There is no question that the death of six mostly young hostages, one of whom held dual American and Israeli citizenship, is a sad development. Yet no one involved in the conflict over nearly a year now can claim a moral stance without setting the record straight on who is to blame for those deaths, together with countless Palestinian deaths in ongoing, daily massacres.

The blame falls squarely on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist cabinet, who spared no effort to keep the war going in order to maintain their posts and pursue their racist agenda of uprooting Palestinians, denying them the right to self-determination and a life of dignity like other human beings the world over.

Since the beginning of this year, and more and more over the past three months after US President Joe Biden announced a roadmap to reach a ceasefire and a prisoner exchange deal in late May, Netanyahu has spared no effort to sabotage the mediation effort led by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States. In every round of talks, he would either not send negotiators, or agree to send them with a limited mandate.

Believing himself to be clever, capable of rolling the dice to trick all his interlocutors, the Israeli premier always came up with new demands and conditions that could only result in the talks failing. The latest excuse he came up with was his insistence on not pulling out Israeli occupation troops from the narrow, 14-km long border between Gaza and Egypt, known as the Philadelphi Corridor.

The leader of a state that claims to maintain military supremacy over all Middle East countries now describes such illegal military presence along the Egypt-Gaza border as a “strategic and existential need” for Israel’s security. That can only be described as absurd, since what it means is that no deal can be reached to stop the Israeli killing machine in Gaza since neither the Palestinians nor Egypt will ever agree to this condition.

Ironically, only two days before news of the discovery of the bodies of the six Israelis on Saturday, Netanyahu and his loyalists in the Israeli cabinet pushed for a vote to back his position on keeping the Israeli occupation troops in Rafah and along the border between Gaza and Egypt. Eight ministers supported Netanyahu, and Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, was the only vote against.

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a member of an extremist group labelled terrorist by the US State Department who openly calls for starving and deporting Palestinians, abstained. He said the decision was not strong enough as it allowed the gradual decrease of the number of Israeli Occupation Forces, instead of strengthening Israeli military presence and permanently occupying Gaza.

Gallant, though not exactly a dove himself — he has been accused of committing war crimes and issued an arrest warrant by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court — warned that by sticking with this stand on the Philadelphi Corridor, Netanyahu was practically abandoning the Israeli hostages held in Gaza and leading to their death. Top Israeli military commanders, including the chief of staff, told Netanyahu that Israel could return to the border if the first stage of the ceasefire deal failed, and that they could afford to pull out at the moment.  

All the arguments and conditions Netanyahu had been fabricating backfired when the news of the hostages’ death arrived. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets stating the reality that all the rest of the world could clearly see: Netanyahu is responsible for their death, more than any other party. The Israeli premier not only insisted on maintaining the genocidal war in Gaza, but also sought by all means to drag the region into all-out war by expanding Israeli strikes to Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen.

Most likely, and after nearly a year of ongoing war, Netanyahu felt confident that he could maintain the status quo, without fearing any serious backlash from the United States or Europe, who would never stop providing him with the weapons he needed to kill Palestinians. For this reason he even decided to make matters worse for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem as well, ordering his army to launch the widest military campaign there in more than two decades.

Life has already been hell for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank since 7 October, with more than 635 Palestinians killed, including 150 children, and thousands arrested. However, over the past week alone, the Israeli army raided nearly every key Palestinian town and refugee camp in the West Bank, killing dozens.

Egypt has condemned Israel’s ongoing military aggression in the West Bank, and strongly denounced Israel’s attempts to expand the scope of confrontations within Palestinian territories and its continued use of excessive military force, unlawful killings, bulldozing roads and destroying civilian infrastructure and homes. “These violations should not go unchecked and Israel must abide by its legal obligations as an occupying power and protect the security of the Palestinian population in the occupied territories instead of escalating the situation and fuelling conflict,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 5 September, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly