The road to colonial land grab ties into humanitarian deprivation

Within Israel, a big reckoning with the entire Zionist colonial enterprise should be taking place. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a further land grab in Gaza, ostensibly to force Hamas to surrender and bring the hostages back, relatives were reportedly shocked. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum issued a statement saying, “Has it been decided to sacrifice the hostages for the sake of ‘territorial gains’?”

Of course, it has been decided. The settler-colonial enterprise is dependent upon its settlers, even when the settlers themselves have to pay the price for colonial politics. The Israeli government’s security narrative is falling apart even within segments of Israel’s settler society.

Land theft is what the Gaza Genocide is all about, not the hostages.

They were merely a veneer for the international community to hide behind while allowing Palestinians in Gaza to be slaughtered even as futile negotiations for ceasefires went on in the background.

However, the scale of deprivation forced by Israel on Gaza, largely ignored except for meagre announcements of humanitarian assistance, remained marginalised from the bigger picture. Despite the scale of announcements regarding forced displacement, weaponisation of starvation, Israel’s targeting of humanitarian aid workers and Palestinian journalists, as well as the refusal to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza unhindered, the link between deprivation and Israel’s plans to seize Gaza was ignored.

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The so-called Israel Defence Forces, declared Defence Minister Israel Katz, will “capture extensive territory that will be added to the State of Israel’s security areas,” under the pretext of eradicating Hamas. Netanyahu elaborated on this further: “We are cutting up the Strip, and we are increasing the pressure step by step, so that they will give us our hostages.”

The rhetoric for international diplomatic appeals, however, does not correspond to the realities that Israel is creating in Gaza. The intention and action to completely eradicate Palestinian presence from Gaza has been visible since the start of the genocide. If Israel envisages Gaza without Palestinians, what is the point of allowing humanitarian aid to enter, aid workers to bring necessary relief, journalists to document the atrocities, bakeries to feed people? What is the point of Palestinians having land if Israel wants that land for itself?

To being the rhetoric back to the hostages, the IDF said that only their release can stop the colonial land grab in Gaza. The Morag Corridor, however, corresponds to a former evacuated Israeli colonial settlement in Gaza. Zionist settlers have been clamouring to resettle in Gaza since the start of Israel’s genocide.

Only complicit partners with Israel can feign ignorance of these facts.

Israel made it clear that not even the slightest calls for temporary alleviation will be heeded. Just a few days ago, the EU called for restoring the ceasefire and allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza. Netanyahu responded with colonial land theft.

Instead of just focusing on humanitarian aid, why not focus on halting Israel’s genocide? The EU, for example, is picking and choosing on when to side with the Trump administration in this matter. The only consistency it shows is absolute disregard for Palestinian lives while hypocritically prioritising the humanitarian paradigm.

But what will Western leaders do once Israel vanquishes the humanitarian diplomacy, if the plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza is brought to completion? Nobody will be able to say that they didn’t know what was happening.

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