'All Eyes On Gaza City' as Israel Ramps Up Campaign of Conquest and Ethnic Cleansing
"The explicit goal of turning Palestine's largest city into a wasteland has nothing to do with hostages or Hamas and everything to do with genocide," said one critic.
Operation Gideon's Chariots 2—Israel's plan to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse Gaza—intensified Thursday, with fugitive Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying Israeli forces will take over all of the embattled strip even if Hamas agrees to a ceasefire and one of his far-right ministers vowing to continue the genocidal war even "at the expense of the hostages' lives."
"We have begun the preliminary actions and the initial stages of the offensive on Gaza City, and already now [Israeli] forces are holding positions on the outskirts of Gaza City," Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Effie Defrin told reporters. "We will intensify the strikes on Hamas in Gaza City, the political and military stronghold of the terror organization."
Defrin added that the IDF is warning residents to evacuate in a bid to "minimize harm to civilians." However, critics say "evacuate" is a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, the stated goal of Israeli officials including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said earlier this month: "We conquer, cleanse, and stay until Hamas is destroyed. On the way, we annihilate everything that still remains."
Arutz Sheva reported that Operation Gideon's Chariots 2—which ultimately aims to force much of Gaza's population into a concentration camp in order to make way for possible Jewish recolonization of the strip—will involve five IDF divisions, two of them reserves. The news site said that the IDF will issue new emergency draft orders to 60,000 reservists, who will augment the 70,000 who are already activated.
IDF Col. (Res.) Marco Moreno said Thursday that the only way to achieve security is via the "voluntary migration" of everyone in Gaza—another euphemism for ethnic cleansing, given Palestinians' unwillingness to voluntarily abandon their homeland.
"Even if Hamas disarms, raises a white flag, and disappears, it won't be long before a new organization rises in Gaza with the same agenda to destroy the state of Israel," Moreno said during a TV interview. "The only way to ensure true security is through the voluntary migration of all Gaza residents."
Israeli Settlement Minister Orit Strook, a member of the far-right Religious Zionism Party, told the radio station Kol BaRama Wednesday that she favors continuing the war "even if it is clear that Hamas will execute the hostages," 20 of whom remain imprisoned since the October 7, 2023 attack.
"Of course, it is not only me who will vote to continue the war at the expense of the hostages' lives," added Strook, who is known for her extreme support for illegal Israeli settler colonization of Palestine and for allegedly filming her and her husband's sexual abuse of their daughter for pornographic videos.
Hamas condemned the Israeli operation in a statement accusing the Netanyahu government of "continuing its brutal war against innocent civilians, escalating its criminal operations in Gaza City with the aim of destroying it, and displacing its residents in a full-fledged war crime."
The United Nations human rights office said Wednesday that "Israel's reported decision to take full control of Gaza City and to forcibly displace its population will lead to mass killings of civilians and destruction of infrastructure vital to the survival of the population."
Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said President Donald Trump—who has said he wants to empty Gaza of Palestinians and transform the strip into the "Riviera of the Middle East"—is "fully supportive" of Israel's campaign.
Israel is facing an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice, while Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation.
The Gaza Health Ministry said that at least 50 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces Thursday, including nine aid-seekers and five family members massacred in a drone strike in Khan Younis. Two massacres in Gaza City's Sabra neighborhood killed four and eight people respectively, while four people were killed in a separate strike on a family home in the al-Shanti area.
Two more Palestinians also reportedly starved to death in Gaza, where at least 271 people including 112 children have died from malnutrition driven by Israel's "complete siege."
Since October 2023, Israeli forces have killed at least 62,122 Palestinians—most of them women and children—and wounded more than 156,700 others, with thousands more missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Expert analyses including multiple peer-reviewed studies have concluded the official Gaza Health Ministry death toll is likely a vast undercount.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, a joint investigation by Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham of +972 Magazine and Local Call and Guardian senior international affairs correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison revealed that, contrary to Israeli claims of a historically low civilian-to-combatant kill ratio in Gaza, a staggering 5 out of 6 Palestinians killed in the strip between October 2023 and May were noncombatants.
