It is hard to describe in words the pain of witnessing your people being destroyed for more than 670 days. It is even more unfathomable to contemplate another Israeli escalation, after witnessing so much suffering and so many crimes committed against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. How can this be allowed in full view of the world for so long? Will the world stand by?
Israel’s security cabinet declared this escalation when it approved a plan to “fully occupy” the Gaza Strip and attack concentrations of population, starting with Gaza City itself. The consequences of this newest military onslaught are foreseeable and predictable. In May 2024, Israel attacked Rafah despite international warnings and in defiance of an international court of justice order – Rafah no longer exists. In November and December 2024, Israel attacked the northern towns of Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya, and destroyed them in a campaign that former minister of defence Moshe Ya’alon described as “ethnic cleansing”. More recently, Israel unilaterally violated the ceasefire agreement, imposed starvation on the 2 million survivors and destroyed the southern city of Khan Younis.
All these actions are in violation of the three rulings on genocide by the international court of justice (ICJ) in January, March and May 2024. The ICJ identified a risk of genocide in January 2024 and stipulated measures that Israel needed to follow to prevent the committing of genocide, including the unlimited provision of humanitarian aid. By all accounts, Israel has been violating these measures. An attack on Gaza City will be the latest phase of Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Immediately after 7 October, Israeli leaders, politicians, commanders and soldiers repeatedly said that they would destroy, burn and flatten Gaza. And they proceeded to do just that: Israel has effectively destroyed 90% of the Gaza Strip, turned it into a wasteland, and crammed the population into 12% of the territory, throwing them into dire humanitarian conditions that are unfit for human survival. By besieging and bombarding the territory, Israel has left no safe place for civilians and no way out of Gaza. An attack on the remaining concentrations of population in Gaza City or Deir al-Balah or al-Mawasi will mean more massacres, more mass displacement, and inflicting on the remaining desperate and starving population conditions that will lead to their physical destruction.
What is Israel’s end game? Israel says that the occupation of Gaza will be “temporary”. But by now we are familiar with the Orwellian rhetoric that conceals reality and true intentions. We know that before, in 1967, Israel started a “temporary occupation” of Palestinian and Syrian lands. It has become permanent. This is why the ICJ declared in July 2024 that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is illegal and violates basic and fundamental norms in international law, including the prohibition of acquisition of territory through force, the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and the prohibition on apartheid or racial segregation.
According to the ICJ, Israel already occupied Gaza even before 7 October 2023, thereby depriving Palestinians of freedom in their own homeland. This means that intent to “fully occupy” Gaza in August 2025 can only be a euphemism for something else in the context of this genocide.
It means Israel is pursuing the messianic fantasy and the criminal enterprise of a “Greater Israel”, with the goal of “maximum land, and minimum Arabs”. This goal is also clear in the continuing forcible displacements in the West Bank and the calls to “resettle” Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu is not seeking to free Gaza from Hamas, he is seeking to empty Gaza of its Palestinian population. Already in early January 2024, the UN said that Gaza has become uninhabitable. In early November 2024, Israel’s former minister of defence, Yoav Gallant, who is wanted by the international criminal court, reportedly said that there was nothing left for the army to do in Gaza. If so, what has the Israeli army been doing in Gaza since then?
Israel’s intentions are clear. In January 2024, Netanyahu, another fugitive of international justice, doubled down on his longstanding rejection of Palestinian statehood, and an overwhelming majority in the Knesset supported his position in July 2024. In April 2024, the UN rebuked Israel for expanding the “buffer zones” in Gaza because it meant the permanent removal of the population.
In May 2025, according to the Times of Israel, Netanyahu said that Israel was destroying homes in Gaza so that Palestinians would have nowhere to go back to and would be forced to leave their homeland. In July 2025, the current minister of defence, Israel Katz, announced a plan for the ruins of Rafah that was compared to a “concentration camp” by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert. In recent months, the main Israeli activity in Gaza has been the systematic demolition of buildings by well-paid civilian contractors.
In light of this, you understand the true meaning of Netanyahu’s statement that “Gaza” (rather than Hamas) “will not be a threat”, and why the recent cabinet decision would reject a role for the compliant Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority in Gaza. This is not about Hamas, nor about military objectives, nor about the hostages whose release Netanyahu has systematically sabotaged. Rather, this is a genocidal campaign that continues the denial of Palestinian freedom and seeks to impose Jewish supremacy, from the river to the sea.
As Israel promises further escalation, it is fulfilling Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich’s, monstrous promise in April 2024 of “total annihilation”. For decades, the west has failed the test of human rights and international law, as Israel has increased the brutality of its occupation and consolidated its apartheid regime over the Palestinian people. Western states such as the UK will not be able to wash their hands from complicity in Israel’s mass atrocities in the past two years. By granting Israel impunity from accountability and by arming this rogue state, the west has enabled these atrocities. Recent declarations about recognition of a Palestinian state are a publicity stunt and a distraction that conceals this impunity but highlights the lack of action.
It is beyond urgent, and legally and morally required, that all states take immediate and meaningful actions to stop Israel, including sanctions, arms embargos, the suspension of trade and diplomatic relations, and support the international courts to bring Israeli criminals to justice. Unless action is taken, Gaza – as Smotrich monstrously put it in May 2025 – “will be destroyed”. Will the world continue to stand by and watch an unfolding genocide?