Sunanda K. Datta-Ray | Why Israel wants Gaza to be free of all Palestinians

Even Israel’s admirers and well-wishers, which includes Narendra Modi’s India, must wonder as the new year breaks what exactly Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes to achieve by bombing the Gaza Strip into extinction. Is there really a plan behind the continuing bombardment or are Mr Netanyahu and his friends driven by sheer rage like an angry child smashing into smithereens a toy that has incurred their unreasoning wrath? More and more one suspects that Israel’s real aim is to create a terra nullius, a “territory without a master”, where Israeli ownership can no longer be questioned.

The Latin term has been used to justify the white colonisation of non-white lands like Australia, New Zealand, the United States of America and Canada. An early instance of this kind of acquisition is commemorated in a romanticised oil painting by John Alexander Gilfillan, later popularised through Samuel Calvert’s 1865 engraved drawing, depicting Lieutenant James Cook annexing New South Wales in the name of the British Crown on August 22, 1770. However, the High Court of Australia overturned this implementation of the legal principle of terra nullius in Australian law in 1992, and recognised the continuing connection and rights to land of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples through Native Title.

Not that Israel is bothered about precedents. It will create them where none exists. In the gullible public’s imagination too, the terra nullius definition indicates that the land in question can legally be occupied with sovereign rights by another nation, under the doctrine of discovery which the International Court of Justice approves as a legal method of territorial acquisition. In practice, the term has often been cynically used to ignore the rights and even physical presence of the original natives (Australian aboriginals or American Indians) to legitimise state occupation and colonization. This produced the fiasco of a small group of Australian aboriginal men once landing somewhere on the British coast and claiming to take possession of the United Kingdom.

Israel’s apparent attempt to legitimise its occupation of Arab lands could be treated as a similar farcical enactment of history -- like the nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 referring to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in 1948 -- if it were not for the deadly intent of the aggressors. The bombardment of Gaza started on October 7, 2023, immediately after Hamas attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages.

Israel began ground operations in the 25-mile-long Strip, which is between 3.7 and 7.5 miles wide and whose 141 sq miles supported 2.3 million Palestinians and boasted one of the world’s highest population densities. This wanton killing of men, women and children, and the deliberate razing into dust of their homes and all supporting amenities of civilised urban living could be attributed to the blind desire for revenge. Jews accept the Bible’s Old Testament where the Book of Matthew 5:38 speaks of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” on the grounds that the law ordains that the punishment must match the injury.

On October 13, however, Israel went beyond the Judaic injunction on crime and punishment and articulated four goals it sought to achieve -- to destroy Hamas, free the hostages, ensure Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel, and to return displaced residents of Northern Israel. More than 35,000 Palestinians, including more than 7,800 children and 4,900 women, have been killed in Gaza since the retaliatory operation began. Another 10,000 people are missing and presumed dead under the rubble of destroyed buildings. Israel is accused of war crimes and genocide. It is also alleged that but for the war emergency, Mr Netanyahu would have to face charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust by him and his close political allies during his fourth and fifth terms as Prime Minister. The Israeli police began investigating him in December 2016 and, subsequently, Mr Netanyahu was officially indicted for breach of trust, accepting bribes, and fraud on November 21, 2019. As a result, he was obliged to legally relinquish his ministry portfolios other than the office of Prime Minister.

By mid-December, Israel had dropped 29,000 munitions on Gaza, destroying or damaging 70 per cent of homes, destroying hundreds of cultural landmarks, and damaging dozens of cemeteries. Experts say that the scale and pace of destruction is among the most severe in recent history. An acute humanitarian crisis has developed, with healthcare on the brink of collapse, shortages of food, clean water, medicine and fuel due to the blockade, and electricity and communications blackouts. The United Nations has warned of potential famine. It was widely reported that there is “no safe place in Gaza”, as Israel struck areas it had previously told Palestinians to evacuate to. Nearly all 2.3 million Gazans have been internally displaced, while 250,000 to 500,000 Israelis were internally displaced. Israel has detained thousands of Palestinians and said it lost 353 additional soldiers in its invasion as of October 13, 2024.

The widespread civilian deaths have led to accusations of war crimes against both Israel and Hamas. As a result of the invasion, South Africa instituted proceedings in the ICJ, accusing Israel of committing genocide and requesting the ICJ for provisional measures of protection. Other accusations include the deliberate targeting of civilians, starving Gaza’s population, the use of human shields and holding of Israeli hostages by Hamas. With one per cent of Palestinians dead in Gaza, 85-90 per cent driven from their homes, and a humanitarian crisis that worsens every day, Israel possibly hopes that Gaza’s few survivors will escape into Egypt, whatever the cost.

This could also be the rationale for pursuing an equivalent of Atilla the Hun’s scorched-earth policy of destroying everything that allows the enemy to survive, including the deprivation and destruction of water, food, humans, animals, plants and any kind of tools and infrastructure. Israel says that it is eliminating terrorists, but then it bombs a hospital or a school and says -- producing no proof -- that terrorists were hiding in the hospital/school.

Such problems will no longer bedevil the strongest power in West Asia if Gaza is depopulated so that “between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty” as the founding charter of Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party trolls. That terra nullius will not then be a “territory without a master”. It will be entirely Israel’s property.