Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that it is Israel’s policy to allow as much humanitarian aid into Gaza as necessary, which aid agencies have said is false. And yesterday, the prime minister said that he wanted to allow food convoys into Gaza at the Rafah crossing, but that convoys were being raided and taken over by Hamas.
This week, Israel also abandoned talks with Hamas in Qatar in response to the US' decision to abstain from the UN Security Council's resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Just a day later, after the US stated that the resolution was “non-binding”, the US State Department said that Israel had agreed to reschedule the meeting on military plans for Gaza’s southern city of Rafah.
Esteban Carrillo, a Beirut-based Ecuadorian journalist and head of news for The Cradle, spoke to Sputnik’s Political Misfits on Thursday about Israel’s continued fight against Hamas. When asked by Sputnik’s John Kiriakou whether Israel’s war is for public consumption, or if it is to depopulate Gaza and settle it with Israelis, Carrillo suggested that it is “not possible to stomp out ideas with violence”.
“The history of the world tells us that it’s impossible to stomp out resistance. You cannot stomp out ideas with violence. So it's really just for foreign consumption,” said Carrillo. “It's the same thing as, when, George W. Bush stood in front of the banner with ‘mission accomplished’. Like, we defeated terrorism, and then to this day the wars are still raging.”
“I think Israeli officials have been very vocal, very open—that their plan is to kill as many Palestinians as possible to resettle Gaza,” he continued. “Jared Kushner, the architect of the Abraham Accords, a couple of weeks ago said that Gaza's beachfront property is so valuable and they need to start doing the clean-up work. What does he mean by the clean-up work?”
Sputnik’s Kiriakou said the Political Misfits team has seen advertisements and fliers across synagogues in North America telling those in the Jewish community that they can buy land in Israel, which suggests that the Gaza Strip is under the process of being occupied by the Israelis. Where, exactly, the land is being sold was unconfirmed at the time of this article's publication.
“It's happening,” Carrillo responded. “It's happening completely. We at The Cradle have seen these reports about these meetings happening in the US, you know, in which land is offered up for sale, like auctions. And what are they selling? They're selling property in Gaza because at the end of the day, this is what the zionist project is about now. It's a homeland for Jewish people, but in which the homeland is put ahead of the people.”
“I would imagine that we're gonna see some sort of a temporary ceasefire like we saw in November. They keep talking about the six weeks. I do not expect Israel to consider accepting a lasting ceasefire because this war needs to continue for this government to remain in power,” Carrillo said. “What happened earlier this week, it really was like a temper tantrum."
“They canceled this delegation to Washington. They walk out of Qatar, leaving a small Mossad team. And now they're walking it back. They're walking it back because they know that with no US support these things fall apart in a matter of days. They haven't been able to defeat Hamas, which is a militia with about 35,000 strong in six months, dropping everything on them, killing thousands and thousands of civilians and Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other groups, they're still there, they're still battling.”
“And this is with the full support of the US using the weapon cache that exists in Israel, sending over 100 weapons shipments since October under the radar, and they still haven't been able to do it. So, imagine the moment that that stops, it's going to be even more embarrassing than October 7th,” said Carrillo.
Kiriakou noted that the Israeli government’s stance on rescuing hostages has changed over the course of the war, adding that Netanyahu has been accused of abandoning hostages, as he continues to walk away from hostage swap deals. He also notes that there have been reports of Israeli soldiers killing two unarmed doctors who refused to abandon their patients, while Israel claimed to have killed 200 “terrorists” at the al-Shifa hospital complex in the last two days.
“Just ask Netanyahu what he is doing to rescue all the captives who remain in Gaza. Nothing,” said Carrillo. “He walked away from all the talks. Every time Hamas offers a comprehensive ceasefire—a lasting ceasefire that includes a prisoner exchange, Netanyahu and his entire band of misfits comes out and says, 'this is ridiculous. This is absurd. We cannot accept that this would be a total defeat.' So it's right there, they don't even try to hide it.”
“If you believe even a shred of what the Israelis are saying, then there's enough resistance fighters around these hospitals to warrant these actions. But, in reality, this is just an attack on humanitarian shelters. This is part of the strategy to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable,” Carrillo continued.
“This is the end goal here, to make it so that, even if there's a lasting ceasefire and even if there's humanitarian aid and attempts for reconstruction, what is there going to be to reconstruct? At this point, these places are like the surface of the moon,” said Carrillo. “There's nothing that anyone can do.”
“We have seen the level of brutality that has been unleashed. And we talk about the invasion of Rafah as if it's something that is going to happen, when in reality Rafah has already been under heavy fire, under heavy airstrikes for weeks at this point,” he added.