While the US-Israeli war against Iran and Lebanon has distracted world attention, Israel has intensified its genocidal attacks against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

“Gaza Faces Public Health Collapse Amid Rat Infestation and Disease as Israel Blocks Reconstruction” is the headline of a report on Democracy Now from May 7. This is on top of Israel’s continuing bombardment and destruction. 

Israel controls two-thirds of the land in Gaza. Palestinians have been herded into the remainder. The continuing murder of Palestinians is exemplified by one example:

On May 6, an Israeli airstrike killed the son of Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s chief negotiator, taking part in indirect talks with Israel. His son, Azzam, was killed in Gaza City. Israel has now killed four of al-Hayya’s sons since 2018. 

“Hamas condemned the violence as a blatant violation of last year’s ceasefire agreement. Since the ceasefire went into effect, Israel has killed at least 837 Palestinians.”

The week before, an Israeli drone strike killed a 9-year-old boy, Adel al-Najjar. In a translation quoted on Democracy Now, a family spokesman explained that Adil was part of a group:

“Collecting cardboard so we could bake…They want to eat. They want to drink. His father is blind…[he] leans on his children…
A little child. He did not damage a tank. He did not make missiles…Isn’t it shameful that we bury our children every day right in front of us?”

Eyad Amawi, coordinator of local NGOs based in Gaza, the Gaza Relief Committee, was interviewed on Democracy Now by Amy Goodman. She asked him to explain what was happening on the ground in Gaza. Amawi said:

“What’s happening is no longer just bombardment or physical destruction. It is the collapse of every essential condition required for human survival: water, food, health, dignity, shelter, safety, everything.” 

Amawi said the Gaza Relief Committee issued a new report that:

“Found that more than 59 percent of our people suffer from insufficient drinking water. And more than 55 percent are uncertain whether the water they consume is safe or no[t]. [N]early 94 percent of families report food spoilage. Rodent infestation…has become widespread inside shelters due to the environmental collapse.”

Amawi, when asked about the Israeli blockade of Gaza, explained that the number of trucks with aid, including food, allowed in through the single cross point into Gaza has been severely reduced, and does not meet basic needs after Israel “completely destroyed Gaza.”

These basic needs include “cement and iron and some basic materials to help us to resume our partially normal life in Gaza, fixing the sewage network and water network, and fixing infrastructure to prevent this environment from causing infectious disease here.” 

Israel claims these materials have “double use” as military materials to justify severely restricting them. In addition, the number of medical evacuations out of Gaza has been cut to only 12 percent of needs.

Amawi sums up Israeli policy: “What we are witnessing is the systematic use of deprivation and public health collapse as instruments of collective punishment over our people.”

West Bank

An article in the May 4 New York Times reports that:

“Extremist settlers acting with seeming impunity have intensified their attacks on Palestinians across the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Their campaign of violence and intimidation is emptying out entire villages and leaving countless Palestinians fearing what each nightfall might bring.”

The article was authored by Times correspondents who have been “reporting from across” the territory under Israeli military rule since 1967.

“’It’s a chance to escalate pogroms on Palestinians while the world is distracted [by the U.S. Israeli war],’ said Iran Yaron, an anthropologist who has spent years studying Israel’s radical nationalist groups, including long stretches with extremist settlers. ‘Their goal is to expel Palestinians from their lands and make them their own.’’

The Israeli government says that it aims to expel all Palestinians from all the territory it rules. Israel does not refer to the West Bank as occupied territory, but as “Judea and Samaria,” which was part of ancient Israel, reflecting its aim of incorporating it officially. In reality, Israel has already assumed military control of the West Bank and Gaza.

Since 1967, Israel has embarked on a project of creating settlements across the West Bank. The areas they control are officially part of Israel, and the settlers are Israeli citizens. A web of roads connects the settlements, isolating Palestinian regions. A new road is being constructed to connect them with Jerusalem.

The police force in the West Bank is under the jurisdiction of Ben-Gvir, the government’s national security minister, who “made his name as a lawyer defending settlers who had attacked Palestinians,” says the Times.

The Times reported a few of the attacks:

“When Israeli settlers attacked his West Bank village, Moatasem Odeh saw his son Amir, 28, fatally shot. Then he was stabbed repeatedly and beaten unconscious….

Villagers might have once driven attackers away by throwing stones, said Mr. Odeh, 46, but settlers now routinely carry guns. ‘We are helpless,’ he said, ‘and they know it.’”

Another example:

“In the Jordan Valley, masked men sexually assaulted Suhaib Abualkebash, 29, and brutalized his extended family.

In Deir Dibwan, east of Ramallah, Odeh Awawdeh, 25, was fatally shot when he tried to stop settlers from stealing his family’s sheep, according to his family and local authorities.

Thaer Hamayel, 28, was shot dead fending off Israeli settlers raiding his village, Khirbet Abu Falah.

‘I’m afraid of being in my house, and I am afraid of what will happen if I leave it,’ said Maleeha Al-Omari, 40, standing outside her home just steps from where Mr. Hamayel was gunned down.

‘No one protects us from the settlers,’ she said. ‘We are on our own.’”

Coupled with the Israeli war against Lebanon and the US-Israeli war against Iran, the Israeli escalation in Gaza and the West Bank shows us a US-Israel axis of evil in the Middle East.

Editor’s note: It is widely argued that Israel has failed to militarily defeat Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which still internally controls the populated areas.