Netanyahu’s unwinnable war
Summary: the Israeli PM has once again seemingly wrecked efforts
to secure a ceasefire in Gaza while rubbing salt in the wound by
shuttering Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel.
The lead editorial
in yesterday’s Haaretz edition was scathing. In response to Sunday’s
closure of Al Jazeera’s office in Jerusalem on the orders of the
Netanyahu government the Israeli daily said:
In making this anti-democratic decision, Israel took a step down the slippery slope on the way to becoming a country that silences people.
Previous governments that closed Al-Jazeera's offices were Egypt and
the Gulf countries. In any case, Al-Jazeera shouldn't be shuttered, but
doing so may turn out to be only a preface to a policy in which any
media outlet, Israeli or international, that the government doesn't like
is shut down. That's how it is when there's an extreme right-wing
government that has declared war on freedom of _expression_ and on the
rule of law in Israel.
The government justified its decision by claiming Al Jazeera, whose
owners are Qatar’s ruling family, was “a mouthpiece for Hamas.”
Doha has worked hard toward achieving a ceasefire and a release of more hostages after being instrumental in an early temporary pause in the fighting that saw 105 hostages released. And it looked that over the past week-end real progress
was being made until Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to have wrecked the
talks by placing new demands on the table and then doubling down with
the shuttering of Al Jazeera.
Israeli critics of Netanyahu, many of whom can be found in the pages of Haaretz, were quick to draw what seems an obvious conclusion.
“Netanyahu is fleeing from a hostage deal. The closer it gets, the
faster he runs to avoid it” Yossi Verter wrote before adding:
At least twice in recent months he has sabotaged the sensitive
moves toward a deal, whether through public statements or covert
messages, or by curbing the mandate of the negotiating team. It was no
different this time.
Meanwhile the IDF has ramped up preparations for a land invasion of
the already besieged and partly destroyed city of Rafah in the south of
Gaza which is housing more than 1 million refugees from Gaza City, Khan
Younis and farming communities in the north of the Strip. On Monday
morning an IDF spokesperson
detailed what he called “a limited operation” that is coupled with an
order that 100,000 people leave immediately. They were told to move
north to a thin strip of land along the Mediterranean coast, land that
humanitarian aid organisations have said is uninhabitable. Hamas called
the order a “dangerous escalation.”
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