If you read the Western press this morning, you can believe that the desire of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take military control over Gaza is new. But abandoning the 2000 LB bombs does not save the captives and the wiping of whole districts does not come without the intention of building something in their place.
Friday, the Israel security firm approved the occupation of Gaza City, formalizing what has always been the end of this genocide. The plan follows a deliberate sequence: destroy first, then hungry, occupy, ask for demilitarization and finally perform a complete ethnic cleaning once the Palestinians have no political power and the ability to resist. This is how the dream of “great Israel” is realized.
But why formalize this occupation now, after 22 months of systematic slaughter? Because the crime scene must be disinfected before the world sees what remains of Gaza.
On Sunday, the Israeli army murdered journalists from Tel Aviv Tribune Anas Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa by dropping a missile on a media tent near the Al-Shifa hospital. Their names are now added to the long list of more than 230 Palestinian journalists and the media workers that Israel has killed since October 2023.
Israel prohibiting all foreign media from freely accessing Gaza, Palestinian journalists were the sole responsible for covering and documenting Israeli war crimes. Assassination is a clear message to stop, to remain silent.
Meanwhile, foreign journalists who rolled over air flights to Gaza were also warned. Aerial images they published offered overviews of the Gaza corpse: a patchwork of broken concrete, ruins and hollow streets. It is a complete desolation.
The images shocked viewers around the world and therefore the Israeli government quickly prohibited filming on these flights, warning that the assistance drops would be interrupted if there were violations.
Israel knows that he cannot continue to block foreign media in Gaza forever. The genocide will eventually end; The convoys of help and the emergency services will be allowed to enter and with them, foreign journalists with cameras.
So, before the arrival of this day, Israel rushes to erase the evidence because once the world will see Gaza, it will no longer be able to claim that the war concerned something other than the mass murder of the Palestinians and the erasure of their history.
The occupation of Gaza City is the murderer who returns to the crime scene to hide the body. The objective is not only to cover crimes, but to convince the world that the dead are not dead and that what we see is not what it is.
The number of official deaths in Gaza amounts to 60,000, a number which by many expert accounts is a sub-account. According to estimates, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have probably been murdered. As UN experts declared on August 7, “Israel exterminates the inhabitants of Gaza by all means.” There are a lot of crimes to cover.
We have already seen the Modus Operandi of the Israeli army by trying to destroy evidence in Gaza. He buried civilians massacred in pits in common with bulldozers; He retained the bodies of victims of Palestinian torture; He dug in the sand scenes of whole crime of execution; He planted weapons in the hospitals she ransacked; He lied about the discovery of tunnels.
All this perfectly corresponds to the long history of Israel to bury evidence of atrocities. Since 1948, the Israeli authorities have systematically erased their ethnic cleaning of the Palestinians by building themselves above the ruins of Palestinian villages and cities.
Israeli Intelligence has also removed documents from archives that provide Evidence of Zionist and Israeli Forces Committing War Crimes During the Nakba of 1948. Some of the documents that have disappeared give gruesome details about the brutality of zionist fighters During massacres of Palestinians, Of Dawymeh, Near Hebron, Where Hundreds of Palestinian Men, Women, and Children WERE KILLED by artillery fire or directly executed. In 1955, the colony of Amatzia was built on the ruins of the Palestinian village.
By now occupying the northern part of the Gaza Strip, Israel will certainly use these same methods of erasure and falsification. He will also be able to control the coverage of foreign media, just as he has done so far.
The Israeli army only allowed foreign journalists to Gaza anchored with its military units in strict conditions which transform journalists into participants in Hasbara. Integrated journalists must submit all documents for military examination before the publication, must operate under constant observation and cannot speak freely with the Palestinians.
Journalists thus become mouthpieces for the Israeli army, parrobe their justifications for wholesale destruction and propagating their lies on Palestinian civilians such as “human shields” and hospitals and schools of Gaza as “terrorist hubs”.
Large -scale occupation can also help facilitate other massacres and ethnic cleaning. Those who refuse forced displacement will be labeled “activists” to excuse their massacre. Israel used this strategy very early in the genocide, dropping leaflets warning the Palestinians from northern Gaza that they will be considered “partners in a terrorist organization” if they do not comply with “evacuation orders”.
Mass displacement is essential to concealment because it creates a new story that Palestinians voluntarily migrate rather than being ethnically cleaned. The short -term objective is to force those who wish to comply with concentration camps in the South and to detach them from their homes and their land. Over time, it would become easier to expel the Palestinians elsewhere and to deny them the right to return. It is in the same way that Nakba’s refugees were forced to flee to Gaza and then refused their internationally recognized right of return.
The international community’s response to the Israel plan was just more convictions. Germany went so far as to interrupt the military exports that could be used in Gaza – something that should have been done 22 months ago when Israel began to bomb without discrimination of civilians.
These actions are pathetic. They do not abuse these governments of their complicity to help and encourage the crime of genocide; They are only another sign of their moral cowardice.
The international community must take decisive measures. He must undertake a military intervention, as under international law, to force Israel to immediately put violence, to allow humanitarian aid without restriction in Gaza and to give the Palestinians the freedom to which they are entitled. International journalists must be granted immediate access to perceive the evidence of the crimes of Israel before disappearing under the coverage of “military operations”.
It is time for the world to begin to believe the Palestinians. For 22 months, the Palestinians said it was a genocide. They said it while being stuck under the rubble, while hungry, while carrying the body of their children. They said that Israel did not defend themselves but tried to erase the Palestinians. They said that ethnic occupation and cleaning are the goal. Israeli politicians themselves said.
Without urgent international action, the words “never again” will not refer to the prevention of genocide, but to the existence of Palestinian life in Gaza. The truth that so many Palestinians have died to say should not be buried with their body.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.