ON SUNDAY Israel’s army chief, Eyal Zamir, announced that tens of thousands of Israeli reservists will be called up in a planned military occupation by Zionist forces of the entire Gaza Strip.
In his announcement Zamir said: ‘This week, we are sending tens of thousands of draft orders to our reserve personnel to intensify and expand our actions in Gaza.’
This announcement was followed yesterday with reports in the Israeli press that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet had formally voted to approve a plan to capture all of Gaza and remain in occupation indefinitely.
Two officials told Associated Press that this plan includes the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to southern Gaza.
Israel’s public broadcaster Kan cited officials ‘with detailed knowledge’ of this plan to completely occupy Gaza, saying that it would be gradual and could take months.
The extreme right-wing Zionist national security minister Itamar Ben-Givr, in an interview on Israeli Army Radio, said he wanted ‘a powerful’ expansion of the war saying: ‘We need to increase the intensity and continue until we achieve total victory. We must win a total victory’ before going on to demand that Israel bombs ‘the food and electricity supplies’ in Gaza.
In reality since the start of their genocidal war in Gaza the Zionist regime have been pursuing precisely this plan of mass murder, and since they broke the temporary ceasefire agreement they have been carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation including the bombing of food and aid depots.
Over 52,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children, have been killed by Israeli bombs and soldiers according to official estimates.
Despite this massive genocidal onslaught, the Israeli Zionists and occupation forces have failed to achieve any of Netanyahu’s aims of releasing captives, destroying Hamas and smashing the Palestinian resistance.
This plan, which was conceived by the Zionists months ago, represents a last desperate attempt to secure victory by the military occupation of Gaza and driving the entire Palestinian people out of their land and into neighbouring countries or into the mass graves that Palestinians are forced to bury their dead in.
What is clear, is that Netanyahu can only launch this occupation plan with the support of US imperialism and its allies in Europe and in Starmer’s Labour government. Netanyahu and the Israeli military certainly cannot rely on tens of thousands of reservists answering the call up.
Already, reports emerged last month that over 100,000 Israelis have stopped showing up for reserve duty in the Israeli Occupation Force, while on 10th April nearly 1,000 pilots and aircrew issued a public statement demanding a permanent end to the war in Gaza.
This latest plan for complete and permanent military occupation of Gaza has massively intensified the splits within Israel, with families of Israeli captives issuing a statement saying that this plan deserves to be called the ‘Smotrich-Netanyahu Plan’ for ‘sacrificing’ their loved ones.
Bezalel Smotrich is the right-wing Zionist finance minister, and the families’ statement reflects the widespread belief amongst Israelis that the war in Gaza cannot be won and is being deliberately prolonged solely to keep Netanyahu in power and out of the courts where he faces multiple charges of corruption.
Netanyahu is relying on the support of US president Donald Trump, which will of course command the support of American imperialism’s faithful ally the Starmer government. This is revealed in the reports that the full-scale occupation will be implemented following Trump’s visit to the Middle East next week.
There, Trump will be expected to give the green light to permanent occupation of Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
The working class in the UK, US and Europe must now intervene and advance support for the Palestinian people and opposition to genocide by taking action.
The working class must force their trade unions to call general strikes to bring down their capitalist governments and bring in workers’ governments that will end all support for the Zionist regime, immediately recognise the independent state of Palestine, and provide all the material aid required for its victory over the genocidal Israeli state.
This is the way to put an end to imperialist-backed genocide.
