A second nakba? A warning from Haaretz
JVL Introduction
A cautionary Haaretz editorial warns about the serious danger of a second Nakba.
It isn’t even one that requires a further expulsion of Palestinians. That, from the northern Gaza Strip has already happened, and Israel shows no signs of letting those refugees return.
On the contrary, with over a million displaced Palestinians in the Rafah region alone, pressures are intense within Israel for an invasion of the area with the countless dead and wounded civilians it will entail.
Haaretz concludes:
A prolonged occupation and the building of settlements in Gaza would be a war crime and a moral crime, which would only intensify the conflict and cause Israel to be hated the world over.
This article was originally published by Haaretz on Tue 26 Mar 2024. Read the original here.
Israel's war on Hamas must not turn Into a second Palestinian Nakba
Haaretz Editorial
While the new refugees were crowded into Rafah, Israel destroyed a large part of Gaza City and its suburbs: homes, shops, schools, universities and government institutions. A strip about a kilometer wide along the border underwent “shaving” – the removal of houses, roads and vegetation for a future security buffer zone, where entry to Palestinians would be banned. The IDF paved a road bisecting Gaza to build border crossings of some sort between the north and south of the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinians who remained in northern Gaza, staying near to their destroyed homes, are in danger of starvation, according to United Nations warnings. Israel refuses to transfer supplies to them along a short route from its territory via the closed Erez crossing. During negotiations with Hamas for a cease-fire and an exchange of hostages and prisoners, Israel refused to return all the refugees to the northern Strip, agreeing only to return the women and children in the first stage.
There have been increasing calls in Israel to turn the occupation of the northern Strip into a permanent reality, just like the West Bank, and to build Jewish settlements instead of the Palestinian cities and villages destroyed in the war. This demand is presently shared by far right parties Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism, as well as many members of the Likud faction. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who at first spoke against Jewish settlement in Gaza, is now talking about a prolonged stay in the Strip, and opposes any Palestinian rule there on “the day after” the war.
Decisions about expelling Gaza’s residents, demolishing their homes, the “shaving” of the border strip and the paving of a bisecting road were made behind closed doors, under cover of the fog of war and the calls for revenge against the Palestinians for the October 7 massacre in the Gaza border communities. The government and the IDF refrained from communicating these decisions to the public, and information about the situation on the ground is coming for the most part from international organizations and media outlets, or from satellite photos.
As time passes, there is increasing fear that the displacement and destruction will become a permanent reality – and the residents of the northern Gaza Strip will become refugees, like their forefathers, the refugees of the 1948 Nakba. The war that aimed to bring down Hamas and return the hostages to Israel – and whose goals have not been achieved, even after many long and bloody months – must not turn into the Palestinians’ second Nakba.
Israel’s future, security, and well-being lie in a shared life with the Palestinians and Arab countries, and not in the creation of a new wave of refugees, who will inevitably vow to take revenge. A prolonged occupation and the building of settlements in Gaza would be a war crime and a moral crime, which would only intensify the conflict and cause Israel to be hated the world over.
The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.
Just a note that even from the virtuous Haaretz the point made is about the danger of “revenge”, not immorality, illegality or insanity.
Perhaps the editor feels that the readership is beyond any ethical appeal and would only consider prudential considerations.
My concern is that part of the “ceasefire” will be the collaboration by the Fatah leadership within the PLA to act as the policemen for the Zionist Apartheid Settler State.
The constant cry that October 7 was an unexpected, devastating, unprovoked action when the Israeli occupation and decades-long mistreatment of the Palestinians and immediate completely disproportionate continuing genocidal behaviour visible to all is a sign of loss of rational humanity. To be unable to live without destroying the people who happen to be different and resistant to their eradication is not a sign of God’s will or rational reflection.
I have just read Ilan Pappe’s book Ten Myths about Israel. Written in 2017 , its longest and most terrifyingly prescient chapter is about Gaza. Already seven years ago Pappe was naming the treatment of Gaza as ‘a slow genocide’.