The date is October, November, or December 2024, or maybe early 2025. The Israeli military has just launched a new operation throughout northern Gaza \u2014 \u201cOperation Order and Clean-up,\u201d we\u2019ll call it. The army orders the temporary evacuation of all Palestinian residents north of the Netzarim Corridor \u201cfor their personal safety,\u201d explaining that \u201cthe IDF is expected to take significant action in Gaza City in the coming days, and wants to avoid harming civilians.\u201d<\/p>\n
The order is similar to\u00a0the one the military issued<\/a>\u00a0on Oct. 13, 2023 to the more than 1 million Palestinians living in Gaza City and its environs at the time. But it\u2019s clear to everyone that this time, Israel is planning something else entirely.<\/p>\n Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant remain tight-lipped about the real goals of the operation, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, as well as other ministers on the far right, declare them openly. Here, they cite a\u00a0program<\/a>\u00a0that the \u201cForum of Reserve Commanders and Fighters,\u201d spearheaded by Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, proposed just a few weeks ago: ordering all residents of northern Gaza to leave within a week, before imposing a full siege on the area, including shutting off all supplies of water, food, and fuel, until those who remain surrender or die of starvation.<\/p>\n Other prominent Israelis, in recent months, have also called on the military to carry out mass extermination in northern Gaza. \u201cRemove the entire civilian population from the north, and whoever remains there will be lawfully sentenced as a terrorist and subjected to a process of starvation or extermination,\u201d Prof. Uzi Rabi, a senior researcher at Tel Aviv University,\u00a0elaborated<\/a>\u00a0in a radio interview on Sept. 15. And in August, according to a\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0in Ynet, government ministers had already started pressuring Netanyahu to \u201ccleanse\u201d northern Gaza of its inhabitants.<\/p>\n Another\u00a0proposal<\/a>\u00a0was written in July by several Israeli academics, titled \u201cFrom a murderous regime to a moderate society: The transformation and reconstruction of Gaza after Hamas.\u201d According to that plan, which was submitted to Israeli decision-makers, \u201ctotal defeat\u201d of Hamas is a precondition for starting a process of \u201cderadicalization\u201d of Palestinians in Gaza. \u201cIt is important that the Palestinian public also has a broad perception of Hamas\u2019 defeat,\u201d its authors argued, adding: \u201c\u2018First aid\u2019 can begin in areas purged of Hamas.\u201d One of the proposal\u2019s authors, Dr. Harel Chorev, a senior researcher at the Moshe Dayan Center where Rabi also works,\u00a0expressed full support<\/a>\u00a0for Eiland\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n But back to our scenario: \u201cOperation Order and Clean-up\u201d gets underway, and despite the army\u2019s evacuation orders, some 300,000 Palestinians remain among the ruins of Gaza City and its environs, refusing to leave. Perhaps they stay because they saw what happened to their neighbors who left at the beginning of the war, believing that it was a temporary evacuation, and who to this day wander the streets of southern Gaza without a safe place to shelter. Perhaps because they fear Hamas, which calls on residents to refuse Israel\u2019s evacuation orders. Or perhaps because they feel they no longer have anything to lose.<\/p>\n Either way, the army imposes a complete blockade within a week on all those who remain in northern Gaza. Hamas fighters \u2014 the Eiland document estimates that there are 5,000 left in the north, but no one really knows their true number \u2014 refuse to surrender. On international television and social media,\u00a0 people around the world watch as Gaza City is consumed by mass starvation. \u201cWe would rather die than leave,\u201d residents tell journalists.<\/p>\n On Israeli TV, commentators are not convinced that such a move will be decisive to win the war. But they agree that a \u201ccampaign of starvation and extermination\u201d is preferable to the army continuing to drag its feet in Gaza. Some voices in the studios warn of the potential damage to Israel\u2019s public relations, but nonetheless the plan obtains the support of the majority of the Jewish-Israeli public. Palestinian citizens of Israel, who intensify their protests against the genocide, are arrested for even posting about it online, and the police forcibly suppress demonstrations by the radical left.