Israel is ethnically cleansing northern Gaza

Having failed to destroy Hamas or return the hostages, it is becoming increasingly clear that Israel’s strategy has changed. The whole population remaining in northern Gaza, some 400,000 men, women and children, are being subjected to a policy of ethnic cleansing.

While indiscriminate bombardment and sniping is being used to terrorise the population southward, the area is being deliberately starved and its medical infrastructure obliterated. The people are being given a choice: flee with nothing, or die.

The fact that Israel has now completed the construction of a road cutting the Gaza strip in half would seem to confirm that this represents the implementation of what is being dubbed the ‘General’s plan’. This plan, which has been studied by Netanyahu, would depopulate northern Gaza in preparation for its colonisation by Jewish settlers.

This is ethnic cleansing. The UN has called it a “genocide within a genocide”. The evidence is so horrifying and overwhelming that even the US has been forced to distance itself from the massacre. And yet, they have not lifted a finger to halt this unimaginable atrocity. Previously western politicians would split hairs about whether what is happening in Gaza qualifies as ‘genocide’. Now Israel’s policy is utterly naked.

‘Surrender or starve’

For over a year, Israel has been indiscriminately pummeling one of the densest urban areas on earth with state of the art western weapons. As a result, Gaza has been irreparably reduced to a shattered landscape of burned out buildings and rubble. 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed, infrastructure is in collapse, and disease and famine have been unleashed. On the basis of the average pre-2022 growth rate, it is estimated it would take 350 years for the Gazan economy to return to its impoverished, pre-war level.

For over a year, Israel has been indiscriminately pummeling one of the densest urban areas on earth with state of the art western weapons / Image: Ramy Abdu رامي عبده, Twitter

Despite Israel’s colossal military superiority, and despite the fact that they have destroyed everything of value in the Gaza strip, they have been unable to decisively achieve victory. At each stage of the war, the IDF has occupied an area, only for Hamas fighters to return once they move on to their next target. For every Hamas fighter killed, ten more young men who have lost everything are prepared to take their place.

Now that Israel has opened up a new front in Lebanon, assorted politicians and generals in Israel are pushing Netanyahu to wrap up the costly war in Gaza. But what would the end point look like? Giora Eiland, a retired Israeli general and the former head of the National Security Council, has developed a plan that has circulated widely at the top levels of the Israeli government. Known as the ‘General’s plan’, it involves cleansing northern Gaza of the Palestinian population. In a closed session of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Eiland explained:

“We have to tell the residents of north Gaza that they have one week to evacuate the territory, which then becomes a military zone; [a zone] in which every figure is a target and, most importantly, no supplies enter this territory.”

In an interview, Eiland made his thinking more explicit. What is needed, he explains, is mass terror against the whole civilian population:

“The fact that we are breaking down in the face of humanitarian aid to Gaza is a serious mistake… Gaza must be completely destroyed: terrible chaos, severe humanitarian crisis, cries to heaven…”

Later he said:

“All of Gaza will starve and when Gaza starves, then hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will be angry and annoyed. And hungry people, they are the ones who will bring about a coup against [Yahya] Sinwar.”

Eiland intends for this to be implemented in the area north of Wadi Gaza, including North Gaza and Gaza city, which still contains 400,000 Palestinians, or 20 percent of the population of Gaza. Then, as his supporters in the Knesset explain, “after carrying out the program in this area, it is possible to carry it out in other parts of the strip.”

27 of the 120 members of the Knesset have publicly come out in support of this plan. It is particularly popular amongst the representatives of Israel’s fanatical far-right settlers. For them, the total cleansing of North Gaza – and after that the entire strip – would mean an opportunity to annex and settle it. In the last week, a conference called Preparing for the Resettlement of Gaza, held in view of the smoking ruins of Gaza, was attended by ten Likud members, and senior ministers like Smotrich and Ben Gvir.

Netanyahu himself has not explicitly come out in favour of the controversial plan. But behind closed doors, he is reported to have said that the plan “makes a lot of sense”. It would be fully consistent with what we know about Netanyahu. Max Hastings, recounting a 1977 dinner party in Jerusalem, told The Guardian in 2009:

“I heard a young Israeli talking about the Arabs in terms which chilled my blood. ‘In the next war,’ he said, ‘we've got to get the Palestinians out of the West Bank for good’… that young Israeli whom I heard enthuse about emptying the West Bank of Arabs was Binyamin Netanyahu, today his country's prime minister.”

But whether it is officially declared policy of Netanyahu and his government or not, all signs point to the fact that Israel is doing exactly as the plan proposes. 

A new siege of northern Gaza has begun, in which IDF soldiers and senior defence officials alike have confirmed that the specific aim is to depopulate the area by implementing a ‘surrender or starve’ plan.

“Genocide within a genocide”

Since September, aid to the north was reduced to a trickle, and since the beginning of October, no food, water, fuel or aid has been allowed in / Image: Fars Media Corporation, Wikimedia Commons

On 1 October, Israel issued an order for all 400,000 people living above the Netzarim corridor to evacuate, precisely as outlined in the General’s plan.

This area, which used to be home to 1.1 million people – and to Gaza city, which now lies in ruins – has already been devastated by a year of relentless bombing and two sieges. But now, since the beginning of October, the IDF has cut off North Gaza from the rest of the strip and is subjecting it to a new siege targeting the whole population.

Since September, aid to the north was reduced to a trickle, and since the beginning of October, no food, water, fuel or aid has been allowed in. Sewage and water infrastructure have been deliberately targeted. All but two water wells and one bakery have been destroyed in Israeli air strikes.

