Nearly two months after the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, evidence is increasing today that Israel is involved in a process of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians living in the Strip. The American website (Responsible Statecraft) says that even if we decide to uncritically believe Israel's announcements and consider that its attack on the Gaza Strip and its two million people is aimed only at "destroying Hamas," we will find that the Israeli operation is so deeply misleading that it should prevent the United States or any other power from either support it or ignore it.

Hamas cannot be destroyed by bombs and ground invasion. Even if this were possible, what is clear is that the ongoing operation will not enhance the security of Israeli citizens in the future, but will in fact make it worse. Israeli announcements should not be uncritically believed in any event.

Israel is committing ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians in Gaza

The American website says that one evidence of ethnic cleansing is the enormous force and indiscriminate nature of Israeli military attacks. It cannot be said that the operation is primarily focused on destroying Hamas, while entire neighborhoods are being destroyed, inflicting more civilian casualties than military ones, while there is not much evidence of achieving any positive results except for the seizure and display of some allegedly empty tunnels.

All you have to do is think about the following numbers. Israeli officials claim that their Gaza operation has so far killed 5,000 Hamas fighters. Officials have admitted that these numbers are just rough estimates, while the outside world has no way of knowing whether they are close to reality or not.

But let's assume that this number is correct. The Israeli army itself estimates that the number of Hamas's military wing was about 30,000 fighters at the beginning of this war, which means that there are still 25,000 fighters to be eliminated. The latest estimates of the total number of Palestinian casualties, which are rapidly increasing in this war, indicate the fall of 17,000 dead, including more than 6,000 children.

Is it enough for Israel to kill 100,000 Palestinians?

You can review the following calculations yourself. According to the current pace and methods used by Israel, we will find that completing the mission to eliminate the military wing of Hamas will result in the killing of about 100,000 Palestinians, including more than 30,000 children, as the American website says.

This estimate does not include the damage resulting from Israel's pursuit of the rest of Hamas' strength outside the military wing, including senior leaders whom Israel pledged to kill, as well as Hamas's civil administration in the Gaza Strip, which Israel pledged to eliminate. This estimate does not take into account the rate of civilian casualties as a result of the Israeli army’s current escalation of its operations in the southern Gaza Strip, which has become crowded with those fleeing the north and to which they were told to go as “safe areas.”

The rate of losses in the south is likely to be at least as high as the losses of previous operations in the north.

Israel's real goals

Responsible Statecraft says these numbers are far higher than any rate that could be justified in response to what Hamas did in Israel on October 7. These numbers also indicate that Israeli goals include killing civilians and expelling the largest number of Palestinians out of Gaza, in addition to eliminating Hamas.

The Israeli military claims that it used the warnings to reduce civilian casualties, but those allegations are nothing more than a cruel joke. The army orders residents to flee their homes and then bombs them anyway, whether on the road or inside the place to which they were asked to flee. Then they are asked to move again, only to be bombed again.

QR codes and leaflets containing information about safe areas are useless, because communications are down and the majority of Palestinians do not have internet access.

Israel no longer bothers to use the old practice of “warning missiles,” which relies on using a small munition at first to warn the residents of a building that it is about to be bombed — as if it were okay to bomb someone’s house as long as you gave them a few minutes’ notice.

The West Bank is not far from Gaza and there are crimes of ethnic cleansing

Other evidence of Israel's goals in Gaza comes from successive events in the West Bank. Israeli settlers there have spent the last two months using murder, violence and intimidation, largely with the tacit approval of the Israeli authorities, with the aim of driving the village's old Palestinian residents from their lands.

Then comes the speech of Israeli political leaders, which some observers described as genocidal speech. There have been plenty of examples of this over the past two months. Defense Minister Yoav Galant said about Gaza: “We will eliminate everything in it.” Meanwhile, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, Nissim Fattouri, said about the Palestinians of Gaza: “Expel them all.” In what Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter said: “We are now in the process of implementing the Gaza Nakba.” As for Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, he suggested that Israel consider dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza!

Add to the above the evidence that has emerged regarding the Israeli government's plans. A report in October revealed a proposal from the Ministry of Intelligence to transfer all Gaza residents to Egypt's Sinai, to be housed in tents first and then transferred to permanently built cities.

The proposal did not explain how Israel would overcome Egyptian opposition to population transfer in any way. But other reports have emerged confirming that Israeli leaders and diplomats are quietly proposing the matter to other governments, with the aim of transferring hundreds of thousands of Gazans to Egypt.

The Israelis claim that this step will be temporary for the duration of the ongoing war, but their interlocutors rejected the idea due to the possibility that this displacement would become permanent, as happened in previous incidents of displacement of Palestinians.

While a recent report stated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assigned Ron Dermer, his American-born Minister of Strategic Affairs, to develop a plan to “reduce” the population of the Gaza Strip to the lowest possible extent. The news was published by the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, which supports Netanyahu and supposedly has good relations with him.

Displacement with American support

In a possible reflection of that planning, other Israeli media reports spoke of a proposal that had already been presented to members of the US Congress, which includes transporting two million Gazans through Egypt to permanently settle them there, in Iraq, Turkey, and Yemen. The United States is supposed to use its aid to those countries as a means of pressuring them to accept this arrangement.

The Hamas attack on October 7 demonstrated that it is impossible to remove the conflict with the Palestinians from the regional equation. But the Israeli government rejected with all its might the only way to end these unrest, which is to resolve the conflict through peaceful negotiations that give the Palestinians the right to self-determination, whether by choosing a two-state solution or obtaining equal rights in one state.

Instead, it increasingly appears that Israel is trying to remove the Palestinians themselves from the equation through murder, ethnic cleansing, and displacement. This clear Israeli strategy will not bring peace to Israelis or others as long as disaffected exiles persist, as was the case with its previous maneuvers. The best example of this is how Israel pursued the exiled Palestine Liberation Organization in the early 1980s, which resulted in the outbreak of several wars, the rise of Lebanese Hezbollah, and the loss of all hopes for stability in Lebanon.

The Biden administration has shown some signs of realizing what is happening. Vice President Kamala Harris said during the climate summit in Dubai that “the United States will not accept the forced transfer of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip or the West Bank under any circumstances.” The United States also began imposing a visa ban on Israeli settlers accused of committing acts of violence in the West Bank.

But these indicators do not amount to a complete disconnect between Washington and those hateful policies and practices in reality. It can be said that this separation is necessary in order to spare the United States from being exposed to more international contempt, which its association with Israeli actions brought upon it in the first place, as the American website says.

Source: Sama News