Jadaliyya Co-Editor, Mouin Rabbani, Addresses Israel’s “Indefinite, Genocidal Military Campaign” in Gaza on Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: Israel’s security cabinet has approved plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take over Gaza City, spurring international condemnation as world leaders warn of the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of a full-scale Israeli military occupation.

In response to Israel’s intensifying military campaign, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced today Germany will suspend the export of military weapons to Israel that could be used in Gaza. The move stopped short of a full arms embargo but marks a significant shift in Germany’s position.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the decision “wrong,” adding, quote, “It will only lead to more bloodshed.” U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk urged for the plans to be “immediately halted,” and that the move, quote, “runs contrary to the ruling of the International Court of Justice that Israel must bring its occupation to an end as soon as possible … and to the right of Palestinians to self-determination,” unquote.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid also condemned the decision to seize Gaza City, saying on social media, “This is a disaster which will lead to many more disasters … a disaster for generations to come,” he said.

Ahead of the late-night security [cabinet] meeting, Netanyahu told Fox News he, quote, “intends to take over all of Gaza.” Netanyahu spoke to Fox News’ Bill Hemmer in Jerusalem Thursday.

BILL HEMMER: Will Israel take control of all of Gaza?

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: We intend to, in order to assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza, and to pass it to civilian governance that is not Hamas and not anyone advocating the destruction of Israel. That’s what we want to do. We want to liberate ourselves and liberate the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas.

AMY GOODMAN: Netanyahu claimed Israel would not seek to govern Gaza, but rather turn the territory over to unnamed Arab forces. Palestinians in Gaza reacted to Netanyahu’s calls to take over the besieged strip.

MAHMOUD AL-QURASHLI: [translated] Netanyahu’s decision to occupy Gaza — it’s like there’s nothing left to occupy in the first place. We’re already dying, a hundred thousand deaths every day. Around 100 to 150 people die daily, from starvation, on top of everything else we’re going through. Practically all of Gaza has been squeezed into the western part of Gaza City, and that’s all that’s left, just that, west Gaza City. At this point, for the people, there’s no difference anymore whether he occupies it or not.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as the Israeli TV station Channel 13 revealed Netanyahu deliberately imposed starvation in Gaza, restricting aid to the besieged enclave, as part of a strategy to force Hamas to surrender. Internal government transcripts from March show Netanyahu repeatedly ignored calls from senior ministers to move to the second phase of the ceasefire agreement to release the Israeli hostages.

For more, we’re joined by Mouin Rabbani, Middle East analyst, co-editor of Jadaliyya and a nonresident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, also a nonresident senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs. Mouin Rabbani is a contributor to the book Deluge: Gaza and Israel from Crisis to Cataclysm.

Mouin, welcome back to Democracy Now! First, respond to the Security Council’s [sic] endorsement of Netanyahu saying he’s taking over Gaza City, and then respond to the international outcry that has ensued, including a voice we haven’t heard condemning Israel before, and that’s Germany.

MOUIN RABBANI: Yes. It wasn’t the Security Council. It was Israel’s security cabinet that took this decision to seek to seize physical control of the entirety of Gaza City. And I think it needs to be seen as the first phase of a larger plan, enunciated by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the clip you just showed, where the objective is to take control, physical control, of the entirety of the Gaza Strip in the context of unachievable objectives, basically ensuring there isn’t even so much as a water pistol left in the Gaza Strip. And it’s really a recipe for permanent occupation, annexation in all but name, until Israel’s international partners agree to that. And I think we have to recall what Israel’s strategy has been from the outset, which is the expulsion of the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip outside the territory and retaining this territory under permanent Israeli control. That’s really what’s going on here.

As far as these statements of criticism and condemnation are concerned, I think we have now reached — in fact, we long ago reached — the point where words are entirely meaningless. In the context of a genocide, if all you can do is to criticize and condemn, while continuing, as in the case of Britain, intelligence overflights over the Gaza Strip that directly benefit the Israeli military, or now, even in the case of Germany, banning the export of weapons that can be used in the Gaza Strip — and good luck figuring out which can and which can’t — these are basically political theater, performative acts. Yes, they do signal a shift in the position of this or that government, but they still fall very, very far short of meaningful, concrete measures that can persuade or force the Israeli government to change course.

AMY GOODMAN: I should correct myself. I didn’t — Germany didn’t exactly condemn what Israel is doing, but they did for the first time say they were stopping weapons to Israel that could be used in Gaza.

MOUIN RABBANI: Correct, yes. I was referring specifically to Germany, and the condemnation has come from some other quarters. But, you know, we have to recall now that Israel has been very clear that it intends to force the evacuation of the entire population that remains in Gaza City southwards, then to take full control of that area in order to seek to eliminate the remaining Hamas fighters that are based there.

