Canceling the Palestinians is Israel’s next play

Those waiting for a ruling from the International Court of Justice on South Africa’s claim that Israel is guilty of committing genocide in Gaza will have to wait for many more months and even years. And those who believe that the International Criminal Court will step up and charge more Israeli officials and military officers with war crimes may never be vindicated. The war on Gaza has become a test of the veracity and durability of a world order that is slowly crumbling.

In this lopsided world, delivering justice is a matter of opinion, perspective, bias and power. In the heart-wrenching reality of today’s world, the Palestinians have no sponsor and, in geopolitical terms, they have no cards to play.

Israel resumed its war on Gaza last month, first by cutting off all humanitarian aid to more than 2 million people and second by launching missiles and sending tanks into the beleaguered Strip. The reasons for this are now clear. Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu decided to pull out of the ceasefire agreement because he did not want to end the war. For him, perpetual war on Gaza extends the life of his coalition government and cushions him from accountability for the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. But he now sees an opportunity to achieve a more sinister goal.

It is not about securing the release of the remaining Israeli captives. That goal would have been achieved if Netanyahu had honored his commitments under the ceasefire deal. The goals of the war have changed: aside from destroying Hamas — an objective that his military admitted had already been largely achieved — he now wants to have complete control of Gaza while facilitating the displacement of its inhabitants. Genocide has transcended into ultimate cancellation.

Call it ethnic cleansing or anything else, Israel is acting with complete impunity and the Trump administration has given it the go-ahead. The outcome in less than two weeks: more than 1,000 dead, including no less than 300 children. Imminent starvation is now the next chapter of this renewed military campaign; the end game being forced expulsion.

This is no longer extended genocide but the deliberate extermination of the Palestinians to colonize all of historical Palestine

Osama Al-Sharif

A glance at the West Bank depicts a picture just as gloomy. Israel has virtually destroyed the biggest refugee camps in the occupied territory, unleashing with vigor a new wave of settlement building and land expropriation, while allowing extremist settlers to terrorize the indigenous population. The Israeli army has sent tanks into civilian areas, killing innocent bystanders and arresting thousands.

This is no longer extended genocide but the deliberate extermination of the Palestinians to colonize all of historical Palestine. Nothing in the past 75 years of this bloody conflict compares to what is happening today. And it is no longer about acquiring territory by force, reclaiming an alleged ancestral land or even annexation. It is the deliberate cancellation of the Palestinians.

It is mind-boggling that the reaction to this second phase of the war on the Palestinians has been bland, if not nonexistent. Starving millions of people is now “troubling” and “a cause for concern” for most world governments. The killing of children, medics and aid workers barely merits a reaction from government spokespeople. The declaration that Israel is actively seeking to displace Gazans — and soon even West Bankers — no longer triggers worldwide condemnations.

Gaza is now a slaughterhouse and the West Bank a relentless bloodbath. Palestinians are killed every day. Their killings have been normalized. Palestinian detainees are subjected to torture, inhumane treatment and even summary executions. More than 50,000 Palestinians in refugee camps in the West Bank are now homeless. The refugee camps there have become ghost towns. Israel’s extermination of the Palestinians is reaching a climax. But the world is looking the other way.

Acting with impunity, Israel is pushing its extermination campaign to new limits. Annexation is now only a matter of time. Pushing Gazans to despair amid starvation, disease and death is a given.

It is pathetic that today’s Zionists would turn their backs on history and seek to expel Palestinians from their homeland

Osama Al-Sharif

Israel has used the Oct. 7 attacks to carry out its most egregious plans — once thought so far-fetched that they could never be implemented. The evolution of this conflict over the past 100 years is simply shocking and hard to digest.

European Jews arrived as immigrants in Palestine seeking to escape persecution. Aided by the colonial powers of the day, they soon established a foothold in a land that had for centuries been inhabited by Arabs, a Semitic people, of all denominations — Muslims, Christians and Jews. Instead of coexisting with the natives, European Jews sought to establish a home on lands that did not belong to them.

Today, coexistence is not an option for the ultranationalist and ultrareligious Jews. With no historical or archaeological evidence to back their claim, today’s declared aim is to conquer all of historical Palestine — and beyond — while uprooting the natives.

Unless the world wakes up to the cruelty of what is happening to the Palestinians today, the crime of complete displacement and even extermination may well be committed. Israel today is a regional superpower that is backed by the Western world, in particular the US. The fact that the Palestinians are Semitic people with unshakeable links to their ancestral lands is not even an issue for debate.

What is true is that Israel is a colonial settler state that has managed to make it into the 21st century against all odds. The Palestinians do not need to prove their ties to the Holy Land. It is the Israelis who have never been able to establish ties to this piece of land.

In the 15th century, the Sephardic Jews of Spain found refuge in Muslim Spain in what Jewish scholars describe as a “Golden Age,” during which Jews flourished as politicians, philosophers and merchants. Even when they were expelled from Spain by the Christian Reconquista, they found sanctuary in Muslim North Africa.

It is pathetic that today’s Zionists would turn their backs on history and seek to expel Palestinians from their homeland by committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the people who received them and were willing to share their land with them.

The wholesale extermination of the Palestinians is not a fantasy but a realistic project that Israel’s leaders appear to be bent on carrying out. This could become the most heinous affront to humanity in today’s world. Without outside intervention, such a sinister scheme could take place. The fact that such an occurrence could trigger cataclysmic regional war notwithstanding, it could also bring chaos and mayhem to today’s world.

• Osama Al-Sharif is a journalist and political commentator in Amman. X: @plato010