During the night of last weekend the Israeli Army (IDF) launched a massive operation in the northern Gaza Strip. While they had withdrawn part of the troops to concentrate them on the Lebanese border, the high command Redeployed several units, including the 162nd Armored Division, nicknamed the “Steel Formation.”who had been at the head of the Israeli columns during the invasion of Lebanon in 2006.
At the same time, the IDF Numerous “evacuation orders” were issued.ordering Palestinians concentrated in the north to abandon their makeshift shelters in an area that includes part of Gaza City, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia. Furthermore, the army threatens to invade the three hospitals in the area.
Refugees who are displaced from the north are expected to have to cross the infamous Natzarim corridor, which cuts the Gaza Strip from east to west south of Gaza City. Fortified last February by the Israeli army, the corridor prevented populations displaced to the south from returning to the north. Therefore, It is not certain that Gazans forcibly displaced by these new evacuations will be able to return to their homes..
With these new reinforcements, the Israeli army also launched a large military operation in the Jabalia refugee campwhich it surrounded before bombarding it for several hours.
For six days, Jabalia residents have been trapped in their homes in northern Gaza, while The bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks in recent days lie in the streets.
As the Israeli army tightens the siege of the camp, which began on October 6, people are afraid to leave. Meanwhile, power outages have left many in the dark and forced to rely on neighbors for information.
“We hear sounds of shelling and shelling at random, but we don’t know where exactly,” he told Middle East Eye Abed Ali, resident of the camp.
The IDF had already brutally attacked the same camp just a year ago, a few days after the start of its offensive against Gaza, when many Palestinians, fleeing the city, took refuge there.
“Famine and extermination”: a military plan to reoccupy northern Gaza
The massive redeployment of Israeli forces to the north raises fears of the worst for the 400,000 Palestinians who still remain there. An offensive that could be the beginning of an operational plan developed by several reservist generals, documented by the site +972 in mid-September, whose objectives were defined as “famine and extermination.”
Drafted at the initiative of reservist General Giora Eiland and several reservist commanders, the plan considers that the current strategy of the Netanyahu government is ineffective and proposes making the north of the Netzarim corridor an “exclusive military zone in which the entire population [ …] would receive the order to leave” before imposing, a week after these evacuation orders, a “total military siege of the area.
Making the northern Strip an “exclusive military zone” would mean eliminating all Palestinians who refused to leave, either by starvation or direct elimination.
Although the Israeli Prime Minister does not openly claim this strategy at the moment, the events of recent days present certain similarities with the provisions of the “Eiland” plan. For several months, the Israeli ruling classes have remained divided over the future of Gaza. While the military command, concerned about the cost of the war, campaigns for the establishment of a technical government, entrusted to Palestinian factions that do not respond to Hamas, the far right defends the complete recolonization of Gaza. Between these two positions, Benjamin Netanyahu campaigned for collective colonization, transformed into a free trade zone, under the auspices of an Arab-Israeli coalition led by the United States.
Critical of Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy, the “Eiland” plan could mobilize the opinion of the General Staff, concerned about the projection of military forces on three fronts, since the beginning of the invasion of Lebanon, while responding to maximalist guidelines of the extreme right. The implementation of such a plan would mark a turning point in the IDF’s genocidal operations in Gaza and would involve the systematic elimination of all northern occupiers who refuse to abandon their lands.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
