On August 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced to a Fox News interviewer that Israel would “take” the entire Gaza strip. One day later, the Israeli security cabinet approved this just-announced plan. While the details of any such plan are unclear and may not actually yet exist, it is clear that Israel now intends to take over and control at least the northern area of Gaza around Gaza City, and perhaps the entire strip.
This comes on top of nearly two years of horrific destruction of the Palestinian people and the small enclave of Gaza. In this period Israel’s total war against the people of Gaza has included the forced migration of probably every single person who lives in the Gaza strip at least once; the bombing of every hospital in Gaza and the total destruction of most of them; the bombing of every school and university in Gaza; the flattening of entire neighborhoods; the bombing and destruction of every water and sewage treatment facility in Gaza; the destruction of all food producing land and facilities; the full blockade of all food and supplies intended to enter Gaza; the killing of hundreds of journalists; the fire-bombing of tent camps; and the bulldozing of all structures near the borders with Israel, including tens of thousands of homes.
Currently, according to the World Food Program (WFP), nearly a third of Gaza’s population is going several days without food. The 400 United Nations aid distribution sites that used to exist have been eliminated in Palestinian territories and been replaced with a sham operation called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is run by Israel. Under the GHF, two million Palestinians in Gaza are forced to get aid from just four military-controlled distribution sites. These sites are open at random times, only to be announced on social media, for an average of 11 minutes, and during that time able bodied men are funneled into prison-like lines often surrounded by fencing and wired, often to be savagely gunned down. In the past couple of months, the United Nations has reported that close to 1,400 Palestinians have been killed just for seeking food. The head of Doctors Without Borders has characterized the GFH sites as “Death Traps.” Meanwhile there is footage of far right settlers attacking aid convoys with the Israeli Defense Forces passively watching.
In total since October 7, at least 61,000 are confirmed dead, although the real number is undoubtedly higher. At least 18,500 of those dead are children. Hundreds of thousands more have been wounded, blinded, mangled, maimed, and worse. The human toll is already unimaginably terrible.
Israel has agreed to weak ceasefires on two occasions, only to violate those agreements months later to pick up their destruction right where they left off.
It is a genocide, plain and simple. Israeli leaders have said as much openly. In the first days and weeks after the October 7 attack, Netanyahu told residents of Gaza to leave because Israel would turn Gaza “into rubble.” He told Israelis to remember “what Amalek did to you,” a quote referencing a biblical story giving the Israelites the right to “kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings.” The Israeli Defense Minister at the time called Palestinians “human animals,” and Israel’s Finance Minister said in the spring of 2024 that, “there are no half measures. You will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.” And the Deputy Speaker of Parliament said that “now we all have one common goal – to wipe the Gaza Strip off the face of the earth.” Their words and intentions couldn’t be clearer.
So now, after nearly two years of already genocidal destruction, the Israeli state, led by a leader who needs to continue the war to satisfy his allies in his political coalition and keep himself out of prison, will embark on yet another offensive into the heavily populated territory. What will this mean for the Palestinians still alive? More unimaginable suffering.
Responding to the global massive outcry, some of the imperialist powers, particularly in Europe, have felt compelled to begin to be somewhat critical of the proposed occupation. They have embarked on public criticism of Israel’s brutality. France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and Australia have made pledges that they would “recognize a Palestinian state” at the upcoming meeting of the United Nations general assembly in September. It’s important to specify that even these gestures of saying they would recognize a Palestinian state would come with strings attached, particularly that the Palestinians would have to “demilitarize.” In other words, the Palestinians would have to agree to give up any capacity to defend themselves, which is insane given that they have faced close to two years of open genocidal violence.
Even some Israelis, despite overall support for the war effort, are furious at their government for prioritizing Netanyahu’s political survival and the continued destruction of Palestinians without the slightest concern for the Israeli hostages who may still be alive, or who could have been saved with an earlier negotiated settlement of the violence.
The United States has shown a different attitude than its European allies. The Trump administration has made no firm public comments on the move to take the entire strip, and not a word that could be perceived as critical of Israeli actions. This means that the United States is completely supportive of the plan. And why wouldn’t it be? Both U.S. political parties have supported Israel completely since at least the late 1960s.
And remember that it was Trump himself who in February proposed that the U.S. should “take over” and “own” all of Gaza. Those comments were not well thought out or clear statements of policy, and within weeks they were already forgotten in the flood of vicious words and tweets that come from Trump. In other words, Netanyahu is proposing something similar to what Trump originally proposed in February, but with Israeli troops doing the killing and forced removal. There is no reason why Trump and U.S. imperialism wouldn’t support it.
And the U.S., as the biggest supplier of weapons and military aid to Israel, plays the deciding role in what Israel does or does not do. As long as U.S. imperialism needs Israel to exist and to act as its hired gun in the Middle East, Israel will continue to enact savage destruction on its neighbors and supposed enemies.
Within the U.S., there are small signs that a shift may be beginning. Mass protests at college campuses last year revealed the outrage among young people at the Israel regime’s barbarism. Recent polling of public opinion in the U.S. has seen a rise in the percentage with an unfavorable view of Israel, with the Pew Research Center poll finding that for the first time, a majority of those polled had negative views of Israel. A Gallup poll found that only roughly 8% of Democratic voters and 25% of Independent voters support Israel’s actions in Gaza.
In response to shifting public opinion, last month 27 Democrats in the U.S. Senate voted for a bill that would have stopped some shipments of arms to the Israeli military. But as of now, none of these shifts change the fact that U.S. imperialism, under Democrats and Republicans alike, is still the primary supporter of Israeli military superiority in the Middle East. The only difference under Trump is that, while some politicians at least paid lip service to caring about the human rights of Palestinians, Trump doesn’t even feel the need to do that and is willing to openly support ethnic cleansing of an entire region. This U.S. support for Israel is the root of the problem.
We have the power to end this carnage. We can put an end to U.S. imperialism, and in doing so put an end to Zionist barbarism. We can organize ourselves and take action to oppose our own government and its imperialist policies. Protests are an important start but they are not enough. To end these atrocities, we will need to go much further, and we will need to bring down the entire capitalist system that requires the genocidal destruction of whole segments of humanity. There is not a second to waste!
