After the resumption of military operations by the Israeli Army in the Gaza Strip on 18 March in a clear violation of the ceasefire agreement of 15 January, the war on Gaza is no longer about the release of Israeli hostages or the “crushing of Hamas.”
What we have been witnessing over the past three weeks is nothing short of a deliberate plan to exterminate the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Since 18 March, more than 1,200 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed. All 25 bakeries operating in Gaza have been closed owing to a lack of flour and fuel to power their generators. The Israeli government has cut off the electricity that was powering the water purification system in Gaza. The Israelis have also closed all the crossings linking Gaza to the outside world since 2 March, and no aid or humanitarian assistance has reached the millions of Palestinians living in hellish conditions that are unequalled anywhere else in the world.
All of the above bears witness to the fact that what Israel has been engaged in in Gaza is tantamount to pure and simple genocide. The ruling coalition government in Israel keeps its death machine in action, systematically killing dozens of Palestinians every day. At the time of writing, 60 Palestinians have lost their lives under relentless attacks by Israel. Over the course of the last three weeks, 284,000 Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza.
On 2 April, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said that the military operations in Gaza would continue in order to “crush” the infrastructure of Hamas and take hold of large swathes of land inside Gaza that would be integrated into “security zones.”
According to some Israeli military analysts, the new Israeli chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Eyal Zamir, is planning to defeat Hamas with a large-scale ground offensive that could last months before the elaboration of any political solution for the future of Gaza. Zamir will not hesitate to deploy enough troops to occupy Gaza indefinitely, they say, and to control the distribution of humanitarian aid. He also previously warned that 2025 would be a year of war.
This promised war should not be understood as only referring to the war on Gaza, since it could also include Iran if the US Trump administration chooses the military option to deal with Iran if diplomatic avenues fail.
On 5 April, the White House announced that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be visiting Washington to meet US President Donald Trump on 7 April in order to discuss the war on Gaza and the release of the Israeli hostages, the Iranian nuclear programme, and the question of tariffs on Israeli exports to US markets announced by Trump on 2 April.
During the hastily arranged visit, Netanyahu will hold meeting with senior US officials including Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff. Earlier, Trump said that Israel would be “unrestrained” if Hamas did not release the hostages and “step down.”
Prior to Netanyahu’s visit, press reports referred to the transfer by the United States to Israel of a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system, which provides protection against ballistic missiles able to travel more than 5,000 km, as well as two batteries of Patriot missiles. I would surmise that this decision has been taken as a precautionary measure in case war erupts against Iran.
Will the US-Israeli summit meeting on 7 April open the way for region-wide de-escalation, including of the war on Gaza? Without jumping to conclusions as to the final outcome of this summit meeting, the second since Trump took office in January, there is nothing to indicate that Israel’s war of extermination in Gaza will end anytime soon, though on this I hope I am mistaken.
The writer is former assistant foreign minister.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 10 April, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: