Israel Gearing up for Full-Scale War on Gaza - What Next?

Rasa - Israeli air and ground forces have reportedly finished a week-long exercise to prepare for a full-scale war on the besieged Gaza Strip.

News ID: 438116

Date: 09 June 2018 - 00:38

RNA - The maneuvers, which were carried out “in preparation for war in the North and South,” ended on Thursday, enlisting hundreds of warplanes and gunships. The drills included actual airstrikes of large numbers of targets across the coastal territory.

Israeli aircraft, meanwhile, have dropped leaflets in Gaza, which warned Palestinians of an imminent war, saying they had to refuse to protest near the fence separating the enclave from the occupied territories.

This is while Palestinian protesters and political groups have vowed to continue the protests until Israel lifts the blockade and allows Palestinians to return to their homes from where they were forced out when Israel took over the West Bank and Gaza as well as East Jerusalem al-Quds during the Six Day War of 1967.

The international community must now make a critical decision: Should it allow another Israeli invasion against the Strip through inaction and complicity, or use international systems to force Israel to cooperate and stop its ongoing aggression.

There is a solution for all this insanity. Israel keeps relaying messages to the world that it’s still interested in occupation and war. On the other hand, Palestinians have made demands and conditions that have never been discussed, as Israel refuses to even hear, let alone consider, their demands.

The population of Gaza is now suffering far more than it was before the 2014 war. Once again, the two parties responsible for the blockade causing that distress - Israel and Egypt - are bringing the next war closer.

Today, however, it is the Israeli regime worsening Gaza’s distress. In recent weeks, its troops have killed many Palestinian protesters, refused entry of international aid to Gaza, cut off water and electricity, prevented large numbers of patients from receiving treatment outside the territory, forced thousands of Gaza government employees into early retirement, barred Gaza banks from transferring payments to Egypt in order to obtain fuel for the Strip’s only power plant, and threatened to wage a new war.

According to Fars News Agancy, the result has been a humanitarian catastrophe. The crisis has awoken some UN members and policy makers to the increased risk of a new conflict. And now Israel has warned that it is precisely what it is after.

But Israel is not the only, or even primary, party to blame. The real basis of Gaza’s problems lies in American and Egyptian moves to isolate Gaza, as well as the US-led states' decision to uphold the fiction that by killing Palestinian protesters and blockading Gaza, Israel is defending itself.

To prevent another war and to stabilize Gaza, the world community should force Israel to lift the blockade and Egypt to allow in fuel and humanitarian aid. That is a positive first step. But much more needs to be done, above all ending the apartheid system and allowing Palestinian refugees to return to their occupied homes and lands.

Any international inaction, or worse indifference, to any of these logical and rightful options would deepen the separation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and would mean complicity in Israeli genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian nation. As Israel has just warned, it could even lead to yet another devastating war against Gaza.

847/940