Israel’s military has claimed it has encircled Gaza City and divided the besieged coastal strip into two, as Gaza came under its third total communications outage since the start of the war.
“Today, there is north Gaza and south Gaza,” Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters on Sunday, calling it a “significant stage” in Israel’s war against Hamas.
Israeli media reported that troops are expected to enter Gaza City within 48 hours. Strong explosions were seen in northern Gaza after nightfall.
But the “collapse in connectivity” across Gaza reported by internet access advocacy group NetBlocks.org and confirmed by the Palestinian telecom company Paltel made it even more complicated to convey details of the new stage of the military offensive.
It seems to me that they’re planning on squeezing the people from the north into the south, then closing off the north from any return. This is consistent with a plan of annexing and depopulating Gaza.
If so, this would be ethnic cleansing. This strategy appears to be genocide.
One issue the IDF has been working with for a while is the sheer amount of tunneling by Hamas. There is dense housing right on top of the tunnels. Destroying the tunnels can lead to the above buildings collapsing, as well as the damage caused by any explosives.
Will they annex and depopulate Gaza? I hope not. That’s just going to create another generation of fighters itching for revenge. Grievances outlast Hamas, and they will likely find a form. That said, maybe a single state solution will be the best form of government, as long as Palestinians, Jewish Israelis, and other groups are guaranteed equal rights. The half-ass “two state” attempt right now isn’t working.
I guarantee, if they actually offered that nobody would complain. But they won’t, to “preserve Israel’s Jewish character”. See: Their rejection of Palestinian right of return.
Hell, if they were willing to do that Israel wouldn’t exist and we’d just have had a unified Palestine in 1948.
They want to keep Gaza and the West Bank under military rule until they can fully depopulate them and create Lebensraum.
you’re ignoring the fact that the Palestinian Arabs do not want a two state solution, and the majority of them want to genocide the Jews.
Well yeah they were talking about one-state secular democracy, not a two state solution
For most of the time Israel has existed the Palestinian stance has been a one state under Palestine without Jews. They didn’t want a secular democracy, they wanted to get rid of the Jews.
The fact you think Palestine didn’t have Jews is funny and really sad. Go read a book.
Of course it had Jews, long before it had Muslims. Doesn’t change that the majority of Palestinian Arabs want to get rid of the Jews.
And we’re talking about the area since the formation of Israel.
Bruh Jews and Muslims have lived together for 1400 years what are you even on about?
Uh… The PLO had a lot of national support for a hot minute there, until Netenyahu just up and shut down the Oslo accords. That’s what made terror as popular in Palestine as it is now; there’s simply no other means of resistance left to them.
You mean the PLO who’s second charter was:
“Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit”
They weren’t exactly fans of a two state solution either.
Uh… They then recognized Israel as part of the Oslo accords so… Yeah. There goes your excuse.