Most recently, Israel has moved to ban UNRWA, the main lifeline for the people of Gaza. Again, this is fully in line with the General’s plan. As Eliand put it, “all of Gaza will starve.” 

This starvation policy has been accompanied with a campaign of terror. In a report in The New York Times, doctors tell of seeing instances of children shot in the head and chest on a daily basis and are only able to conclude that these are deliberate assassinations. This can only have one purpose: to terrorise the whole population and send the message – if you remain in northern Gaza, whoever you are, we will attempt to kill you.

In Jabilia – formerly the biggest refugee camp in Gaza and the starting point of the first Intifada in the 1980s – Israel is going house to house and school to school conducting raids to remove and arrest those sheltering inside. 

Afterwards, the buildings are destroyed to prevent anyone from returning: in the last few days, three schools in Jabilia have been razed. In one case, a school being used as a shelter was bombed, killing dozens including children and doctors. Without water, there was no means to fight the fire that the bomb ignited. On top of this, the last remaining fire engines in north Gaza have been deliberately destroyed to ensure that the fire can do its work.

Videos capture crowds of Palestinian boys and men, blindfolded, stripped and cable-tied, led away at gunpoint to be interrogated. All men and boys above the age of 13 are being treated as suspected combatants. Some have been kidnapped and forced to work as human shields for Israel’s raids, being made to enter buildings or tunnels ahead of IDF soldiers to test for booby traps. Women and children, once separated from the men and older boys, are then being forced to march south.

Again, to quote Eliand’s words in describing his ‘General’s plan’: “every figure is a target”.

Two of the three standing hospitals have been disabled. In the Indonesian hospital, which was one of the largest still standing in Gaza, medics were forced to let people bleed to death because of the sheer number of casualties. Right next to the hospital, the IDF set up a military base and an interrogation centre, forbidding anyone from entering or leaving. As a result, the dead had to be buried inside the complex.

The last working hospital, Kamal Adwan, has been starved of power and medical supplies for four weeks. On Friday, after a bombing attack that destroyed its oxygen supply, it was raided by IDF troops. All medical staff were either evacuated or arrested, leaving one Paediatrician to look after hundreds of patients. There are now no medical facilities whatsoever in the north of Gaza. Missions to clear bodies, or retrieve people from the rubble have been forbidden by the Israelis. Corpses line the streets, thus encouraging disease to spread. According to the UNRWA chief, “The smell of death is everywhere”.

Again, this can have no other design than to send a message to those still in the north that if you remain, you will die.

And where are those that manage to escape supposed to go? All of Gaza is a ruin. One woman feeling with a toddler told the BBC:

“They told us we had five minutes to leave the Fallujah school. Where do we go? In southern Gaza there are assassinations. In western Gaza they’re shelling people. Where do we go, oh God?”

According to another Gazan forced to flee Jabalia, IDF soldiers told him, “Go south; you will never return to the north. The north will be ours, and we will build settlements there”. Already, a gang of settlers has stormed the border of North Gaza, anticipating its total clearance.

The facts make quite clear that Netanyahu’s regime is in the process of carrying out the General’s plan in one form or another. As we have explained, what we are witnessing is the ethnic cleansing of north Gaza.

Western imperialism has blood on its hands!

Since 7 October, the ‘world's most moral army’ has acted with deliberate, savage brutality against the civilian population of Gaza. It has unrelentingly rained down death and destruction on hospitals, schools, and refugee camps. It has committed systematic torture, rape, and summary executions. It has fired at UN peacekeepers with white phosphorus. It has assassinated journalists, American civilians and British medics, on top of numerous Palestinian women, children and other non-combatants. 

They are all intended to make life impossible for the Palestinians, so as to force a mass exodus from their homeland. All of these are war crimes, by any definition of that word. And yet, nothing has been done.

America has recently put pressure on Netanyahu to tone down the violence. A recent letter from the US State Department to Israel demands “urgent” steps be taken to improve the “dire” situation, including restoring aid to North Gaza. Otherwise, they threaten, there “may be implications” for the billions of dollars of weapons that America sends to Israel.

If the political representatives of US imperialism seriously considered the lives of Palestinians to be worth saving, they could cut military aid in 24 hours and stop the carnage immediately. They have not done this.

In fact, the letter gives Israel 30 days to comply, which conveniently places the deadline after the US election by which time the Administration, if it has not been replaced, has the option to backtrack on its threats without fear of immediate electoral fallout.

Netanyahu can act with impunity because he knows that in the end, whatever he does, the Americans will line up behind Israel in support of its ‘right to defend itself’ i.e. its right to butcher whoever it likes.

The western imperialists’ commitment to Israel is ‘ironclad’. For them Israel is an irreplaceable centurion of American interests in the Middle East. As Joe Biden once put it many years ago:

“It is the best $3 billion investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the US would have to invent an Israel to protect our interests in the region.”

Although the US has the leverage to end this slaughter, it will not do so because it cannot afford to lose Israel. Israel will not adhere to a ceasefire so long as it has the US behind it. Though the western powers might be slightly distancing themselves from the worst of Israel's genocidal rampage, whatever comes they will back their ally. They are complicit. Biden, Harris, Starmer, Schultz, Macron: all of their hands are covered in blood.

Moral and political pressure is not enough. These crimes are in the nature of imperialism! The bloodletting will not cease until the gang of criminal, warmongering politicians, and the billionaires that back them, are overthrown.

Imperialism must die so that humanity may live!