The Final Act: Israel’s Long-Planned Conquest of Gaza Enters Its Endgame

Israel’s Gaza City Offensive: The Final Mask of Pretext Slips Away

The mask has finally slipped completely. Israel’s military announced this week that it has begun “preliminary actions” for a ground offensive to capture and occupy all of Gaza City, confirming what honest observers understood from the beginning: this was never about rescuing hostages or defeating Hamas. This is the completion of a decades-long project to seize total control of Gaza and the West Bank, using October 7th as the pretext for ethnic cleansing that was always the ultimate objective.

Defence Minister Israel Katz’s approval of the Gaza City operation, scheduled for security cabinet approval this week, represents the formalisation of conquest disguised as counterterrorism. With 60,000 reservists being called up and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians facing forced evacuation orders, we witness not military necessity but the systematic implementation of territorial annexation through population displacement.

The Israeli Defence Forces already control Gaza City’s outskirts, with troops operating in the Zeitoun and Jabalia areas under the euphemistic banner of “laying groundwork” for operations. Brigadier General Effie Defrin’s promise to “sever the population’s dependence on Hamas” reveals the true agenda: not eliminating a terrorist organisation but destroying Palestinian self-governance entirely to facilitate permanent Israeli control.

The Humanitarian Catastrophe

The deliberately engineered humanitarian crisis serves conquest’s purposes perfectly. International Committee of the Red Cross warnings about “catastrophic situations” for Gaza’s 2.1 million residents miss the point entirely; the catastrophe is not unfortunate consequence but calculated strategy. When civilian populations face starvation, disease, and constant displacement, they become easier to eliminate or expel.

Twenty-five Palestinians died in Israeli strikes Wednesday alone, including entire families bombed in refugee camps. These aren’t tragic miscalculations but systematic applications of collective punishment designed to make Gaza uninhabitable for Palestinians while creating space for Israeli settlement and control.

On Wednesday Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of disregarding the mediators’ ceasefire proposal and said he was the “real obstructionist of any agreement”, according to a statement cited by Reuters.

The manufactured concern for the 50 remaining hostages,20 believed alive, provides perfect justification for operations that endanger those same hostages. The Israeli government rejected partial hostage release deals not from concern for captives’ welfare but because peace would interrupt the conquest schedule. Total victory requires total war, and total war requires rejecting any settlement that might preserve Palestinian presence.

The best thing Hamas could do, and to be fair, should have done a long time ago is release the hostages…

International Complicity Through Performative Opposition

French President Emmanuel Macron’s warning that the offensive “can only lead to disaster” exemplifies the international community’s choreographed response: express concern, avoid action, enable continuation. European leaders understand perfectly that this operation aims at permanent territorial control, yet their “condemnation” serves only to provide diplomatic cover for Israeli actions through the appearance of international oversight.

The Qatar and Egypt mediation efforts, presenting 60-day truce proposals that Hamas has accepted, function as theatrical exercises designed to demonstrate Palestinian intransigence when Israel inevitably rejects reasonable terms. The requirement for “comprehensive” rather than partial deals ensures that no agreement can satisfy Israeli demands, providing justification for continued military operations.

The October 7th Pretext Dissolves

After 22 months of systematic destruction, the initial justification for military action has evaporated entirely. Hamas stands “battered and bruised” according to Israeli military spokespersons, its governmental and military infrastructure largely destroyed. If this were genuinely about security threats or terrorist capabilities, the mission would be complete.

Instead, we witness escalation precisely when the stated objectives have been achieved. The shift from targeting Hamas to “severing population dependence” reveals conquest’s true nature. The goal was never eliminating terrorism but eliminating Palestinian presence, using terrorist threats as convenient justification for ethnic cleansing.

The victims on the Israeli side, the 1,200 killed and 251 taken hostage on October 7th, provided the emotional and political capital necessary to launch operations. The attacks created the permissive environment for implementing territorial expansion that previous governments could only dream about executing. From that day to this, every action has been condoned as an act of defence. backed by every Western government, all knowing this could only end this way…

The Endgame Revealed

Gaza City’s conquest represents merely the latest phase in systematic Palestinian dispossession that began with the 1948 Nakba and continues through daily settlement expansion, house demolitions, and administrative absorption of Palestinian territory. The current operations complete the transformation of Gaza from besieged enclave to occupied territory, matching the West Bank’s gradual annexation through settlement growth and military control.

Israeli officials no longer bother hiding their territorial ambitions because international enabling has removed the need for subterfuge. When Western governments provide unlimited military aid while expressing token concerns about civilian casualties, they signal that conquest enjoys implicit approval provided sufficient rhetorical distance is maintained.

The Israeli military’s announcement of Gaza City operations marks not escalation but culmination. Everything that has occurred since October 7th, the systematic destruction of infrastructure, the displacement of populations, the elimination of governmental capacity, the rejection of ceasefire proposals, has led to this moment when conquest can be completed under legal and diplomatic cover.

The tragedy for Palestinians extends beyond immediate military operations to the international abandonment that makes such operations possible. When the “international community” provides weapons while expressing concerns, when “mediators” propose solutions designed to fail, when “allies” condemn actions while enabling their continuation, the victim population faces not merely military occupation but systematic international betrayal.

The 62,122 Palestinians killed since October 7th represent not collateral damage but strategic depopulation, each death contributing to the broader project of making Palestinian presence untenable while creating space for Israeli control. The numbers that international organisations quote as evidence of humanitarian catastrophe become, from conquest’s perspective, measures of successful implementation.

For those who still believed that international law, humanitarian norms, or democratic values might constrain Israeli actions, the Gaza City operation provides definitive evidence of their irrelevance when they conflict with imperial objectives. The mask hasn’t slipped; it’s been deliberately removed because pretence no longer serves any purpose.

The final act of Palestinian dispossession from Gaza proceeds with methodical efficiency, international enabling, and comprehensive impunity. What remains is not whether this conquest will succeed, it already has, but whether anyone retains sufficient moral courage to name it accurately rather than hiding behind euphemisms about security operations and terrorist threats.

The reckoning with what we have witnessed, enabled, and failed to prevent lies ahead. History will record not merely what Israel did to Gaza, but what the world did to Palestinians by ensuring they faced their destruction entirely alone.