Over the past 16 years Israel has launched five major attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip, each more severe than the previous, with varying degrees of material destruction and loss of human life. This latest war, which began after Hamas broke through the barrier in southern Israel, killing some 1,200 Israeli soldiers and civilians and abducting 240 hostages on 7 October 2023, exceeds our capacity as humans to comprehend.
As well as Israeli impunity, what binds these wars together is the failure to bring Israel to compensate Gaza, its people and institutions for the losses it has caused. There was one exception: in 2010 Israel compensated the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) $10.5m for buildings destroyed during its 2009 operation. But this was not to be repeated, even though as occupier of the Gaza Strip it is Israel that must shoulder the burden of the reconstruction. Israel’s past failures to compensate Gaza have meant that it could continue to carry out severe destruction with impunity, leaving other countries to foot the bill.
Other than the devastation and extensive loss of life caused by the bombardment during this latest round of war on Gaza, what stands out is the extent of the destruction, with the apparent objective of rendering the whole Strip uninhabitable. It has variously been described as domicide, ecocide and most chillingly genocide.
An active war is not taking place in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Yet under the cover of the war in Gaza, Israel has sped up its settlement building, and the violent settlers supported by the Israeli army have accelerated their attack on Palestinian villages. The attempt at impoverishing the West Bank by preventing nearly 150,000 workers from going to their jobs in Israel is continuing. The Israeli army has also been using helicopter gunships to bombard West Bank cities such as Jenin, Tulkarem and Nablus. The Palestinian population in East Jerusalem has been subject to constant harassment. On 4 June, in advance of the annual Flag Day march in honour of Jerusalem Day, the Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir issued a threat: “We’ll ascend the Temple Mount despite them,” he said. “We have to hurt them in the place most important to them.”
In both the West Bank and Gaza we can see historic similarities in the methods used by the occupation authorities to achieve a similar objective. In the West Bank, large areas of land were declared as firing zones, and out of bounds for Palestinians only to be later used for Israeli settlements after the Palestinian presence on the land had been made illegal. Other tactics used to achieve the same purpose include assigning large areas as public lands reserved for the exclusive use of Israeli Jews.
These tactics, along with discriminatory land-use planning, have been used by Israel over the past 55 years of occupation and have rendered the majority of the land in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem unavailable for Palestinians to use, reserving the majority of the land for exclusive Jewish settlements. Palestinians are deemed by Israel as expendable; in violation of international law applicable to occupation, all possible means to rid their land of their presence have been used. The same policy dominates in the Gaza Strip – the important difference being the extent to which Israel has been willing to go since the 7 October attack by Hamas.
The calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state put forward by the US, the UK and the EU are being linked to how Gaza’s future is managed after the war ends. Yet both Gaza and the West Bank have been devastated: the former by bombing, the latter by extensive Jewish settlements. The viability of such a state can only be assured if these Western countries stand on the side of international law and not only bring an end to the Israeli occupation of both Gaza and the West Bank but also to all its consequences, including the removal of illegal settlements.
In both these areas, Palestinians are not treated as human beings deserving of human rights, including the right to self-determination. Instead, they are regarded as dispensable creatures whose presence on the land, which Israel claims as its own, can be erased by bombs or removal from their land by transferring it to Israeli Jews to settle. Unless this changes, there can be no future for the two people to live in peace together.
Raja Shehadeh is a lawyer, human rights activist and writer. His latest book “What Does Israel Fear from Palestine?” is published by Profile
This article is part of the series Losing Gaza
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