EDITORIAL: The first day of Eid al-Fitr in Gaza was yet another day of farewells and funerals as Israel continued to rain down bombs on the enclave. Some 60 Palestinians, many of them children, were killed, and many more in the following days and nights.
On Thursday last alone 112 people were killed, including many women and children across Gaza. Since the Jewish state unilaterally called off the ceasefire on March 18, at least 1,100 Palestinians have perished in relentless bombings.
The renewed assault on Gaza is part of a “maximum pressure” campaign purportedly aimed at forcing Hamas to renegotiate the ceasefire deal, and secure release of the remaining 59 Israeli captives in exchange for Palestinians being held in Israeli jails.
As a matter of fact, Hamas’ offer is on the table to free all of the 59 Israeli hostages in one go in return for a permanent ceasefire, which is a fair call. But Tel Aviv is willing to put its hostages’ lives at risk since its real war objective is further expansion of the settler Jewish state to create ‘Greater Israel.’ In a step in that direction its defence minister Israel Katz announced on Wednesday expansion of the Israeli ground attack on Gaza, vowing to seize large areas of the Palestinian enclave and incorporate them into a self-declared security zone.
Some reports suggest Tel Aviv intends to capture about 25 percent of Gaza’s territory – comprising just 140 square miles into which are squeezed 2.3 million people – as part of its pressure campaign.
Israeli military has already set up a devious ‘buffer zone’ inside Gaza, extending to an area around the edges of the enclave, including a large area in the so-called Netzarim Corridor through the middle of the territory.
Netanyahu has also mentioned establishment of what he described as the ‘Morag Corridor’, saying “we are cutting up the Strip, and we are increasing the pressure step by step, so that they will give us our hostages.” This makes it clear what the pressure aims to achieve.
Meanwhile, settlers and soldiers have unleashed a reign of terror in the occupied West Bank, bulldozing Palestinian homes and destroying agricultural farms. They have killed at least 884 West Bank Palestinians and arrested about 15,700 others since the war on Gaza started 17 months ago.
In a high profile case a few days ago, a settler backed by soldiers detained and badly beat up Hamdan Ballal, Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary ‘No Other Land’. He was released, though, last Tuesday from a police station located in a Jewish settlement.
As the world watches passively, Israel is going ahead with its maximum pressure plan designed to exterminate as many Palestinians as possible, and drive the rest into the neighbouring Egypt and Jordan, as unabashedly advocated by US President Donald Trump. Those two countries as well as other Arab states are opposed to this scheme out of fear that it would destabilise their own societies rather than sympathy for the Palestinian cause.
But they are unwilling and/or unable to resist US- Israeli pressure. The Jewish state is likely to face resolute resistance, nevertheless, from certain regional forces, which can upend what passes as fragile peace and stability in that part of the world.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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