Israel may or may not have God on its side (opinions vary), but it certainly has the United States government on its side, and that seems to be enough. It has just attacked an unarmed civilian ship called “Conscience” with armed drones near Malta in the central Mediterranean, almost 2 000km from Israel — and nobody has said “boo”.
Sceptics please note: Israel has not formally claimed responsibility for the operation. The culprit might theoretically have been any other country from Albania to Zimbabwe, but I am assuming that the only country with a motive for the attack probably did carry out the attack.
When the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the group that sent the “Conscience”, sent an earlier aid convoy to Gaza bearing 10 000 tonnes of aid in 2010, Israel waited until the ship “Mavi Marmara” neared the coast and sent commandos who abseiled down from helicopters. Ten civilians were killed and 28 injured, and there was an almighty international uproar about it.
That was really the main purpose of the trip. Israel can always be counted on to overreact, and the Coalition expected to exploit that overreaction to turn the spotlight on the perpetual Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. The sponsors of the “Mavi Marmara” probably didn’t expect so many dead, or even any dead, but in terms of publicity it was all grist for the mill.
Drones have made it a lot easier for Israel this time. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime was able to disable the ship much farther away, and though it couldn’t be sure nobody on the “Conscience” would be killed, there would at least be fewer dead. But frankly, there wouldn’t have been much outcry now even if the Israelis had sunk it with all hands.
It wouldn’t have mattered all that much even if Swedish activist Greta Thunberg had gone down with the ship. (She was scheduled to join it the next day.) Israel has carte blanche to do anything it likes in Gaza, with the possible exception of Israeli actions that Donald Trump strongly disagrees with — and he hasn’t found any yet.
Unsurprisingly, this has unleashed a huge although lopsided “culture war” in Israel. When all doors are open and every choice seems possible, everybody is under pressure to come out and state their real desires. In Israel, this has brought an ideological struggle between those who cling to older Jewish values and the relatively recent ethno-nationalist majority out into the open.
Israel’s official goals in Gaza are the return of the remaining hostages and the destruction of Hamas, but the wholesale removal of Palestinians from the territory controlled by Israel is now openly discussed.
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Here, for example, is Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, speaking the day before Netanyahu broke the ceasefire and resumed military operations on 18 March. He said he hoped the bombing would begin the “mass transfer” of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip to other destinations, presumably outside Israeli-ruled territories.
“Even if the process is slow at first, it will gradually pick up pace and intensity,” he said.
“There won’t be anything for the Gazans in Gaza. After we go back to fighting and all of Gaza looks like Jabaliya [utterly obliterated], there will be nothing for them there.” However, it would be “a huge logistical operation to get such vast numbers of people out of here”.
Smotrich is from the far right of Netayahu’s coalition, but defence minister Israel Katz agrees: “I instructed the IDF to capture additional areas, evacuate the population, and expand the security zone around Gaza ... through a permanent hold of the area by Israel. As long as Hamas refuses [to free the hostages] it will lose more land.”
The process is already underway.
The voices of those who defend the old values are fewer and weaker.
“It’s crystal-clear that the renewal of the war is for political reasons and not for security reasons,” wrote Guy Poran, a retired air force pilot whose open letter was signed by a thousand other air force reservists and retired officers.
However, such protests have no visible effect on policy.
Netanyahu called the signatories of the letter “an extreme fringe group that is once again trying to break Israeli society from within” and ordered the dismissal of all active-duty officers who had signed the letter. The Israel Defence Forces are being politicised even faster than the US armed forces.
Surprises are still possible. Netanyahu’s policies are unsustainable without Trump’s unhesitating support, and Trump has the attention span and the emotional volatility of a four-year-old. But 70% of Gaza is already effectively out of bounds for Palestinians, and barring some surprise about-turn the Great Eviction is getting underway.
Where to remains to be seen, but they certainly can’t stay in the Trump Riviera.
- Dyer is a London-based independent journalist. His new book is titled Intervention Earth: Life-Saving Ideas from the World’s Climate Engineers. His previous book, The Shortest History of War, is also still available.
