Just days after announcing its latest plan for the “total conquest” of the Gazan territories, on Monday, May 6, Israel dropped thousands of leaflets on southern Gaza. The macabre leaflets, illustrated with biblical references to Moses and the parting of the Red Sea, read: “Rafah is only the beginning” and “Residents of Gaza, the Israeli army is coming.” Now, after a week of relentless bombing, it seems Israel is following through on its promise.

Since last Wednesday, Israeli aircraft have been ravaging the Strip with bombing raids. The death toll already exceeds 500, with around 100 strikes per day. Hospitals, schools, makeshift shelters, tents — nothing escapes the Israeli onslaught. Gazans are being killed while they are awake, while they sleep, while they look for food, and while they wander through the apocalyptic ruins of their homes.

And now, Israel is preparing to further intensify its operations and deepen its encroachment into the strip. Five divisions have been mobilized, following the mass recruitment of reservists, and several tens of thousands of men and hundreds of armored vehicles are being deployed in the obscenely named operation “Gideon’s Chariots.”

For the time being, ground operations are still limited, but thanks to satellite images and images reaching us from the Strip, it is possible to reconstruct the movements of ground troops who began to advance this weekend beyond the buffer zones under Israeli control. Beit Lahia, in the far north, and Jabalia, in the northeast, are surrounded. In the latter, the Indonesian hospital is under siege. Drones are shooting at anyone who tries to flee the hospital, and aircraft have destroyed the electricity generator. Between the Mefalsim Corridor and the Netzarim Corridor, ground troops have penetrated deeply and Gaza City will soon be surrounded. In the center, Israel has launched an offensive on Deir al-Balah from the east. In the south, the army has advanced several kilometers northward.

The bulk of the mobilized forces have not yet been thrown into battle, no doubt due to the increasingly embarrassed reactions of Western governments, which are struggling to justify this new offensive after 592 days of genocide. 

But Israel seems intent on going all the way. In a press conference on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, hammered home the genocidal objectives he has given to the IDF. 

The aim of the war has not yet been achieved. We have a well-conceived plan. The world is telling us to end this war. I am prepared to do so on terms that satisfy Israel’s security: the hostages must be returned, the leaders of the Strip must go into exile, and the Trump plan must be implemented.

A few trucks carrying humanitarian supplies have been able to enter the enclave, but this is far from the 500 trucks required to transport the minimum aid that Gazans, who are on the brink of starvation, need to survive. The blockade has still not been lifted. Famine plagues millions of Palestinians, and disease continues to spread.

The War Cabinet’s Genocidal Plan

The war cabinet’s three-phase plan leaves no doubt about what will happen next. According to statements by an Israeli army officer, the first phase of the operation was completed before the weekend and involved completely razing Rafah in preparation for concentrating the entire population of the Strip there. The area was in fact flattened while the occupation forces built a number of infrastructures intended to facilitate the forced transfer of Gazans.

In the second phase, which Israel appears to have begun now, the military aims to drive Gazans to the far south by conducting an extremely intense bombing campaign and deploying massive ground forces. In the third phase, the military plans to rule the enclave. The fate of Gazans, confined to an open-air concentration camp in Rafah, is still unknown. Already, the Trump administration is negotiating with Libya to deport more than a million Gazans there. Other locations have been considered, such as Somalia, Somaliland, and Sudan.

This is where the so-called “humanitarian plan” proposed by the war cabinet comes in. Documents provided to the press lay out plans for the establishment of humanitarian “hubs” in the far south of the enclave. Once the population is concentrated there, at the end of the second phase, Israel would set up around ten distribution points and aid would only be distributed to Gazans identified by facial recognition technology, after their families have been registered. Distribution would be carried out by “experienced professionals, including those who already secured the Netzarim corridor during the recent ceasefire.” In other words: mercenaries hired by U.S. private security groups, under the direct control of the Israeli army. The identification of Gazans “eligible” for food rations raises fears that this operation is simply a way of establishing the list of people to be evacuated or, in the worst-case scenario, exterminated.

Its clear the genocide is in now in full swing. While this may not be its final stage, we are undeniably witnessing a terrifying acceleration. More than ever, there is an urgent need to restart and strengthen mobilizations in support of Palestine. The danger is imminent. The labor movement must throw itself with all its might into the battle alongside the youth and the members of the working class that have been mobilizing for Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli attack, to put an end to the economic, financial, and moral support of the imperialist powers to Israel. While French president Emmanuel Macron and a few other leaders have criticized this new offensive, there is no indication that they are preparing to impose sanctions, which, in any case, will be insufficient to end the ongoing genocide. In the United States, Israel’s main supporter, university youth have a decisive role to play alongside workers, and have been courageously standing up for Palestine. 

In the Middle East, mobilizations by workers and the popular classes are the only way to stop Israel and end the genocide. In Jordan, Egypt, and all other countries in the region, people must once again flood the streets to denounce the collaboration of their rulers in the mass murder of Palestinians. For instance, Egyptian president Al-Sisi is profiting from the genocide by entrusting smugglers close to the government with the task of extorting Gazans who want to flee, and has built a gigantic open-air prison in the Sinai to imprison Palestinians whom Israel threatens to deport from Gaza. And in Jordan, the government is fiercely repressing mobilizations and banning the Palestinian flag from the streets. 

With the Palestinian people on the brink of collapse, mass mobilization is the order of the day.

Originally Published in French in Revolution Permanente on May 21