In an interview where he outlines an extremely depressing and disturbing future for his country Israel, the internationally acclaimed columnist of Haaretz newspaper, Gideon Levy, has bluntly said that if Israel “invades Gaza it will be one of the biggest crimes of war Israel has ever committed.”
In a 21-minute interview with Karan Thapar for The Wire, Levy, who is the author of The Punishment of Gaza and the winner of the Olof Palme Prize and Sokolov Award, says if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threat “to change the Middle East” and defence minister Yoav Gallant’s threat that “Gaza will never go back to what it was” are implemented, Israel could be “on the brink of a wider war”.
Asked about the very disturbing and depressing picture that he is painting of his country’s prospects, Levy said that “in realism Israel needs a miracle” adding the chances of that are very small. He said that people are in denial of their treatment of the Palestinians and they have played with fire for years, if not decades.
Levy says: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bears very great responsibility for what happened and he must pay the price.”
With the situation in Gaza moving steadily, if not acceleratedly, towards a climatic denouement, the United Nations this morning announced that Israel wants all of Gaza north of Wadi Gaza to be vacated in 24 hours. That’s 1.1 million people. The Israeli military has told these Gazans to evacuate to the south and only return when they are permitted to do so.
Speaking about the way Israel has treated the Palestinian people over the last several years or decades, he says: “We’ll fire at innocent people, take out people’s eyes and smash their faces, expel, confiscate, rob, grab people from their beds, carry out ethnic cleansing and, of course, continue with the unbelievable siege of the Gaza strip, and everything will be alright.”
In fact, Levy asks of all the Palestinian people – and not just those of Gaza: “How is it possible to forget that these are human beings whose ancestors were expelled from their land and placed in refugee camps where they would remain? These were human beings whom Israel dispossessed and expelled, whom it conquered again in their land of refuge and then turned into animals in a cage.”
Looking to the future, to the extent it is possible to do so, Levy asks: “Will Israel learn its lesson? No. … the threats of ‘flattening Gaza’ prove only one thing: we haven’t learned a thing. The arrogance is here to stay even though Israel is paying a high price once again.”