Israeli media: Israel is plotting to colonise Gaza

The Western media keeps covering up Israel's crimes - but if you read Israel's newspapers, there is a different story.

One of the better ways to understand the crimes being committed by Israel is simply to read Israeli newspapers.

Normally, perpetrators of grave crimes seek to cover them up. The impunity granted Israel by the West means that does not apply in this case, and so newspapers there nonchalantly print existing and intended war crimes. This is quite unlike Western media outlets, which often fail to report these crimes at all. After all, they know their audiences do not approve. That’s not the case in Israel, a society awash with genocidal mania which - according to polling - leaves most Israelis opposing all humanitarian aid, and evenly split on whether too little firepower, or just enough, has been expended in Gaza (once you exclude the 20% of the Israeli population who are Palestinian).

If you read the Israeli media, it is clear Israel intends to steal Gaza’s land and colonise it. As Israeli peace activist Nimrod Flaschenberg puts it:

We already know that the IDF has publicly declared that the people of northern Gaza will not be allowed to return to their homes. This is itself is of course unambiguous ethnic cleansing.

Now, there are two articles in the web version of Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, which is Israel’s highest circulation newspaper.

One is headlined: ‘With military outposts and tacit approval from the coalition: This is how Israel will apply martial law in Gaza.’

This looks at Israel’s strategy after the dismissal of defence minister Yoav Gallant, who now faces an international arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, who notoriously demanded a total siege on ‘human animals’ as he referred to Gaza’s population, but - in a sign the Israeli government’s extremism - was seen as too moderate.

In the subheading of the article itself, it discusses Israel’s plans for de facto control of the Strip and how it “corresponds with the settlers' plans to settle in northern Gaza”, followed by the quote: ‘A historic opportunity returns’.

The piece looks at how Israel is on its way to impose a military administration in Gaza, pushed by both finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and national Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir - both ardent supporters of colonising Gaza. The IDF, it notes, is deepening its seizure of Gaza’s territory, establishing military outposts with the aim of seizing wide areas. It notes that Trump’s election has emboldened this strategy.

To quote:

“At the same time, the plans for seizing the territory as part of extracting a price from Hamas in Gaza correspond with settlers' plans to settle northern Gaza. Officials in the settlement movement claim that this is a historic period of time to change reality on the ground vis-a-vis the Palestinians, and an opportunity that will not return.”

Another article similarly expands on this theme, entitled ‘Cell towers and water lines: A closer look at Israel’s expanding foothold in Gaza’

This details the infrastructure being created for a permanent Israeli occupation, and flippantly discusses how this shows the “military hopes a large portion of the Palestinian population will soon pass southward within Gaza as pressure mounts on the Jabaliya area.”.

This is naked ethnic cleansing, driving those civilians who survive permanently from their homes to an impossibly overcrowded southern Gaza.

That war crimes are just casually discuss war crimes here is striking: the articles goes on to report that Israel seized a chunk of Gaza because it was “initially positioned as a bargaining tool, suggested Israel would withdraw and allow one million displaced Gazans to return to their homes if Hamas released roughly 100 hostages.”

This flippantly discusses using a million civilians as bargaining chips - and the crime of collective punishment.

It goes on to discuss how the conditions of those surviving Israeli hostages worsen each week, with reports they will be executed by Hamas if IDF advance on positions, that right-wing ministers see this as inevitable and that they’re arguing this “would naturally resolve the hostage issue and could strengthen Israel’s resolve to retain its current foothold in Gaza.”

Well there it is. Israeli leaders have no interest in the hostages coming home at all, hence their vetoing of a hostage deal. From reading this, it’s clear they want the hostages to be killed, which they hope will build support for Gaza to be annexed.

It then goes on:

“Israeli leaders and right-wing lawmakers, some openly advocating the establishment of new settlements in Gaza, maintain that retaining control over this newly claimed territory is essential.”

It then adds this colonisation of Gaza would be solidified with public anger at Hamas, because the hostages would have been executed. Willing on the killing of hostages - so the Israeli state can illegally colonise the stolen land that they have erased Palestinian life from.

Indeed, we know that Daniella Weiss, the far-right Israeli settler leader, told Israeli television last week that she had visited northern Gaza to scout locations for Israeli settlements, claiming to have the support of 740 Israeli families to do so.

And according to The Times of Israel, the Israeli broadcaster Kan reported that Weiss was smuggled into northern Gaza by Israeli troops. Last month, several Israeli cabinet ministers attended a conference on the border with Gaza urging its settlement.

Meanwhile, the Israeli media is publishing pieces calling for the settlement of southern Lebanon. Michael Freund is the former communications director of Benjamin Netanyahu and has published a piece in the Jerusalem Post headlined ‘Southern Lebanon is actually northern Israel’.

Some perspective. Israel has wiped Gaza from the map, it is exterminating its population, and then is seeking to settle a landscape in which Palestinian life has been extinguished with Israeli colonists. 

As ever, with the crimes Israel is committing in full view of the world: no one can say they did not know.