Latest news with #militaryoccupation
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Israel's Plan for Gaza Could Be an Historic Mistake
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has unveiled a new plan for Gaza that signals a return to military occupation for an indefinite period. The announcement came after Israel's security cabinet voted unanimously to expand operations in the Strip with the explicit aim of permanently defeating and rooting out Hamas. According to Israeli officials, the plan known as Operation Gideon's Chariots will be implemented immediately after President Donald Trump's upcoming Middle East trip concludes this week, unless a last-minute hostage deal is reached before then. Trump's visit—with stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—is being treated as a window of opportunity for negotiations. If Hamas does not agree to a ceasefire and hostage exchange by the time Trump leaves the region, Israeli officials say a massive ground offensive to seize and indefinitely occupy all of Gaza will begin 'with great intensity.' Tens of thousands of reserve soldiers are being called up in preparation as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) plans to invade and capture the whole of Gaza, the culmination of a war that began with Hamas' October 7, 2023, invasion, massacre, and abduction of hostages. Notably, Netanyahu's ultranationalist allies like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have openly embraced the term 'occupation,' vowing 'no retreat from the territories we have conquered, not even in exchange for hostages.' In practical terms, Israeli forces plan to flatten any remaining buildings and systematically destroy the entirety of Hamas' extensive tunnel networks across Gaza. The Gaza Strip's 2.1 million Palestinians would be moved into a single 'humanitarian zone' near Rafah in the south, tightly controlled by the IDF. Entry and exit to the zone would be screened, and there would be a resumption of humanitarian aid into Gaza, which has been paused since March. Under the new plan, aid would be distributed only to those vetted as not being Hamas-affiliated. This scenario marks a major shift from Israel's stance over the past 18 years, following the withdrawal of its civilian settlers alongside its troops from Gaza in 2005. Even in the context of the ongoing war in Gaza, Israel had not openly proposed long-term governance or occupation of the Strip again until now. Israeli opposition leader Yair Golan, a retired general, argued that the war against Hamas is 'no longer a temporary operation but a move that prepares for a permanent presence,' warning the move would 'cost us blood … through exhaustion and most importantly through losing our way.' Many within Israel's security establishment are uneasy; former lawmaker Ofer Shelah cautioned that Israel would be assuming responsibility for 2 million Gazans with all the consequences that entails—from international backlash to massive economic and military burdens. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has offered little or no opposition to the plan. Reports from Israeli officials suggest Trump is 'not currently playing an active role' in Gaza ceasefire talks and has 'given Netanyahu a green light to do as he sees fit.' Still, the significance of Netanyahu's announcement cannot be overstated. By declaring Israel will reoccupy the strip, he is reversing decades of Israeli policy that sought to avoid a quagmire by not reabsorbing Gaza. Perhaps more importantly, Netanyahu has for the first time admitted that the return of the hostages is not his top priority, saying 'the supreme objective is victory over our enemies.' This is a shift that has left Israeli ceasefire negotiators 'reeling.' Multiple family members of the hostages blasted the cabinet's decision, saying the plan chooses 'territory over freeing the hostages.' Public opinion in Israel appears to side with the families: 60 percent to 70 percent of Israelis oppose a major operation to reoccupy Gaza and instead support a deal to end the war and free the captives, according to Barak Ravid's reporting in Axios. These Israelis fear the planned offensive may further imperil the 24 hostages believed to be still alive in Hamas captivity. But Netanyahu has opted to press ahead on a path that will be extremely difficult to reverse and may have risky and unpredictable consequences both for Israel, the Palestinians, and the region. At the same time, a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in Gaza. Since early March, Israel has enforced a total blockade on the Strip, cutting off shipments of food, water, and fuel to prevent them falling into the hands of Hamas. As a result, no supply trucks have entered Gaza since March 2, when a U.S.-brokered ceasefire ended. Gaza's local food production is negligible under current conditions, as fields have become battle zones and farmers can't risk tending them, and fishermen are barred from the sea. Although some food remains in specific locations, the ongoing military operations have left many communities' food supplies exhausted, clean water scarce, and people fighting over whatever scraps remain. In Gaza's hospitals, doctors and aid workers paint a hellish picture: malnourished children with skeletal frames, surgeries performed without anesthesia, and a lack of basic medicines for common ailments like diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. One displaced expectant mother, Ola al-Kafarna, described her plight to Reuters: 'We stand up and get dizzy due to lack of food. There are no eggs, meat, food, or drink. We are tired.' Did Hamas realize when they chose to start a new war against Israel in October 2023 that this would be the position Palestinians would be facing in 2025? The sheer scale of the horror, which has left some 80 percent of Gaza's population displaced from their homes, has led many there to conclude that Hamas' actions brought unbearable suffering. As one Gaza resident told Reuters at a recent anti-Hamas demonstration, 'People are exhausted and have no place to go. … Many [were] chanting 'Out, Hamas.'