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It takes little to ascertain that the reason for Israel’s genocide in Gaza was colonial expansion. Israel made no secret of it from the start, with talks about forced transfer and attempts to involve the international community in its war crimes. Settlement leaders were also very vocal about resettling in Gaza throughout the genocide and recently ridiculed the EU’s sanctions against Israeli settler leaders and organisations. The latter, unfortunately, is probably well placed ridicule as sanctions without decolonisation will not stop Israel’s colonial expansion, as Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich revealed this week.
Israeli media reported Smotrich stating that there are plans for three Israeli settlements awaiting approval by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During a meeting with the mayor of Sderot Alon Davidi, Smotrich announced, “The Settlement Administration, under my leadership in the Defence Ministry, has completed its staff work, and we are ready to establish three settlements immediately once we receive the green light from the prime minister.”
Smotrich’s colonial reasoning follows earlier comments by several Israeli leaders that link settlements to Israeli security. The planned settlements are perceived as part of a plan that will provide a security buffer for Jewish settlers living on the border with Gaza.
Recently Netanyahu announced his instructions to the Israeli military to occupy 70 per cent of Gaza. Smotrich’s announced plan only reaffirms what the international community is so intent on denying – military occupation is setting the scene for Israel’s colonial expansion in Gaza.
Recently Israel also announced it was reviving its forced transfer plans for Palestinians in what remains of Gaza, opting for a rebranding now under the euphemism “plan for free movement”. According to Israeli media, the rebranding would persuade Palestinians in Gaza to comply, while also bringing foreign countries on board.
READ: The international community is not opposing Netanyahu’s threat
For Palestinians, forced transfer and a plan for free movement reek of the same colonial violence. There is no free movement when Palestinians are forced into 30 per cent of what remains in Gaza; indeed there has been no bigger show of coercion by Israel which forces Palestinians to leave, apart from the destruction of the genocide itself.
The impossibility of living without land is obvious, but offering a forced way out of Gaza is ethnic cleansing, not a free, individual decision.
The international community, however, is another matter altogether when it comes to ethnic cleansing and settlement expansion. Almost ten years ago, the UNSC approved Resolution 2334 which spares colonialism while taking issue with settlement expansion. To date, quarterly meetings discussing its implementation are still taking place, even though there is no implementation of Resolution 2334. Israel is up against nothing when it comes to the international community. It knows that settlement expansion in Gaza will be condemned but not stopped, as long as the international community can keep up appearances with briefings that are as bogus as the two-state paradigm itself.
The UN has created a brand of impunity which would force it to collapse on itself, were it to truly challenge Israel on war crimes and international law violations.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, Palestinians who survived are living the unliveable, stranded in a shrinking territory while Israel gambles with euphemisms and waits for its colonial triumph.
READ: The EU does not need to clarify its support for Israeli colonialism
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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