Injustice and oppression can never last forever, and Israel knows this 

The Israeli occupation’s brutal offensive against the Gaza Strip continues; at the same time, it has intensified its siege on the Palestinians living (and dying) there. The occupation state has created a humanitarian catastrophe in its anger and thirst for Palestinian blood. The Palestinians are told to leave, but there is nowhere for them to go when the border crossings are sealed and bombed. Even the “safe south” has been bombed.

The latest Israeli crimes against Palestinian civilians are reminiscent of what happened in the 2014 Gaza War, when 550 Palestinian children were killed, 11,000 homes were destroyed and Gaza was cut off from the outside world without electricity, drinking water, or irrigation, with everything entering and exiting being monitored, and the when and how controlled. There were no supplies of any kind, no medicine or medical equipment, no spare parts, no fruits and vegetables, no flour or feed, no fuel for cars, and even the power plant that supplies the remaining third of the electricity grid was cut off. As it is today.

The Zionist state does not hide its collective punishment to bomb Gaza “back to the Stone Age”, as former Chief of Staff Benny Gantz boasted in an election video in 2019. In doing so, it is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity; it is treating international laws and conventions with open contempt, and its responsibilities as the occupying power to provide the necessities of life to the people under occupation are deliberately ignored.

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To the threat of starvation and dehydration now has to be added the risk of disease because of the lack of clean water and the shattered sewage system. The Palestinian healthcare system is at breaking point, with no medicines and medical disposables, and no fuel for generators needed to power incubators, intensive care units and dialysis machines. Hospitals are grinding to a halt while the casualties mount up in the corridors, and medical facilities are being attacked.

The poverty in Gaza is such that hundreds of thousands of people depend on the UN World Food Programme and UNRWA, neither of which have an adequate budget. It is barely enough at the best of times. This is not the best of times.

How long will the international community enable Israel to act with impunity against the Palestinians?

How many Palestinian men, women and children need to be killed before Israel’s bloodlust is sated? US President Joe Biden is reported to be planning to visit Israel soon to show his support. He is misreading the public mood if he thinks that allowing the apartheid state to kill civilians at will is going to boost his upcoming re-election campaign.

In lashing out at the Palestinians, the Israeli political and military regime is trying to cover its embarrassment at the security failure which allowed Hamas to attack settlements in southern Israel relatively easily. The image of the so-called Israel “Defence” Forces is tarnished forever, not only in terms of its capabilities, but also its self-proclaimed “most moral army in the world” label. Its troops are terrorists in uniform.

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Israel is continuing to bomb Gaza relentlessly and the death toll is rising by the minute. The rules of the game have changed so much that the nuclear-armed settler-colonial state has thrown the rule book out of the window. The air force is trying to inflict the greatest possible number of casualties to force Hamas to surrender before the international community wakes up and says enough is enough.

What is most striking is that US support for Israel’s aggression is much more than words from the White House. It has supplied “military aid” and sent an aircraft carrier naval strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean, as if Israel is engaged in a war against another state rather than the largely civilian population of the besieged Gaza Strip.

With thousands of Palestinians already killed, including entire families; whole neighbourhoods flattened; and illegal munitions used, Israel is exacting a high price from the people of the Gaza Strip for daring to resist its military occupation. The Hamas attack was a symptom of the situation, not the cause; that lies with the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The fact that efforts are now being made to remove the Palestinians from Gaza altogether, either by killing them or driving them into Egypt, signals that a new Nakba is Israel’s intended end result. Injustice and oppression can never last forever, and Israel knows this. It is bound to fail sooner or later.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.