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By Jake Johnson<\/a><\/p>\n Much alarm has been raised over the so-called “Generals’ Plan,” an ethnic cleansing proposal for northern\u00a0Gaza<\/a>\u00a0that has reportedly garnered attention in the\u00a0highest reaches of the Israeli government<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Israeli scholar Idan Landau argued in a\u00a0column<\/a>\u00a0published in English by\u00a0+972 Magazine<\/em>\u00a0on Friday that what the Israeli military is actually doing in northern Gaza “is even more appalling” than the plan outlined by a group of retired generals. Landau argued that focus on the details of the Generals’ Plan has served to obscure the “true brutality” of Israel’s deadly operations in northern Gaza, which has been rendered a\u00a0hellscape of death and destruction<\/a>\u00a0by the military assault and siege.<\/p>\n Landau, a professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, opened his column\u2014first\u00a0published in Hebrew<\/a>\u00a0on his blog\u2014by pointing to two photos: one showing a celebratory event at a camp built by an Israeli settler organization just outside of the Gaza Strip, and the other showing displaced Palestinians lined up at gunpoint amid the ruins of northern Gaza.<\/p>\n “These photos tell a story that is unfolding so rapidly that its harrowing details are already on the brink of being forgotten,” wrote Landau. “Yet this story could start from any point during the past 76 years: the\u00a0Nakba<\/a>\u00a0of 1948, the ‘Siyag Plan<\/a>‘ that followed it, the\u00a0Naksa<\/a>\u00a0of 1967. On one side, displaced Palestinians with all the belongings they can carry, hungry, wounded, and exhausted; on the other, joyful Jewish settlers, sanctifying the new land that the army has cleared for them.”<\/p>\n The Israeli military’s dehumanization of the people of Gaza, Landau wrote, “cannot help but trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars.”<\/p>\n Landau wrote that what the Israeli army has been implementing in northern Gaza in recent weeks is “not quite” the Generals’ Plan, which entails giving Palestinians still in the region a week to leave before declaring the area a closed military zone\u2014and designating everyone who remains a militant who can be denied humanitarian assistance and killed.<\/p>\n The actual strategy Israeli soldiers have been deploying in northern Gaza is “an even more sinister and brutal version” of the Generals’ Plan “within a more concentrated area.”<\/p>\n “The first, most immediate distinction is the abandoning of provisions for reducing harm to civilians, i.e. giving residents of northern Gaza a week to evacuate southward,” Landau wrote. “The second departure concerns the real purpose of emptying the area: while portraying the military operation as a security necessity, it was, in fact, an embodiment of the spirit of ethnic cleansing and resettlement from day one.”<\/p>\n “As opposed to the picture painted by the army, implying that residents in the northern areas were free to move south and get out of the danger zone, local testimonies presented a frightening reality: Anyone who so much as stepped out of their home\u00a0risked being shot<\/a>\u00a0by Israeli snipers or drones, including\u00a0young children<\/a>\u00a0and those\u00a0holding white flags<\/a>,” Landau noted. “Rescue crews trying to help the wounded also\u00a0came under attack<\/a>, as well as\u00a0journalists trying to document<\/a>\u00a0the events.”<\/p>\n The scholar cites one “particularly harrowing video”\u00a0in which<\/a>\u00a0a Palestinian child is seen “on the ground pleading for help after being wounded by an airstrike; when a crowd gathers to help him, they are suddenly hit by another airstrike, killing one and wounding more than 20 others.”<\/p>\n “This is the reality amid which the people of northern Gaza were supposed to walk, starved and exhausted, into the ‘humanitarian zone,” Landau wrote. “Since the Israeli army began its operation in northern Gaza, it has killed\u00a0over 1,000<\/a>\u00a0Palestinians. The Israeli Air Force usually bombs at night while the victims are sleeping,\u00a0slaughtering entire families<\/a>\u00a0in their homes and making it more difficult to evacuate the wounded. And on October 24, rescue services\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that the intensity of the bombardment left them with no choice but to cease all operations in the besieged areas.”<\/p>\n The deadly military assault, Landau stressed, has been accompanied by a “starvation policy” that has severely hindered the flow of humanitarian assistance to northern Gaza.<\/p>\n The heads of prominent United Nations agencies and human rights organizations\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0Friday that conditions on the ground in the region are “apocalyptic” and that “the entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine, and violence.”<\/p>\n Landau noted that on October 16, following pressure from the Biden administration, the Israeli government reportedly allowed 100 aid trucks to enter northern Gaza.<\/p>\n “But journalists<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0north<\/a>\u00a0were quick to correct the record: Nothing at all had entered the besieged areas,” Landau wrote. “On October 20,\u00a0Israel<\/a>\u00a0denied<\/a>\u00a0a further request by U.N. agencies to bring in food, fuel, blood, [and] medicines. Three days later, in response to a request for an interim order by the Israeli human rights group Gisha, the state\u00a0admitted<\/a>\u00a0to the High Court that no humanitarian aid had been allowed into northern Gaza up to that point. By this time, we are already talking about a three-week-long food siege.”<\/p>\n Addressing the question of “what is left for us to do” in the face of such a catastrophe, Landau wrote that “the consensus concerning the war of extermination poisons Israeli society and blackens its future so profoundly that even small pockets of resistance can proliferate stamina and hope to those who have not yet been carried away by the currents of madness.”<\/p>\n “We can also look for partners in this fight abroad, where the critical lever of pressure is the pipeline of American weapons,” he added. “The struggle to end this intensifying war of extermination and transfer in Gaza, particularly in the north, is first and foremost a human fight. It is a fight for life, both in Gaza and Israel: for the very chance that life can continue to exist in this blood-soaked land. Nothing could be more patriotic.”<\/p>\n +972 Magazine<\/em>\u00a0published Landau’s column a day after\u00a0Francesca Albanese<\/a>, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, warned in a\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0that “time is running out” to stop the far-right Israeli government’s attempt to “erase the Palestinians from their own land and allow Israel to fully annex Palestinian territory.”<\/p>\n “Genocide and a man-made humanitarian catastrophe are unfolding in front of us and in Gaza,” said Albanese. “I regret to see so many member states are avoiding acknowledging the suffering of the Palestinian people and instead look away.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Jake Johnson Nov 01, 2024 Much alarm has been raised […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nNov 01, 2024<\/span><\/div>\n