… No one should blame them.' This remarkable protest in late March saw hundreds of Palestinians in northern Gaza rallying and chanting, 'Hamas out!' and 'Enough wars!' Videos of the protests across Gaza reflected a rare public show of opposition to the terrorist group. Indeed, the last 19 months of devastating war and humanitarian disaster has seen Hamas' political standing in Gaza plummet. Although it is hard to poll a wartime population, and even though there have been allegations that Hamas has manipulated political polls for its own benefit, polling by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) shows support for Hamas in Gaza has collapsed from 42 percent right after October 7, 2023, to 21 percent by January of this year. Another survey last October found 57 percent of Gazans considered the October 7 assault 'the wrong decision,' a complete reversal from the initial jubilation among Hamas' base. The imposition of Israel's new plan to completely occupy and hold Gaza indefinitely would seem to be an absolute reversal of Hamas' long-term ambitions of dismantling Israel and replacing it with a Palestinian state. However, Hamas' decline and likely long-term defeat by Israel does not automatically translate into a viable alternative for Gaza governance gaining ground. The Strip's other political options are weak or tarnished. Fatah—the faction behind the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas' longtime rival—remains widely seen as corrupt and impotent, 'weak and illegitimate' in the eyes of many Palestinians. No third force has emerged; instead, a plurality of Gazans (32 percent) now say no existing movement represents them. Hamas' popularity on the broader Arab street has also suffered. Key regional backers like Qatar and Turkey have continued diplomatic support, but even they have urged Hamas to consider ceasefires and hostage releases. Hamas' loss of credibility may be one of the few developments offering a glimmer of hope for a different future in Gaza, albeit a hope tempered by the chaos and suffering of the present. Israel's plan to indefinitely reoccupy Gaza raises existential questions about the future of the peace process, most urgently whether the long-fading prospect of a two-state solution can survive this war. The road map to peace laid out in the Oslo Accords in the 1990s and subsequent initiatives already lay in tatters; a Gaza reoccupation may well be the final nail in its coffin. By implementing its plan, Israel would control all of the land that under the Oslo peace process was earmarked to become part of a Palestinian state. In late 2024, Arab states endorsed an Egyptian-led plan for Gaza's day after that would put the Strip under the PA's administration, ending Hamas rule, with support from the Arab League and financing from Gulf states. But Netanyahu's right-wing partners are already speaking in terms of annexation. Smotrich hinted that after occupying Gaza, Israel might 'talk about declaring sovereignty' there. Netanyahu's government has shown open disdain for the PA's capacity and has thus far rejected proposals that involve a handover to the PA as part of a deal to end the war and release the hostages. The Israeli leader's insistence that Hamas must be completely destroyed suggests Israel is prepared to administer Gaza by force for a long period, regardless of Palestinian or international preferences. Historically, such open-ended occupations—think the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan, or Israel itself in South Lebanon for 18 years—have been unpopular, difficult, and expensive, and usually end not by strategic design but by exhaustion. And the perpetuation of occupation risks radicalizing those who might otherwise be amenable to peace. In the case of the West Bank, which Israel has administered since 1967, the occupation has not brought peace, but instead a bubbling conflict that is suppressed for a while, only to re-emerge later. Although the new Israeli plan attempts to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza by allowing in more aid, it conditions that aid upon civilians being concentrated in a specific area—one tightly controlled by the Israeli military. It does not explicitly envision rebuilding Gaza. It does not offer Palestinians a path to govern themselves. And it does not ask what kind of future anyone, in Gaza or Israel, is supposed to have when one population is fenced into a war zone and the other is assigned to administer it indefinitely. For a hungry and war-weary Palestinian population, there does not seem to be any real alternative on the table, and I fear that we are watching a political and strategic vacuum fill with fire. Hamas is collapsing, hated by the Palestinian people it falsely claimed to represent. But instead of responding with a vision for peace, the Israeli government is responding with bulldozers and bayonets. This is a pivotal moment. What happens now may decide the future of not just Gaza, but