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Oct. 7, 2023, has come to represent Israel’s most painful national trauma since its inception. For the majority of Israelis, it remains the longest and most horrific day of their lives. Hamas launched a carefully planned and meticulous offensive on southern Israeli military bases and civilian settlements, resulting in the deaths of about 1,200 Israelis and the abduction of 250 others, including foreign nationals.
That much is what Israel’s self-engrossed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who keeps reminding the world that the carnage of that day was the worst to befall the Jews since the Holocaust, wants to advertise. He wants to keep the world focused on the tragic events of that day. He wants to keep using the atrocities of that day to justify his perpetual war against Gaza and beyond.
That day, Netanyahu declared war on Hamas, the de facto ruler of the beleaguered Gaza Strip, which is home to more than 2.2 Palestinians. But it soon became apparent this was not a war on Hamas. A year has passed since the region’s most powerful army stormed into Gaza from land, air and sea. And what has been the outcome so far?
More than 41,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have perished in this most brutal and indiscriminate assault. The statistics are staggering: more than 16,000 children have been killed, 20,000 orphaned and more than 8,000 children are now amputees. More journalists, medics, doctors, academics and aid workers have been killed than in any war since the Second World War. More than 90 percent of Gaza’s population has been displaced multiple times. More than 70 percent of Gaza now lies in ruins.
Netanyahu wants to keep using the atrocities of that day to justify his perpetual war against Gaza and beyond
Osama Al-Sharif
And yet, one year on, Hamas is not defeated and the remaining 101 Israeli hostages have not been freed. Netanyahu and his far-right partners have rejected all attempts to reach a ceasefire and return the hostages. The killing spree continues: schools, universities, hospitals and even designated safe areas are bombed on a daily basis.
Israel wanted to control the narrative from day one. It has banned foreign journalists from entering the enclave. It has attacked aid workers and UN employees. And yet Israeli officials have no answer to one central question: What does Israel want?
The West, led by America, has come to Israel’s aid and support, claiming that it has the right to defend itself. But to defend itself against whom? How does the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians justify its right to protect itself? How does the wanton destruction of hospitals, universities and schools explain that right?
Netanyahu has drawn an image of the region where Israel is a victim fighting on multiple fronts against enemies that want to annihilate it. But he never mentions the core cause of that enmity: the occupation of the Palestinians. He never talks about building bridges with the Palestinians or ceding occupied lands to grant them their rightful independent state.
For Netanyahu, any party that rejects the Zionist land grab of occupied territory is a terrorist and is antisemitic. The UN and its secretary-general are antisemitic. The EU’s Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell is an enemy of Israel because he dares point to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Anyone who opposes the Zionist settler-occupation is antisemitic and an enemy of Israel.
Netanyahu has used the Oct. 7 attacks and the war on Gaza to fulfill a goal that is much more ambitious than destroying Hamas. His plans for Gaza and its population are far more profound than defeating Hamas. Otherwise, what is his occupation army doing in the West Bank? The level of devastation that Israel’s army is causing in Gaza and West Bank refugee camps reveals a more sinister intent, one that Netanyahu’s extremist ultrareligious and ultranationalist ministers are too eager to divulge.
Netanyahu has shifted his attention to Lebanon, all while doubling down on the hapless people of Gaza. The heavy bombings of southern Lebanon’s villages and hamlets, as well as of Beirut’s southern district, point to applying what can only be described as the “Gazafication” of the perceived enemy. Garrison Israel is aiming to displace millions and create empty buffer zones around it.
And with an eye on dealing a lethal blow to Iran, Netanyahu hopes to nip any concept of resistance in the bud for generations to come, thus reshaping the region into what he calls “the new Middle East.”
In the meantime, Israel has waged another war on international law and the world order. It sees itself as a permanent victim of any attempt to hold it accountable for the war crimes and crimes against humanity it has perpetrated in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. All edifices representing international law are inherently biased against it and are being manipulated by antisemites who seek its destruction.
Israel will never become a normal state in this region if it believes that never-ending wars are the solution
Osama Al-Sharif
In Netanyahu’s maverick view, Israel’s impunity is a sacred right that can never be challenged. It is and always will be the quintessential victim that does no wrong. That position is summed up by Netanyahu telling the US Congress recently that there have been practically no civilian casualties in Gaza.
The new Middle East Netanyahu is trying to put together is one where Israel resides as the only regional power: the true and only heir to America’s decades-old dominion over the Middle East. In this dystopian world, Netanyahu can annex the West Bank and Gaza and conquer Lebanon, Syria and beyond.
In his new Middle East, the Palestinians get nothing and are displaced one more time. Israel receives the keys to the region as the proxy state of the US.
Of course, with such an overly narcissistic image of the future Israeli state, Netanyahu is failing to understand a region where Israel has existed for only seven decades. What Netanyahu is inviting are perpetual wars and conflicts. His indifference to the lessons of history, culture and the geopolitical realities of the region will only bring fusillades of existential challenges.
Israel will never become a normal state in this region if it believes that never-ending wars are the solution and when the reality is that it is the last colonial-settler Western proxy in the Middle East.
Netanyahu wants to make the world believe that Oct. 7 was when everything started. But the pain and despair are not Israel’s alone. That ominous day marked the beginning of a genocidal war against the Palestinians — a war that still rages on with no end in sight. The harrowing question is this: Will we see the second anniversary of Oct. 7, with additional thousands of Palestinians killed?
- Osama Al-Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman. X: @plato010