Speaking to the Israeli nation about the ceasefire agreement in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last Friday:
“Hamas agreed to the deal only when it felt the sword resting on its neck and it is still on its neck … Hamas will be disarmed and Gaza will be demilitarized … If this is achieved the easy way, so much the better. And if not, it will be achieved the hard way.”
So there’s only one way the genocide does not resume in Gaza: Hamas disarms and unconditionally surrenders to Israel.
The threat of more violence if this doesn’t happen is clear enough in Netanyahu’s words.
Other Israeli officials have promised the same.
Israel’s goal is the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and its complete takeover.
The so-called deal that Donald Trump is getting credit for seeks to achieve this. It is no peace deal. It does not settle any of the outstanding issues of the seven-decade-old Israeli theft of Palestinian land and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. Or the killing of countless innocent civilians by a brutalizing Israeli military intent on defending and extending its gains.
All Trump’s deal does is hand total victory to Israel.
Hamas is to disarm and not take part in any future governing of the Strip.
Of course they are refusing at this point. And if they continue to refuse Netanyahu has spelled out what will happen. Trump can then kiss next year’s Nobel Peace Prize goodbye. Israel would also again be condemned by most of the world as it resumes the killing and the losing of the information war – a main reason it agreed to the deal.
Key to whether Hamas capitulates are other Arab states, principally the Gulf monarchies. They are pressuring Hamas to give up. You see, they stand to get a piece of the action if Trump’s sick dream of a Gaza Riviera is realized on top of the decaying corpses of a significant part of society.
The Arab regimes are villains in this story almost as big as Israel and the United States. They have long ago resorted to lip service to the Palestinians to placate their own repressed and restless populations. Now they stand ready to cash in a bonanza because of a genocide they barely protested.
If Hamas gives up and Netanyahu gets his way — “the easy way” – there will still be a sizable population of Gazans to manage and pacify. The easiest way for the Israelis would be to put them on buses and move them out — if Netanyahu and Trump can finally find someone to take them. Perhaps they will pay the Egyptians enough. El-Sisi has his price.
If most of the Palestinians remain, they will probably wind up in shacks behind the gleaming casinos like in Batista’s Cuba. They would remain a headache for the Israelis, so it’s clear they would rather kick them out.
Netanyahu’s government surviving depends on this happening, the easy way or the hard way.
The right way would be for the Palestinians to build back their own society the way they want with Israeli and U.S. reparations. And to govern themselves the way they want with the leaders they choose in a state of their own, free from the threat of renewed attempts at annihilation.
But the odds of that happening will be a lot worse than claiming the jackpot at the roulette wheel at Trump Gaza Casino.
Source: Consortium News.