the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hamas has lost its support. Palestinians are marching in Gaza's rubble-filled streets and chanting, 'Hamas out.' They are rejecting jihadism. They are demanding peace, and that should be celebrated everywhere. Instead, too many Western 'pro-Palestinian' activists have ignored these voices—perhaps because they don't fit the simplistic narrative that Palestinians are only victims of Israeli aggression. But they are victims of Hamas too. And they are telling the world exactly that, at extraordinary personal risk. There are many potential Arab partners in the region—such as the United Arab Emirates, and other countries who joined the Abraham Accords—who have already indicated a willingness to help rebuild Gaza. This is an offer and opportunity that should not be overlooked, not only to help to start to rebuild the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis, but also because it can help to bring peace between Israel and the wider region. Right now, Netanyahu's policy—driven by extremists like Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir—is to flatten Gaza, rule over the ruins, and call it victory. But unless we can resolve the conflict we risk being sucked into a similar or worse war further along the line. The world and Israel must help to establish a real Palestinian alternative to Hamas that wants to live in peace alongside Israel, not to be permanently occupied. To change the region's trajectory, Netanyahu and Israeli leaders should do the one thing Hamas fears most: empower a credible alternative to Hamas. Back the voices in Gaza that want to live in peace. Support the construction of institutions led by those who want to live in peace alongside Israel, and who will actually serve Palestinian civilians instead of leading them into hellfire.
The Guardian
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
If you were shocked by my film on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, you haven't been paying attention
It wasn't something I saw coming. A film about the situation in the West Bank – an evergreen story if ever there was one – going viral. Appreciation, dismay, gratitude, outrage at what the film showed … Through the week it kept going. More retweets, more feedback, a little bit of pushback. Shock was the theme of many messages – the idea that this was going on. And a feeling of: 'At last.' 'At last, mainstream British TV is saying something about what is happening.' The film was a follow-up of sorts. In 2010, I'd made a documentary called Ultra Zionists. It was a look at the Israeli religious nationalist community that exists in the West Bank – the area across the eastern edge of Israel that has been under military occupation since the six-day war of 1967. Now, a decade and a half on, with the world's attention on Gaza, it was being reported that the settlers were ramping up their activities. The Israeli government had given them thousands of assault rifles. Shootings of Palestinians, vandalism of their property and harassment were all on the rise. We envisioned the film as a kind of road movie through a region under military occupation. On two trips of a little over a week each, with my director Josh Baker and producers Sara Obeidat and Matan Cohen, I drove up and down the West Bank. I made inroads in the settler community, interviewing exponents of the settler mindset. People such as Ari Abramowitz of Arugot Farm, a resort for tourists that sits deep inside the occupied West Bank. Abramowitz was born and raised in Texas but came to Israel as a young man, qualifying for Israeli citizenship due to his Jewish heritage. For our interview, he met me wearing an assault rifle and a handgun. He took me on a tour of the land and declared his view that the Palestinian people 'don't exist'. I also spent time with Daniella Weiss, the woman often touted as the 'godmother' of the settler project. An energetic 79-year-old, Weiss has been working to expand Israeli presence in the West Bank – or Judea and Samaria, as she calls it – for more than 50 years, lobbying governments, raising funds domestically and internationally, promoting a vision of an entirely Israeli-ruled region, with the Palestinians pushed to either accept it or leave. Weiss hosted me at her suburban-style home in the settlement of Kedumim, amid books and family photos. Showing me a map on her wall, she explained that Lebanon, Jordan and parts of Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq were all part of Greater Israel. She explained the settlement process, of creating ever more outposts of religious Israelis. Under international law, the moving of a civilian population into occupied territory is a war crime, I said. This amused her. I mentioned that elements of the Israeli security apparatus viewed her activities with dismay and criticised the extreme settlers for engaging in what they called 'Jewish terror'. She shrugged this all off. We saw her in action at an event promoting the idea of Jewish-only settlements in Gaza – the latest frontier in settler activity. In a fiery speech, she announced that the Palestinians of the region needed to leave and go to other countries – to Turkey, to Canada – anywhere else. On another visit to the Gaza border, she brought a prominent rabbi, Dov Lior. With the smoking ruins behind him, he spoke of the need to 'cleanse' the land of 'camel riders'. In the encounter that made the film's closing scene, Weiss and I had a heated exchange of views on a hilltop at Evyatar, the latest