Increasing Civilian Suffering In Gaza Is Part of the Official Plan of the Netanyahu Government

Memo from Israel's Intelligence Ministry Outlines A Chilling Strategy to Make Civilians so Hungry and Desperate They Will Beg to Leave for Eqypt

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It is indisputable that the world in Gaza is witnessing one of the worst human rights horrors of the century: the death of more than 20,000 Palestinian civilians from what experts believe is the most intense bombing in the shortest period of time in history. More than one million people who have survived the bombing are facing starvation and a high risk of death from a lack of food, water, medical care, and shelter. Adjusted for population, civilians in Gaza have experienced more than 1,000 September 11 catastrophes in only 60 days.

Less well-known is that this all appears to be part of a deliberate and chilling plan put forth by Israel’s government – one being almost completely ignored by the US media.

This was all outlined in a little-known document written by Israel’s Intelligence Ministry only six days after the Hamas attack on October 7. The document outlines a secret plan to expel all Palestinians in Gaza to Eqypt (or other countries), apparently with the ultimate goal of taking over the land to build a Greater Israel. The 10-page memo was disseminated to high-level government officials on October 13, including to the Prime Minister and War Cabinet. We know this because of a stunning expose published at the end of October by the award-winning Israeli media outlet @972mag. Israel’s government has not disputed the reporting or the memo, but this important news has been ignored by The New York Times and most other US media outlets.

The memo was written by Netanyahu ally Gama Gamliel, who heads the Intelligence Ministry. Gamliel puts forth three options for the civilian population of Gaza in the light of the war, but the one she recommends as the most viable (called “Option C”) involves expelling the entire population into the Sinai desert of Egypt to live in tents. What we are now witnessing – forcing all Palestinians in Gaza to flee south only to be crammed into tiny areas near the Egyptian border, the incessant bombing of these spaces, the denial of food and water, and the flattening of most homes and apartment buildings – clearly looks like part of a calculated plan of forcible transfer, which happens to be a war crime. It also looks very much like “Option C” in the memo.

You can see an excerpt from the memo in the graphic above, or you can read the full memo in the article being reported in Israel.

Egypt has been steadfast in refusing to accept any Palestinian refugees from Gaza as it understands Israel likely would never allow them to return. But the Netanyahu government still thinks it can ratchet up the pressure on Egypt to such a degree that the country’s leaders might change their position. The only way that happens is to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza so acute that the world (and hopefully Egypt) will be forced to act to “save” Palestinians from a humanitarian crisis that Israel created deliberately.

Seen in this context, the thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza since October 7 — two-thirds of them women and children – is not an "accident" of war nor is it collateral damage from the bombing. In my view, the almost unbelievable scale of civilian death and suffering is in fact a main purpose of the Israeli military campaign to clear the territory of Palestinians. Israel hopes the Gazans themselves will be so pummeled, demoralized, and desperate for food and water that they will demand entry into Egypt or other countries just to be able to survive. The well-being of the Israeli hostages and the dismantling of the Hamas military network appear to be entirely secondary to this main objective of Netanyahu and his right-wing government.

As I reported earlier, the indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Gaza and the targeted assassinations of intellectuals is only part of it. Hundreds of thousands of children and vulnerable civilians in Gaza face the imminent risk of death due to starvation and disease. I recently posted an article on IG from the New England Journal of Medicine that showed 46,000 excess deaths of children under 5 years old in Iraq in the first six months after the end of the Gulf War in 1991, almost all from disease and a lack of food and medical supplies. Given similar but even worse conditions in Gaza, the scale of childhood death likely will dwarf the amount of childhood death in Iraq after the first Gulf War. Further, the Netanyahu government is cynically pointing to the very suffering it is deliberately creating in Gaza to demand that the international community agree to resettle Palestinians as a "humanitarian" gesture.

The US media refuses to report that Israel's ultimate goal with the “war” against Hamas is the mass displacement to other countries of the civilian population. While I doubt it will work, it does not mean they aren't trying with truly horrific consequences for human life in the meantime. You might know that the New York Times reported October 31 that Israeli officials were openly comparing the level of expected civilian death in Gaza to the level of civilian death in Japan after the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

When they say it themselves, believe them. It is up to us — citizens and the international community – to stop this plan from proceeding one iota further.