No Ceasefire: Netanyahu Pursues Genocide Against Palestinians

“Total Victory”: Netanyahu Pursues Genocide Against Palestinians

In a grim escalation of rhetoric, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has brazenly declared there will be no permanent ceasefire in Gaza until Hamas’s military and governing capabilities are utterly destroyed, and all hostages released. His uncompromising stance arrives just as US President Joe Biden announced Israel had proposed a three-stage plan to Hamas aimed at reaching a potential ceasefire agreement.

While a senior Hamas official claimed they “will go for this deal” if Israel honours it, Netanyahu’s bellicose doubling-down lays bare the true objective behind Israel’s unrelenting bombardment of the besieged strip: the complete subjugation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

For the outside world looking on with mounting horror, Israel’s transparently genocidal “war aims” can no longer be obscured behind the typical smokescreen of self-defence. The unlawful collective punishment being meted out, the wanton targeting of civilian centres, hospitals and other protected sites – it unmistakably constitutes a campaign of extermination cloaked in the unctuous doublespeak of “anti-terrorism.”

In a statement dripping with Orwellian newspeak, the Israeli prime minister’s office declared “Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed” – namely, the “destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities” alongside “ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat.” A naked proclamation that Gaza’s very existence as a self-governing Palestinian territory is an existential affront to the ethno-nationalist vision of a Greater Israel.

The supposed “three-stage plan” unveiled by Biden amounts to little more than a public relations exercise. While ostensibly offering an “off-ramp” from escalating violence through phased reconstruction aid and hostage exchanges, it wilfully ignores the underlying reality that Israel’s objective extends far beyond temporary territorial occupation.

Of course, we mustn’t overlook the staggering irony of Biden’s “feed them to kill them” policy – a cynical sleight of hand that sees the US simultaneously arming Israel’s military juggernaut to the teeth while proffering piecemeal humanitarian aid to its Palestinian victims in Gaza.

This unconscionable two-step of enabling genocidal aggression on one hand while performatively alleviating its horrific consequences with the other has proven too much even for some within the administration’s ranks. At least eight officials have tendered their resignations in protest over the past eight months, decrying the President’s wilful blindness towards Israel’s litany of atrocities perpetrated against the besieged Palestinian enclave.

The charade of enforcing strict military “arms length” while greenlighting the very hardware and munitions employed in Gaza’s extermination lays bare the obscene moral bankruptcy at the heart of American foreign policy. As Palestinian civilians cower under the hail of US-manufactured ordnance, the bitter paradox of their supposed benefactors enabling their slaughter becomes ever more indefensible.

In this cruel game of humanitarian theatrics, the disingenuous overtures of “aid” merely serve to sanctify Israel’s genocidal rampages under the insidious pretence of concern for human life. Each airdropped ration functions as a sanguine figleaf, permitting the Israeli war machine to press on unimpeded in its obliteration of Palestinian statehood ambitions.

It is a callous absurdity that would be almost farcical were the human toll not so obscenely high. As the Palestinian body count continues mounting by the day, Biden’s attempt to play both arsonist and firefighter encapsulates the very depths of America’s moral decrepitude on the global stage. Professed commitments to human rights and democracy laid bare as empty platitudes when weighed against the realpolitik imperatives of projecting military dominance.

The Rejected Three-phase roadmap

Biden said the first phase of the proposed deal would last for six weeks and would include a “full and complete ceasefire”, a withdrawal of Israeli forces from all densely populated areas of Gaza, and the release of a number of hostages, including women, the elderly and the wounded, in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

Palestinians would also be able to return to “all areas of Gaza” and 600 aid trucks would enter the enclave each day. 

In the second phase, Biden said there would be an exchange for all remaining living hostages, including male soldiers, as Israeli forces withdraw from Gaza and the permanent ceasefire begins.

Biden said to move from phase one to phase two, several details needed to be worked out, but he promised that the ceasefire would continue to hold as negotiations progressed.

The third phase would include a major reconstruction plan for Gaza and the return of the “final remains” of captives to their families.

Destruction of Palestinian Statehood the Goal of Israel’s Gaza Assault

As Palestinian civilians continue cowering under the relentless hail of Israeli ordnance, the true depths of this asymmetric slaughter become increasingly undeniable with each passing day. Over 36,000 dead according to Gaza’s health ministry, countless more wounded and displaced in what can only be described as a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing.

With all their devastating firepower, Israel’s leadership remains stubbornly single-minded in delivering a “total victory” Netanyahu repeatedly touts as his goal. An ambition that has drawn scrutiny from international legal bodies like prosecutors from the International Criminal Court, which has now requested arrest warrants for the prime minister and his defence chief over alleged war crimes.

As the horrors in Gaza compound with each passing day, Netanyahu’s hardline rejection of any diplomatic solution that falls short of total Palestinian capitulation lays bare the true extent of his malign ambitions. His professed war on Hamas is rapidly exposed as a tissue-thin pretext for the indiscriminate slaughter of Gaza’s civilian population.

With unconscionable casualty figures mounting into the tens of thousands, Israel’s disproportionate application of force can no longer be rationalized through the increasingly farcical rhetoric of “anti-terrorism” operations. The wanton targeting of residential neighbourhoods, hospitals, schools and other ostensibly protected sites speaks to an agenda unrestrained by the norms of humanitarian law.

Netanyahu’s unyielding refusal to pursue any diplomatic resolution that doesn’t result in the utter subjugation of Palestinian sovereignty merely reaffirms what impartial observers have warned about for decades – Israel’s strategic designs extend far beyond the limited self-defence pretexts peddled to a globally credulous audience.

The true underlying objective, as articulated ad nauseam by successive generations of Zionist ideologues, is nothing less than the permanent and violent dispossession of the Palestinian people. A campaign of ethnic cleansing and demographic reordering in service of manifesting the long-coveted “Greater Israel” – a racist utopia stretching from the river to the Mediterranean, secured through the obliteration of Palestine’s very national and cultural existence.

With each Palestinian life extinguished, each home reduced to rubble, each anguished cry of the marginalized drowned out by Israeli bombardments, Netanyahu’s genocidal endgame is laid increasingly bare. His professed desire for “total victory” can mean only one end – the annihilation of Palestinian statehood ambitions and the mass expulsion or physical eradication of those who dare resist Israel’s ethno-nationalist dicta.

The final aim, as innumerable Zionist ideologues have championed over the decades, is the violent dispossession and subjugation of the Palestinian people in service of a “Greater Israel” stretching from ‘the river to the sea’. Genocide by another name.