You know, just earlier this year, Israel implemented a very similar plan, known as Gideon’s Chariots, and that was supposed to produce precisely the result Israel now says it is seeking to achieve. It’s been two years now where Israel has been unable to achieve its declared military objectives. And this should also lead us to question: What are its real objectives? Is it simply to seek to militarily defeat Hamas, or is it to destroy the Gaza Strip, to reduce it to rubble, as we’ve seen from these recent images that have emerged? And perhaps it’s time to start taking Israel at its word when it says that its objective is to, in its words, implement Trump’s vision of expelling the entire population of the Gaza Strip. Maybe that is exactly what they’re seeking to do. And maybe responses to Israel’s statements and actions should be based on that.

AMY GOODMAN: Israelis also took to the streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Thursday to protest Netanyahu’s plans to occupy all of Gaza.

AMI DROR: We are here demanding the end of the war, the immediate return of the hostages, end of the atrocities in Gaza, atrocities about the children in Gaza and atrocities against our own soldiers and against our own hostages. This war is a political war. The only person that benefits from this war is Benjamin Netanyahu, that’s trying to avoid jail.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Ami Dror. Mouin Rabbani, the response within Israel at this point, do you see it changing? And then I want to ask you about what Netanyahu is talking about when he talks about these unnamed Arab forces he’s hoping will take over Gaza.

MOUIN RABBANI: Yes, so, two points. If you look at the internal Israeli debate about this issue, on the one hand, there are objections to this plan from the military leadership, which have now been essentially overridden by the government, and that is based on the military’s estimation, you know, that it is — it is not capable of a prolonged war, a prolonged insurgency. It’s designed for short, sharp, decisive wars. It lacks sufficient manpower and materiel for the task that has been assigned to it. And on the other hand, you have those from some of the Israeli opposition parties and sectors of Israeli public opinion basically stating that Israel has a choice: It can either continue this indefinite, genocidal military campaign, or it needs to reach an agreement with the Palestinians that puts an end to this war and results in an exchange of captives, because that will be the only way that Israel can successfully retrieve its remaining captives from the Gaza Strip. What I find telling in this debate is that no one is saying, “We shouldn’t do this because of international sanctions that could result.” In other words, Israel is acting in the full confidence that whatever it does, it will enjoy, if not the support, at least the consent of its key sponsors and allies in the West.

Regarding this other point, there’s a fundamental contradiction here. On the one hand, Israel refuses any form of Palestinian administration in the Gaza Strip, not Hamas administration — it equally rejects any Palestinian Authority administration or any other Palestinian governance — while at the same time it is seeking to recruit, essentially, an Arab expeditionary force to take control of the Gaza Strip. But no Arab state has volunteered. Even Israel’s closest Arab allies have refused to participate in this scheme, because, from their point of view, they’re only willing to participate in any initiative that is embedded within a credible and irreversible political initiative that leads to the end of the occupation and Palestinian sovereignty in the Gaza Strip. And given that Israel’s project is precisely to prevent that from happening, I don’t see it getting off the ground.

AMY GOODMAN: The Economist wrote a piece this week, “How much of Gaza is left standing?” It says, quote, “The broader demographic toll is hard to grasp. The studies imply that estimated life expectancy has fallen by more than 35 years, to roughly half the pre-war figure. In percentage terms, this drop is bigger than the one recorded during China’s Great Leap Forward; in absolute terms, it is similar to the one in the Rwanda genocide.” Your thoughts, Mouin?

MOUIN RABBANI: Well, it’s more proof, if proof were indeed needed almost two years after this began, that what we’re dealing here is not a military campaign in which civilians are inadvertently being killed as a result of what’s called collateral damage, but that it is in fact the civilian population which is the premeditated and intended target of this very wide-scale killing spree that Israel has been engaged in. And that is precisely why every major human rights organization, whether Palestinian, international, and now even Israeli, has concluded that we are dealing here with a genocide.

And most recently, in the context of the intensifying famine in the Gaza Strip, we now also have a report from Doctors Without Borders saying that, basically, this scheme that has been established by the United States and Israel, known as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, is, in fact, an orchestrated campaign to weaponize urgently needed humanitarian supplies, and that this mechanism is effectively acting as a death squad. I know you recently spoke with the whistleblower Anthony Aguilar about this, so I won’t comment further.

AMY GOODMAN: But people can go to our interview with Anthony Aguilar at democracynow.org. Mouin Rabbani, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Middle East analyst, co-editor — 

MOUIN RABBANI: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: — of Jadaliyya, nonresident fellow at the Center for Conflict [and Humanitarian Studies], nonresident senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs.

Coming up next, we go to a new book, They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals. We’ll speak with investigative journalist Mariah Blake. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “It’s My Brown Skin” by Helado Negro here in our Democracy Now! studio.