But Netanyahu and his administration are openly promising to destroy everything in Gaza and to make life there so miserable that 2 million Palestinians will be forced to flee, and hopes for the return of the remaining hostages being held by Hamas are almost certainly extinguished.
Just this week, Israel’s finance minister,
Bezalel Smotrich, said, “Gaza will be completely destroyed,” causing civilians to “leave in large numbers to third countries.”
“This will change the reality, the history of the state of Israel for decades to come,” he continued. “We must invent much more than this, especially politically vis-à-vis the United States, and get those third countries. There is a good discourse that is moving forward with them and it should be much more meaningful.”
Smotrich is not the only member of Netanyahu’s government openly saying stuff like this. In March,
The Times of Israel quoted National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir as saying, “Gaza must endure hell. And hell also means bombing all the aid depots that Hamas holds,” as well as halting the supply of electricity and water,
Doing so, he continued, “will cause mass starvation of Hamas terrorists and their supporters in the Gaza Strip and will allow us to return to war with tremendous force, when Hamas terrorists are weak and exhausted, without any significant ability to fight back — and we can crush them without difficulty.”
On Wednesday,
Chef Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchenannounced on social media that “[a]fter serving more than 130 million total meals and 26 million loaves of bread over the past 18 months, World Central Kitchen no longer has the supplies to cook meals or bake bread in Gaza.”
It’s been more than two months
since Israel announced it would stop all goods and humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.Instead of opposing that, our government is enabling it. The Trump administration has been talking about what
country will take in the Palestinians through mass population transfers — a phrase that
recalls some of the worst episodes in human history.