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While Israel has lost nearly all international sympathy and opinion for its siege in Gaza, any punitive action has been paralyzed by US, UK, and German officials shielding the state from repercussions.
Taking advantage of such shielding, the Israeli army is conducting mass demolitions of homes in an area north of the Netrazim Corridor, a strip of land controlled by Israelis dividing the northern neighborhoods and Gaza City. The army has begun constructing military bases—including some 19 larger ones and dozens of smaller ones, indicating it intends to stay.
“While some [bases] were built earlier in the war, the imagery also shows that the pace of construction appears to be accelerating: 12 of the bases were either built or expanded since early September,” the New York Times writes.
In total, the area around the Netrazim Corridor has grown to an 18 square mile (46.6 square kilometer) military zone occupied by Israeli forces.
The corridor is part of the so-called “General’s Plan,” an ethnic cleansing campaign proposed by former general Giora Eiland, and it seems to be well underway.
Israeli military spokesmen and analysts told the Times that the expanded control of the corridor is for “operational purposes” and to prevent Hamas from reasserting command over areas from which they have been driven, but the zone also happens to allow for the Israeli military to regulate the movement of hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians driven south during the genocide.
As @ytirawi detailed in his piece, many of these mass controlled demolitions in the Netzarim buffer zone were recorded via drone, and uploaded on a private Instagram account used by 749th soldiers. We (with help from @fdov21) geolocated most of these videos. pic.twitter.com/Jqtm1onRHv
— Aric Toler (@AricToler) December 2, 2024
Dr. H.A. Hellyer, a West Asia security expert from the English defense think tank Rusi told BBC the Israeli army is “digging in for the long term”.
“Personally, I think they’re going to settle Jewish settlers in the north, probably in the next 18 months,” he said. “They won’t call them settlements. To begin with, they’ll call them outposts or whatever, but that’s what they’ll be, and they’ll grow from there”.
A large, fanatical, and vocal minority in Israel made up of settlers of Gaza from before the 2005 evacuation, is planning to resettle north Gaza—an act that would be illegal under established international law, and destructive to any efforts to create a Palestinian state. Activists from this extremist settler community told the Times that as soon as the war ends they will begin.
Under the General’s Plan, large numbers of Palestinians were ordered to leave their homes and move south, while those who stayed behind or couldn’t move because of injured family members were starved or bombed to death.
The plan has also seen Israel create two more corridors, one in the far north of Gaza, cutting off the towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun, and Beit Lahia from Gaza City in the center, and another in the far south called Philadelphi Corridor that would isolate the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
The war has likely killed over 100,000 civilians by now, and Tel Aviv is ensuring that there is not going to be much of a Gaza to save or to form a state around by the time the killing of Palestinians eventually slows. WaL
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PICTURED ABOVE: A demolition recorded by an Israeli soldier, and shared by Palestinian reporter Younis Tirawi. PC: @gdud749Instagram, via Younis Tirawi.