settlement to be recognised by the Israeli state. Over the days of the shoot, driving around through checkpoints, past blast walls and guard towers and olive groves and Palestinian towns, I thought back to my previous visit 14 years before. Much was still the same. The same sense of a two-tier society: Jewish settlers who lived protected under Israeli civil law; Palestinians who were subject to an opaque regime of military rule, with roads closed, life made difficult in ways big and small. The daily indignity of queues and passport checks. The fear of settler vandalism and intimidation. The reaction to the film, when it aired, was immediate. Positive write-ups and massive online commentary. Some reviews thought they detected a new 'seriousness' in my approach. They referenced a moment when I told Daniella Weiss her views seemed 'sociopathic' – after she suggested she was only interested in the welfare of her own people and didn't give any thought to other people's. It was said I seemed more assertive than usual. I'm not sure whether that's true. But I do think the gravity of what is unfolding gave the encounter more impact. A few pieces were critical of the film. The main charge was that I'd focused on a handful of crazies who weren't representative of the wider community. 'Weiss is a crackpot,' wrote a reviewer in the Daily Mail. On X, the Conservative environmentalist Ben Goldsmith claimed that the extremists in the film 'represent a nutty fringe in Israeli society … about as … accurate a representation of the whole as Tommy Robinson is of UK society'. But this comparison reveals what makes the situation in the West Bank so peculiar. In the UK, Robinson is widely seen as a fringe actor. He is excluded from politics and shunned by those close to government. And yet here was a situation where a similar figure enjoys enormous clout within the Israeli cabinet and who has the protection of the army in her project of settler expansionism. As the Haaretz journalist Etan Nechin said, responding to Goldsmith, 'their representatives are literally sitting in the government and control everything from the police to treasury'. Others asked why I didn't mention that hundreds of thousands of the Palestinians who live under occupation in the West Bank are already refugees – or the descendants of them – having been pushed off land they lived on in 1948 when the state of Israel was created. Now they face potentially a second displacement, with settlers – and elements of the Israeli state – pushing for further deportations and continuing to make life intolerable for Palestinians. The part of the analysis that was less explicitly stated but present in the background was the idea of 'why pick on Israel?' – the idea that atrocities of comparable seriousness are taking place in other parts of the world and that by reporting on religious nationalist Israeli extremism we may have contributed to anti-Jewish sentiment. I take this charge seriously, for reasons I hope are obvious. But the urgency here is that West Bank settlers are a bellwether for where society may be going in countries across the west. In the past, the settler agenda has been supported by governments on both the left and the right but it's currently being embraced by populist leaders and elements of the far right who find much to like about its ethno-nationalist and anti-democratic character. Around the same time that the documentary aired, Israel's national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is a settler, was being hosted at Mar-a-Lago. And so a film about extreme West Bank settlers isn't simply about a region of the Middle East. It's also about 'us'. While the global response to The Settlers has been encouraging in the main, there is also an aspect to it that is deflating. As Peter Oborne pointed out, quite rightly, in a sympathetic review, 'this film tells us nothing new about the situation in the occupied West Bank'. The facts were well known to those paying attention – from the Oscar-winning No Other Land, to ITV's Our Land: Israel's Other War, a documentary that includes extraordinary scenes of settlers seizing control of farmland and making veiled references to intimidation and displacement. One of the sadder and more outrageous results of our film involved the Palestinian activist Issa Amro. Amro lives in Hebron, a West Bank city that, since 1968, has had 700 or so settlers living at its very heart, in a cordon of Israeli military occupation. We filmed Amro on a walk through this so-called 'sterile zone' – the term the army uses. Just a few days after the film aired, Issa reported on his social media that he had been harassed by settlers and soldiers at his home, in what appeared to be a reprisal for his participation in our documentary. Our team got in touch with him and did its best to provide appropriate support. The scholar and writer Hamza Yusuf said on X that the outrage over everything depicted in The Settlers 'says a lot about how well the media has shielded the public from the brutal reality of Israel's occupation'. As proud as I am of the film, I know that our documentary could never capture the full impact of what is unfolding in the West Bank. The reality of the displacement and harassment is often in interactions that are more extreme than those I saw. So I am grateful for the reaction. I encourage people to read and consume more on the subject. I'm glad we were able to show as much as we did. I also wish we could have shown much more. As told to Jason Okundaye. Louis Theroux is a documentary presenter
