Israeli Defense Minister said this Tuesday that when the war in Gaza is over, Israel plans to occupy the Strip forever, a move that will father make the prospect of a peace agreement more impossible.
This Tuesday morning, and during a hearing session in the Knesset, Israel’s Defense Minster Yoav Gallant told the lawmakers that as soon as the war in Gaza is over, the Israeli military plans to directly occupy the besieged Strip so that it can have freedom in carrying out military operations and assassinations as they do now in the West Bank.
“After the war, when it’s over, I think it’s completely clear that Hamas won’t control Gaza. Israel will control [it] militarily but won’t control it in a civilian sense,” Gallant said, speaking among the member of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in Tel Aviv.
“When we’re talking about military freedom of operation, look what happened tonight in Jenin,” Gallant added, referring to the assassination of three Palestinians in the West Bank city early on Tuesday.
Justifying the intended military occupation that Israel plans to maintain in the Gaza Strip, Gallant also noted that the Israeli military won’t occupy the Strip in a civilian sense; “This is military freedom of operation at the highest level, and yet we don’t control the area in a civilian sense. This is achievable [in Gaza as well], and it will take time,” Gallant said.
Israel’s disparate effort to legalize an illegal move!
Sing such language, it seems Gallant wants to legalize Israel’s occupation plan after the war s over by referring to a legal point in embodied in the international humanitarian law. To read between the lines, Gallant wants Israel to occupy Gaza while shunning the responsibilities of an occupying power toward the Palestinian civilian population as required under international humanitarian law.
The law explains that when a state occupies the land of another state as a preemptive move to restore security, the occupier should include sufficient hygiene and public health standards and provide food and medical care to the population under occupation.
But this would be an ironical move for Israel to restore to such part of international law simply because Israeli military has already destroyed Gaza’s hospitals and health system, while imposing a blockade to limit the entry of food and water to the besieged area.
Israeli officials should read the laws twice!
It should also be noted that under the same international humanitarian law, it is strictly forbidden to collectively or individually force the transfers of the population from and within an occupied territory as well as transfers of the civilian population of the occupying power into the occupied territory.
But Israel has been violating this very part of international law as well. It was on this Sunday that dozens of Israeli ministers and lawmakers in Israel’s governing coalition gathered at a conference in Tel Aviv to discuss the war situation in Gaza.
There, the Israeli officials unanimously agreed to promote the forcible expulsion of all the 2.3 million Palestinian population living in Gaza and the building of more Jewish settlements in the besieged area even as the war I still ongoing.
The plan to expel all the Palestinians in Gaza to nowhere is not a new agenda for the Israeli government. A few days after the war started on October 7, a document was leaked from the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence outlining a plan to expel all the Gazans under the pretext of humanitarian concern.
