Defeating Hamas has become secondary to annexation of Gaza

To say that there is no dull moment in Middle Eastern politics would be a gross understatement, and the past 14 months have mainly revolved around a constant and never-ending litany of deaths, destruction, and extreme suffering. The fall of the brutal Bashar Assad regime and, before that, an agreement to end the war between Israel and Hezbollah have been the only flickers of hope and optimism.
Yet, as other events occupy the headlines, we must not forget Gaza. At the beginning of the war, the objectives set by the Israeli government were of defeating Hamas to ensure that an Oct. 7-style massacre would never be repeated, and of bringing the hostages back home, but now the fate of the captives seems no longer to be a priority for the Netanyahu government. Since there is a consensus that Hamas has by now been deprived of its capability to pose a threat to Israel and is mainly engaged in guerrilla warfare in Gaza, there has been a shift in Israel’s objectives, and it is an extremely unpleasant one. What is emerging are allegations of atrocious acts of ethnic cleansing, at least in parts of the Gaza Strip, and of Israeli plans to build Israeli settlements there — two developments that should not be allowed to materialize.
Due to the circumstances, including the total surprise and magnitude of the losses inflicted by Hamas which ignited this war, a dangerous Israeli pattern of response emerged that has strong elements of revenge, and a mindset that feels justified in using excessive force and holding the entire population of Gaza guilty of the Oct. 7 attack. Israel has sought the total elimination of Hamas, while marginalizing the objective of releasing the hostages in favor of a long-term and perhaps even a permanent Israeli presence in Gaza at the expense of the Palestinians.
In the early days of the war there was an understandable and justified broad international support for Israel to go after Hamas, but there was insufficient commitment shown by the international community to prevent Israel from treating the entire population of Gaza as something between collateral damage or — supposedly because it lived under a Hamas government — as collaborators in the crime committed by that Islamist movement.
When the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, it led to bipartisan outrage in the Knesset despite growing evidence of war crimes committed by Israeli troops, and their government’s shift from intentions of ethnic cleansing to operationalizing it, at least in northern Gaza. Most significantly, by now these claims of war crimes are not originating exclusively from Palestinian or international sources, but from those Israelis of conscience who are appalled by the immorality and strategic futility of the path along which Netanyahu and his ultra right-wing government are leading the country.
Moshe Ya’alon, who previously served first as Israeli military chief of staff and later as a defense minister in Netanyahu’s Cabinet until falling out with the prime minister for his recklessness and his corrupting of the entire political system, is not known for his dovish outlook toward Israel’s foreign affairs and most definitely not with regard to the conflict with the Palestinians. However, Ya’alon has still felt obliged to speak up in public against what Israel is perpetrating in Gaza. In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 TV, this decorated former military commander argued that the hawks in Netanyahu’s far-right Cabinet are looking to chase out the Palestinians from northern Gaza to enable them to establish settlements there. And to the surprise of his interviewer, he then declared that “the path they’re dragging us down is to occupy, annex, and ethnically cleanse — look at the northern strip,” and insisted that this was the true situation, despite being challenged on his view both on and off air. 

There has been as shift in Israel’s objectives, and it is an extremely unpleasant one.

Yossi Mekelberg

But we might well ask why he should retract his claim, when Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich suggested last month that Israel should occupy Gaza and “encourage” half of the enclave’s 2.2 million Palestinians to emigrate within two years, and claimed with qualms neither ethical nor political that “it is possible to create a situation where Gaza’s population will be reduced to half its current size in two years,” and that Israel can afford this.
This is the chilling testimony to the state of mind within the settler movement, which has disproportionate power within the Cabinet. They believe that Israel’s military power, which degraded the military capabilities of Hamas and Hezbollah, and re-established deterrence with Tehran, has instilled enough fear among the people of Gaza that they could be bribed en masse to give up their national and political rights. One dreads to think what Plan B would be for Smotrich should more than a million people refuse to accept his dirty money and leave.
In the meantime, there is mounting evidence of war crimes being committed in Gaza. An Israeli historian, Lee Mordechai, has compiled a database of thousands of videos, photos, testimonies, and shocking evidence based on eyewitness accounts, reports, and investigations that documents the horrors committed by Israel in Gaza which was exposed in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. In his report, Mordechai, who is also a former officer in the Israeli army’s Combat Engineering Corps, is said to present evidence linking soldiers to “shooting civilians waving white flags, abuse of individuals, captives and corpses, gleefully damaging or destroying houses, various structures and institutions, religious sites and looting personal belongings,” among other alleged abuses of power in clear and obvious violation of international humanitarian law.
Most of the Israeli media fails its viewers miserably by neglecting to show the horrors their army is committing in Gaza on their behalf, while most of the population, in an act of willful ignorance, is not asking questions or looking for this “inconvenient truth” elsewhere. Neither the trauma of Oct. 7, nor Israelis who claim not to know about the humanitarian disaster inflicted on Gaza’s population, nor any alleged crimes committed by a family member, friend or neighbor could ever serve as valid excuses for not demanding that their government bring this despicable behavior to an immediate halt.
At some point, hopefully soon, the guns will fall silent, and those who were behind them or gave orders to misuse them will have first and foremost to live with their conscience regarding how they treated innocent and defenseless people, but this might not be enough. Fighting an enemy, as cruel as it might be, is one thing; demonizing and dehumanizing other human beings, and hurting and humiliating them, is completely different. It is, therefore, no surprise that Israel’s reputation in the world is at an all-time low. Even worse, however, is that Israel’s appalling conduct damages Israeli society and its ability to live, one day, in peace with its Palestinian neighbors.

• Yossi Mekelberg is a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House.
X: @YMekelberg