[News] Israel-US Gaza Plan Stares Us In The Face

[Anti-Imperialist News]

popularresistance.org
<https://popularresistance.org/israel-us-gaza-plan-stares-us-in-the-face/>
Israel-US Gaza Plan Stares Us In The Face
By Jonathan Cook, Consortium News.
May 2, 2024
------------------------------


   - By Jonathan Cook, Consortium News
   <https://consortiumnews.com/2024/05/01/israel-us-gaza-plan-stares-us-in-the-face/>.



   - May 2, 2024
   - Educate! <https://popularresistance.org/category/educate/>

Above photo: Smoke and flames billow after Israeli forces struck a
high-rise tower in Gaza City, Oct. 7, 2023. Palestinian News and
Information Agency, Wafa, in contract with APAimages.
The media is pretending the West’s efforts to secure a ceasefire are
serious.

*But a different script has clearly been written in advance.*

One does not need to be a fortune-teller to understand that the Israel-U.S.
game plan for Gaza runs something like this:

   1.

   In public, Biden appears “tough” on Netanyahu, urging him not to
   “invade” Rafah and pressuring him to allow more “humanitarian aid” into
   Gaza.
   2.

   But already the White House is preparing the ground to subvert its own
   messaging. It insists that Israel has offered an “extraordinarily generous”
   deal to Hamas – one that, Washington suggests, amounts to a ceasefire. It
   doesn’t. According to reports, the best Israel has offered is an undefined
   “period of sustained calm”. Even that promise can’t be trusted.
   3.

   If Hamas accepts the “deal” and agrees to return some of the hostages,
   the bombing eases for a short while but the famine intensifies, justified
   by Israel’s determination for “total victory” against Hamas – something
   that is impossible to achieve. This will simply delay, for a matter of days
   or weeks, Israel’s move to step 5 below.
   4.

   If, as seems more likely, Hamas rejects the “deal”, it will be painted
   as the intransigent party and blamed for seeking to continue the “war”.
   (Note: This was never a war. Only the West pretends either that you can be
   at war with a territory you’ve been occupying for decades, or that Hamas
   “started the war” with its October 7 attack when Israel has been blockading
   the enclave, creating despair and incremental malnutrition there, for 17
   years.)

Last night US Secretary of State Antony Blinken moved this script on by
stating Hamas was “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a
ceasefire… They have to decide and they have to decide quickly”.

The U.S. will announce that Israel has devised a humanitarian plan that
satisfies the conditions Biden laid down for an attack on Rafah to begin.

   5.

   This will give the U.S., Europe and the region the pretext to stand back
   as Israel launches the long-awaited assault – an attack Biden has
   previously asserted would be a “red line”, leading to mass civilian
   casualties. All that will be forgotten.
   6.

   As Middle East Eye reports, Israel is building a ring of checkpoints
   around Rafah. Netanyahu will suggest, falsely, that these guarantee its
   attack meets the conditions laid down in international humanitarian law.
   Women and children will be allowed out – if they can reach a checkpoint
   before Israel’s carpet bombing kills them along the way.
   7.

   All men in Rafah, and any women and children who remain, will be treated
   as armed combatants. If they are not killed by the bombing or falling
   rubble, they will be either summarily executed or dragged off to Israel’s
   torture chambers. No one will mention that any Hamas fighters who were in
   Rafah were able to leave through the tunnels.
   8.

   Rafah will be destroyed, leaving the entire strip in ruins, and the
   Israeli-induced famine will worsen. The West will throw up its hands, say
   Hamas brought this on Gaza, agonise over what to do, and press third
   countries – especially Arab countries – for a “humanitarian plan” that
   relocates the survivors out of Gaza.
   9.

   The western media will continue describing Israel’s genocide in Gaza in
   purely humanitarian terms, as though this “disaster” was an act of God.
   10.

   Under U.S. pressure, the International Court of Justice, or World Court,
   will be in no hurry to issue a definitive ruling on whether South Africa’s
   case that Israel is committing a genocide – which it has already found
   “plausible” – is proved.
   11.

   Whatever the World Court eventually decides, and it is almost impossible
   to imagine it won’t determine that Israel carried out a genocide, it will
   be too late. The western political and media class will have moved on,
   leaving it to the historians to decide what it all meant.
   12.

   Meanwhile, Israel is already using the precedents it has created in
   Gaza, and its erosion of the long-established principles of international
   law, as the blueprint for the West Bank. Saying Hamas has not been
   completely routed in Gaza but is using this other Palestinian enclave as
   its base, Israel will gradually intensify the pressures on the West Bank
   with another blockade. Rinse and repeat.

That’s the likely plan. Our job is to do everything in our power to stop
them making it a reality.

*Jonathan Cook* is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in
Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years. He returned to the U.K. in 2021.He is the
author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict: Blood and Religion:
The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006), Israel and the Clash of
Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008) and
Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). If
you appreciate his articles, please consider offering your financial
support.
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