| President-elect
Donald Trump has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “do
what you have to do” to “finish the job” in the Middle East. The
incoming U.S. leader campaigned on restoring “peace” to the region and
wants Israel to wrap up its military objectives in both the Gaza Strip
and Lebanon ahead of his January inauguration, according to Israeli
sources. But Trump, who in his first term doled out numerous political
gifts to Netanyahu and his allies on the Israeli right, has not offered
any public clarity on how he thinks the wars should end. Netanyahu,
who last week axed his defense minister in favor of a pliant loyalist,
doesn’t seem to be waiting to find out. Over the weekend, Israel pressed
its advantage, pounding targets in Gaza and Lebanon with warplanes.
Israeli officials are preparing to expand their ground offensive in
southern Lebanon, where Israel is attempting to reduce the military
footprint of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant organization. In
the process, Israel has flattened whole towns and villages and displaced
a quarter of the population. In Gaza,
too, Israel is further squeezing the territory’s devastated northern
areas. Some 100,000 people still in the north are trying to survive
without access to new food or aid supplies, with Israel seemingly
cutting off the flow of new assistance as it tries to root out Hamas
cells still operating in pockets. On Friday, the U.N.-affiliated Famine
Review Committee warned that there was a “strong likelihood” that famine
was imminent in northern Gaza. “It can therefore be assumed that
starvation, malnutrition, and excess mortality due to malnutrition and
disease, are rapidly increasing in these areas,” the panel of U.N.
experts wrote. ![]() | | |
| Aid
workers and U.N. officials paint a picture of complete devastation.
Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for the U.N. agency for Palestinians,
UNRWA, posted a video of her recent drive through stretches of northern
Gaza, showing an endless moonscape of cratered buildings and desolate,
debris-strewn streets. “There is no way of telling where the destruction
starts or ends,” she wrote online. “No matter from what direction you
enter Gaza City, homes, hospitals, schools, health clinics, mosques,
apartments, restaurants — all completely flattened. An entire society
now a graveyard.” The staggering human
toll of more than 13 months of war is still being measured. An analysis
published by the United Nations’ human rights office on Friday of
casualties in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023 — when Hamas launched its deadly
terrorist strike on southern Israel — found that almost 70 percent of
those killed were women and children. The ages most represented among
the dead were 5- to 9-year-olds. Some 80 percent of those killed
perished inside residential buildings or housing, fueling allegations
that Israel has been indiscriminate in its campaign against Hamas. “Our
monitoring indicates that this unprecedented level of killing and
injury of civilians is a direct consequence of the failure to comply
with fundamental principles of international humanitarian law,” U.N.
human rights chief Volker Türk said in the statement. Israeli
officials repeatedly dismiss such charges, insisting their conduct is
in compliance with international law and a consequence of Hamas’s
infiltration into all corners of Gazan society. In this defense, they
have largely been backed by the now lame-duck Biden administration,
which has consistently shielded Israel from international censure. Still,
Israel faces a U.S.-imposed deadline this week to improve access to
humanitarian aid to Gaza or face potential restrictions to U.S. military
assistance. It could be the first instance that the Biden
administration has actually enforced U.S. laws that condition military
aid to foreign countries. In response to apparent U.S. pressure, Israel
said it was opening a new crossing in southern Gaza. But humanitarian
organizations frequently warn that the transit of such aid to Gaza’s
northern areas is often impeded, thanks both to Israeli military
operations and the collapse of any semblance of law and order in the
territory, with gangs and looters ransacking convoys. Even
if the United States determines that Israel has not satisfied its
concerns, Trump may well scrap any restrictions placed on U.S. military
assistance to the Jewish state the moment he takes office. Netanyahu and
his allies on the far right in Israel cheered Trump’s election, knowing
that the U.S. president was more likely to once more give them carte
blanche to enact their sweeping agenda. Analysts suspect Netanyahu may
resist agreeing to formal cease-fires on either front of the war until
Trump is in power, a move that would give the incoming president a
symbolic victory and deny one to his predecessor. “There’s
an understanding between Netanyahu and Trump that they will work to end
the wars,” a source familiar with Israel’s thinking told the Financial
Times, suggesting any diplomatic breakthrough may come after Trump’s
inauguration. “Netanyahu wants to help him reach that achievement. He
didn’t guarantee it, but the notion is that he will wait with any kind
of significant move in Lebanon or Gaza until January 20.” All
the while, the calamity in Gaza is getting worse. Some Israeli
officials have suggested that residents of certain areas of northern
Gaza will not be allowed to return, giving further substance to claims
by rights groups and humanitarians that Israel may be carrying out de
facto ethnic cleansing in the north. As
it is, the conditions there are intolerable. Jan Egeland, a former
Norwegian diplomat and head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, toured the
territory this past week and said the situation in the northern and
central areas of Gaza “is worse than anything I could imagine as a
long-time aid worker.” “What I saw and
heard in the north of Gaza was a population pushed beyond breaking
point,” he added in a statement. “Families torn apart, men and boys
detained and separated from their loved ones, and families unable to
even bury their dead. Some have gone days without food, drinking water
is nowhere to be found. It is scene after scene of absolute despair.” Saeed
Kilani, a northern Gaza resident, told my colleagues this past week
that food was impossible to find and water so saline that it was unfit
for “animals or plants, yet we have no choice but to drink it.” He added
that, during Israel’s initial invasion of the territory, “we survived
by eating grass, but now even that is gone. |