Since Israel broke the ceasefire on March 18, massacres have continued and intensified throughout the Gaza Strip. With the unwavering support of the new Trump administration, Netanyahu and his government have launched a new large-scale operation and resumed their invasion of Gaza, particularly in the south of the enclave. Whether it’s bombings, humanitarian aid blockades, or ground incursions, the hell continues in Gaza.
Since the resumption of genocidal operations, the Hamas-led Health Ministry announced that 1,482 people had been killed by the IDF in the Strip. On April 9, the Israeli military attacked a residential building in the Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, killing twenty people instantly. On Monday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) shelled a journalists’ tent in Khan Younis, burning a Palestinian journalist to death and seriously wounding several of his colleagues. On March 31, 15 Palestinian Red Crescent rescue workers were murdered by Israeli forces, who then attempted to hide their bodies, sparking international outcry. These massacres demonstrate Netanyahu’s determination to prevent the possibility of the residents of Gaza regaining any semblance of stability and, above all, to continue creating the conditions for genuine ethnic cleansing.
In fact, due to the blockade imposed by Israel for more than a month, no more humanitarian aid is entering the Strip. An unsustainable situation for the inhabitants of Gaza that led UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to denounce “the floodgates of horror [reopened]” by Israel, calling Gaza an “extermination camp [where] civilians are trapped in an endless loop of death.”
At the same time, two divisions of Israeli soldiers have been deployed in Rafah since April 2 to, as the Israeli Defense Minister put it: “crush and clear the area of terrorists, and seize large areas to be incorporated into Israel’s security zones.” This was confirmed this Wednesday by Haaretz, which revealed that, according to Israeli defense sources, the IDF was planning to expand the buffer zone bordering the south of the enclave to include Rafah. In other words, 75 additional square kilometers may soon be under Israeli army control, or one-fifth of the Strip. Although many Gazans have already left the area to escape the massive destruction inflicted by the IDF, the remaining civilians are expected to be forced to flee north of the Morag Highway, towards the “humanitarian zones” located around Khan Younis.
This operation foreshadows further large-scale massacres as well as the creation of “concentration camps” to allow the annexation of the enclave. In fact, according to testimonies from Israeli soldiers, the IDF gave the order to “shoot to kill” in the Gaza buffer zone and destroy all buildings to create a veritable “kill zone.” This is a strategy of destruction and forced displacement of the population that appears to align with the annexation ambitions advocated by the Israeli Far Right, as well as calls for a “takeover” of the Strip and the deportation of Gazans made by Trump during his first weeks in office.
Concentration Camps and Annexation
An article in the Israeli-Palestinian media outlet 972+ describes the strategic shift undertaken by the Israeli government in recent weeks. Faced with the obvious impossibility of deporting millions of Palestinians — the infamous “voluntary departure” desired by Trump — the Israeli General Staff is considering other options to carry out its plan to annex the enclave. According to an Israeli journalist, the IDF intends to “transfer the population of Gaza to a new permanent humanitarian zone, from which it will be impossible to leave.” He continued: “This time, the IDF will not allow anyone to refuse evacuation. Anyone who remains outside the humanitarian zone will be considered an accomplice [of Hamas].”
This strategy was timidly confirmed by Israel Katz, Minister of Defense, during a public statement in which he spoke directly to the people of Gaza: “Residents of Gaza, this is your final warning. The next stage will be much more violent […]. The evacuation of the population from the combat zones will soon resume.” The objectives of the invasion of Rafah and its inclusion in the buffer zone seem clear: Israel is preparing to displace Gazans with evacuation orders and bombings to extend its control over the southern part of the enclave; a method similar to the one Israel already employed last October, when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) besieged northern Gaza. Israeli forces then forced hundreds of thousands of people to move south, depriving them of food and water and increasing airstrikes and ground incursions.
These new developments appear to be part of an even more radical development. This time, the Netanyahu government, in line with Trump’s genocidal plan and the annexationist ambitions of the Israeli Far Right, seems unwilling to hide its intentions, which are to establish total control over the Gaza Strip. Such an objective would require concentrating millions of displaced Palestinians in restricted areas, in short, veritable concentration camps where Israel would only have to wait for “hunger and desperation to do the rest.” In other words, the evacuation from Rafah to the humanitarian zone of Al-Mawasi could well be a first step toward establishing these concentration camps, with the aim of annexing the enclave and continuing the genocide.
The Emergence of a Genocidal Consensus in Israeli Society
The desire expressed by Netanyahu and his government to begin a process of colonization of the Gaza Strip must be seen in a broader regional context. Although the Iran-led “axis of resistance” has been considerably weakened since the beginning of the genocide by the defeat of Hezbollah and the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, Israel desires to continue on the path of exterminating the Palestinians. This is even more true with the return to the White House of one of Netanyahu’s most fervent supporters, Donald Trump.
In this context, and to repair the affront represented by the moral victory of the Palestinians at the signing of the ceasefire last January, the Netanyahu government is striving to “finally resolve” the Palestinian question. Far-right figures such as ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir — who returned to the government after the ceasefire collapsed — as well as a growing segment of Israeli public opinion, are jumping on the bandwagon.
A mid-March study by Israeli scholar Tamir Sorek found that 82 percent of Jewish Israelis now support the forced deportation of Gazans to other countries, and 56 percent favor the expulsion of Arab Israelis. These figures have practically doubled compared to a similar survey conducted in 2003. As the scholar points out, the resurgence and widespread adoption of these ideas, formulated by Zionism’s founding fathers, are part of the gradual rise of religious ultranationalism in political spheres since the early 2000s, of which Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are embodiments. In this regard, the government established in 2022 relied for the first time in its history on far-right groups that advocate an uninhibited Zionism, such as Puissance Juive.
Since the beginning of the genocide, the number of speeches openly advocating the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has increased, especially among advocates of the most radical religious Zionism. For several weeks now, in particular, a consensus has been forming within the Israeli political class and civil society around the need to colonize the enclave, as evidenced by the figures mentioned above, but also by the call of a Knesset member to “kill all adult Palestinians in Gaza,” or the declaration by a lawyer and television presenter last February: “We must erase all traces of the deadly mutations in Gaza, from the delivery rooms to the last elderly person.”
All these elements raise fears for the worst for the people of Gaza, while all Western imperialist states continue to show unwavering support for the Netanyahu government, despite some superficial nuances. The intensification of bombing and the expansion of Israeli ground operations in the Gaza Strip portend more than ever new mass population displacements and massacres. In this context, international solidarity movements with Palestine have a crucial role to play in denouncing its imperialism, with the aim of stopping the arms shipments to Israel that allow it to continue the genocide.
Originally published in Spanish on April 10 in La Izquierda Diario.