The people of Gaza have lived under a brutal Israeli siege, in the world’s largest concentration camp, for the last 17 years. And periodically, in an act of resistance, they have hit back at the Israelis and drawn retaliation from them.
Because Israel considers Palestinians to be sub-human, it has used the euphemism of “mowing the grass” for its periodic attacks on Gaza to slaughter its inhabitants in order to “restore deterrence”. In all such attacks, it has been standard practice with them to destroy or damage hospitals, apart from destroying other infrastructure. But following Oct 7, the Israeli attacks on Gaza hospitals have been quite open and especially destructive. Given that under the Geneva Conventions, hospitals are considered singularly protected, one wonders what drove Israel to commit this barbarity.
The connected logic of the following events in Israeli history seem to have unfolded in the destruction of these hospitals:
-Israel was a project of settler colonialism which foresaw the establishment of a Jewish, and not essentially a democratic state. For this to succeed, it was a given that the native Palestinians would have to be driven away to make room for the incoming settlers.
-For the Palestinians to be driven away, ethnic cleansing [to be hastened by genocidal attacks] would be necessary.
-In 1947-48, this was resorted to, and 750,000 Palestinians [half of their population] were driven off their land, while about 500 of their villages were so erased that no sign of them was left on the ground.
-After the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, another 350,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed, and Israel immediately began planting Jewish settlements in the conquered Palestinian territories. This was done to establish new facts on the ground so that [with the passage of time] the establishment of a Palestinian state would become an impossibility.
-What was also decided by Israel, immediately after the 1967 War, was that:
- Since large-scale ethnic cleansing on the lines of 1947/48 would no longer be acceptable to the world at large, this would not be attempted.
- Instead, a policy of “slow genocide” of the Palestinians would be resorted to, so that life for the Palestinians would be made so unbearable, that they would prefer to leave Israel “voluntarily.”
-However, by 2021 an extreme hardline rightist government had taken power in Israel. This had little patience with the policy of “slow genocide” and resorted to increasingly brutal measures to make life unlivable for the Palestinians, to drive them out.
-Meanwhile the “Abrahamic Accords” were coming into play, with one Arab state after another, normalizing their relations with Israel. The next state expected to do this was Saudi Arabia. With this, the dream of a Palestinian state would have turned finally and irretrievably to dust. To forestall this eventuality, Hamas launched their raid on Israel on Oct 7, 2023.
-This attack by Hamas opened for Israel, a recourse to retaliatory action in order to cleanse Gaza of its inhabitants. This could be done in either of the following two ways:
- By ethnically cleansing Gaza and pushing its people into the Sinai desert territory of Egypt.
- Or by full-fledged genocide of the Gazans i.e by killing them all.
-When Egypt refused to accept any refugees from Gaza, Israel was left only with the option of all out genocide to get rid of the population of Gaza i.e. to kill them all. But this could not be achieved by bombing alone because this would take too much time, and with each passing day, this was becoming unacceptable to the world at large.
-The bombing of Gaza therefore, though genocidal in itself, was not an exercisable option for completing the Israeli goal. But bombing could lead to genocide if could prepare the conditions for it. In this scenario genocide would be furthered by the spread of disease and starvation. Rotting bodies buried under the rubble would contribute to the spread of epidemics. Cutting off of food and water would bring death by starvation. Together, these could help the Israeli cause.
-In the destruction of infrastructure, hospitals are central because they help to save life when the aim is to end it. And functioning hospitals also threaten to breach the siege because inflow of medical and related supplies cannot be long denied to them. When there is not a hospital left functional, there is no need for medical supplies, and the siege does not need to be relaxed to let these in. This is why almost as soon as Egypt refused to take in refugees from Gaza and the Israeli plan to ethnically cleanse them ran into the ground, they decided on the option of genocide. And with this decision it seems that the bombing and destruction of Gaza hospitals began in real earnest.
The US [by vetoing the latest Security Council Resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza] has thus allowed Israel the time to complete its job of bombing to destroy the infrastructure of Gaza, and of killing as many people as possible in the process. It is my assessment that this bombing will not be allowed to continue into 2024. Before then, the siege of Gaza will have further tightened, and disease and epidemics will be allowed to run rampant and unimpeded, killing those who were born in a concentration camp, lived there, and were condemned to die there.
It bears thinking about, that those who consider themselves most civilized are responsible for having created this tragedy. This has festered for the last 75 years, awaiting its final and most grisly denouement. Right behind Israel stands the western world led by the U.S helping it to achieve its goal of solving the Palestinian problem through the “final solution”. A goal which Hitler failed to achieve, may finally be achieved by Israel with American support!
How turns the wheel of history!