Editorial | Netanyahu's Ethnic Cleansing Is on Display for All to See

Haaretz Editorial

Nov 10, 2024 3:16 am IST

 The Israeli military is conducting an ethnic cleansing operation in the northern Gaza Strip. The few Palestinians remaining in the area are being forcibly evacuated, homes and infrastructure have been destroyed, and wide roads in the area are being built and completing the separation of the communities in the northern Strip from the center of Gaza City. "The area looks like it was hit by a natural disaster," Haaretz military correspondent Yaniv Kubovich concluded after a tour with Israeli forces there last week.

What Kubovich saw, however, was not a natural disaster but rather a premeditated act of human destruction. A senior IDF officer, identified by London's The Guardian newspaper as Brig. Gen. Itzik Cohen, the commander of the 162nd Division, explained to reporters: "There is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes."

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The officer said the vast majority of residents of the area's communities (Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia, Al-Attatra, Jabalya) have already evacuated. "We received very clear orders," the officer said. "My task is to create a cleansed space. … We are moving the population for its protection, in order to create freedom of action for our forces."

The officer was asked if the army is carrying out the "Generals' Plan" conceived by Maj. Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland and a few of his fellow retired commanders to expel the Palestinians from the northern Gaza Strip while withholding humanitarian aid from and starving those who remain, who would be considered Hamas militants and therefore legitimate military targets. "I don't know what the Generals' Plan is, I have no idea what it is," the other replied, "We are acting on the instructions of the [IDF's] Southern Command and chief of staff."

He said that his division delivers humanitarian aid "toward the south," outside of the "cleansed zone" in the northern Strip, where Israel does not allow food, water and medicine. "The IDF is a moral and ethical army," the officer concluded. "We operate in this area ... to allow the population to move south, while at times almost endangering our own lives."

It's important to call things by their name: Eiland may have sold these ideas to the public, but the "cleansing of the space" in northern Gaza is carried out by the IDF under the direction of its commanders, starting with Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi and Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, who are subordinate to the directives of the political leadership: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the recently fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and his successor, Israel Katz.

Instead of talking about the Generals' Plan, we should be talking about "Netanyahu's Orders." He is the leader and he is responsible for the war crimes committed by the IDF in the northern Strip in the name of the "War of Rebirth": the expulsion of the Palestinians, the destruction of their homes and the preparations on the ground for a prolonged occupation and Jewish settlement.

https://archive.md/dlcYF#selection-919.0-1119.382