Israel: no need for restraint
Summary: Israel brushes aside empty calls for restraint from its
Western friends and allies fully understanding that it can continue a
campaign of genocide in Gaza secure in the knowledge that neither the US
nor Iran want a full-blown regional war.
After the 2 January assassination
of a senior Hamas official in a suburb of Beirut the question in
everyone’s mind was how would Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah
respond. Saleh al-Arouri was killed in a drone strike along with six
others in an attack that Israel as per usual neither confirmed nor
denied. Al-Arouri, long an Israeli target even before 7 October, was a
founder of the Hamas military wing and had close links with Hezbollah.
In a television speech on Wednesday Nasrallah rolled out the often
used tropes about Israeli and US imperialism, he spoke of the axis of
resistance while condemning the violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty and
he saluted the “martyrs” while promising vengeance but crucially he did not threaten to escalate attacks on Israel.
Restraint as the Gaza war grinds on is the name of the game for everyone, everyone save Israel. The Israelis have withdrawn
some ground troops but have stepped up their relentless aerial
bombardment. Thus far more than 22,000 have been killed, nearly 60,000
wounded and more than a million internally displaced. The vast majority
of victims are civilians and though the IDF continues to insist it does
not deliberately target civilians the evidence is overwhelmingly clear
that is precisely what it is doing. Indeed many in the military, in the
government and in Netanyahu’s Likud party have unequivocally stated the
aim of the war is to drive Palestinians out of Gaza while killing and
maiming as many as possible in the process.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir
on 1 January in what he termed “a right, just and moral solution” urged
that Israel co-ordinate and “encourage” the migration of Palestinians
in Gaza to what he called friendly countries around the world, thus
emptying the Strip in preparation for Israel’s seizure of it. The
following day on Israeli TV Likud Knesset member Moshe Saada declared that “today it is clear that all Gazans must be destroyed.” What the world is witnessing live and in real time is a genocide.
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