<\/p>\n U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expresses concern, affirms that the Washington is committed to Gaza\u2019s territorial integrity and the two-state solution, and warns that this latest campaign could sabotage the negotiations for a hostage agreement \u2014 but Netanyahu is unmoved. Under pressure from the right, which sees the expulsion of Gaza City\u2019s residents as its opportunity to flatten the area completely and\u00a0build settlements on top of the ruins<\/a>, the army begins the \u201cextermination\u201d phase that Rabi outlined.<\/p>\n Since the army has claimed civilians can leave northern Gaza \u2014 although soldiers randomly\u00a0shoot and kill<\/a>\u00a0those Palestinian civilians who try to evacuate \u2014\u00a0 it treats anyone who remains in the city as a terrorist. Such a strategy aligns with what Lt. Col. A., commander of the Israeli Air Force\u2019s drone squadron,\u00a0told Ynet<\/a>\u00a0in August about the operation to rescue hostages in Nuseirat Camp: \u201cWhoever did not flee, even if he was unarmed, as far as we were concerned, was a terrorist. Everyone we killed should have been killed.\u201d<\/p>\n Gaza City is completely destroyed, and among the ruins lie the bodies of thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of Palestinians. No one knows the exact number, because the area remains a \u201cclosed military zone.\u201d Operation Order and Clean-upis crowned a success. The army, as proposed in the Eiland plan, prepares to replicate similar operations in Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah. In coordination with field commanders, apparently without the approval of the General Staff, the revitalized movement to resettle Gaza \u2014 which has been\u00a0waiting in the wings<\/a>\u00a0for months \u2014 begins establishing the first new communities in areas that have been \u201cpurged\u201d of Palestinians.<\/p>\n There is no certainty that this scenario will materialize. It can be stymied at various junctures: the army could convey that it is not interested in the full occupation of the Gaza Strip, nor the reestablishment of a military government there. The military is aware that such a large-scale operation could lead to the execution of the remaining hostages,\u00a0as happened in Rafah<\/a>, and it doesn\u2019t want to be responsible for their murder. So too does it fear that such a large-scale operation in Gaza could trigger a stronger response from Hezbollah, and therefore to an intense war on two fronts, or perhaps more.<\/p>\n Despite\u00a0all the leniency<\/a>\u00a0the U.S. administration has shown for Israel\u2019s genocidal actions in Gaza \u2014\u00a0starving<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0annihilating<\/a>\u00a0tens of thousands of Palestinians \u2014 the next stage may be too much even for the self-professed \u201cZionist\u201d President Joe Biden and presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who speaks of \u201cPalestinian suffering.\u201d This may well be the move that will force the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to declare that Israel is\u00a0committing genocide<\/a>, and expedite the International Criminal Court (ICC) to\u00a0issue arrest warrants<\/a>, and not only for Netanyahu and Gallant.<\/p>\n European countries, which until now have been hesitant to sanction Israel, may go all in. Netanyahu could conclude that the international price of such an operation will be too high \u2014 the desires of his right-wing allies be damned.<\/p>\n Israeli society may also pose obstacles to the implementation of the plan. As made evident by the\u00a0mass demonstrations of recent weeks<\/a>, large parts of the Jewish-Israeli public have lost faith in the government\u2019s promises of \u201ctotal victory\u201d in Gaza or the notion that \u201conly military pressure will release the hostages.\u201d Led by the families of the hostages \u2014 who have been radicalized since Hamas\u2019 recent execution of the six hostages in a tunnel in Rafah \u2014 hundreds of thousands of Israelis, it seems, want not only to see the hostages returned home, but also to put the war behind them. The Rabi-Eiland plan, which will certainly prolong the war in Gaza and likely doom the return of the remaining hostages, may be rejected by hundreds of thousands of demonstrators for precisely these reasons.<\/p>\n However, we must also admit that the scenario I sketched out above is not far-fetched. Since October 7, Israeli society has undergone an\u00a0accelerated process of dehumanization<\/a>\u00a0toward the Palestinians, and it is hard to see the army refuse en masse to carry out such an extermination campaign, certainly if it is presented in stages: first forcing out most residents, followed by the imposition of\u00a0 a siege, and only then the elimination of those who remain.<\/p>\nA likely but not inevitable scenario\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n