamas is in every single place and nowhere on the identical time.
Beneath these lies is the system for the actual fact that Israel operates by: The place Hamas goes, civilians go, the place civilians go, Hamas goes. To defeat Hamas, we should additionally take away civilians.
‘Nakba is security’
It’s no secret that the Israeli authorities has been planning and lobbying to have Palestinians expelled to the Sinai Peninsula. As early as late October, a doc from Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence emerged wherein the deportation of the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza to Egyptian territory was clearly outlined.
Netanyahu was fast to dismiss the doc as a “idea paper” and downplay its contents. However one has to surprise what he was pondering of when he came across the phrases “loads of areas” within the ABC interview. May or not it’s the actual property plans which can be being drawn up for growth of recent Jewish settlements in eviscerated Gaza or the conference his ministers attended calling for Israeli resettlement of the strip?
Over the previous 4 months, greater than two million Palestinians have been squeezed farther and farther south nearer to Egypt. In the meantime, the “security” and “evacuation” rhetoric of the Israeli military and authorities has served as a handy cowl for the place that is going.
Israel’s evacuation orders have been a efficiency for the worldwide group to attempt to display that Israel is complying with its obligations below worldwide legislation.
The identical is true of their evacuation maps, their leaflet drops, the “precision” strikes, the “protected zones”. These all kind a part of the “technologies of genocide” designed to make one other Nakba simpler for Israel and extra palatable for Israel’s allies and the worldwide group.
Certainly, they’re a part of the window dressing that helps US President Joe Biden trivialise Israel’s genocidal marketing campaign as “a bit excessive”.
Within the warfare on actuality, fact falls sufferer to political ideology, and disinformation conflicts with different disinformation.
“Battle is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is energy.” Add to this quote from George Orwell’s traditional 1984, “Nakba is security”, for that’s the actuality that has been foisted upon Palestinians in Gaza.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
