These are times of bad news. The war in Gaza marks six months this Sunday without the powerful Israeli army having been able to overthrow the leadership of the Hamas terrorist group or strike down all of its militias. There is, however, a
mountain of more than 33 thousand dead
, mostly non-combatant civilians who, with their tragedy, snatched Israel's victory in the propaganda war.
The more than two million survivors in the Strip are zombies exposed to
imminent epidemics and famines
if the bombs do not deal with them first. Everything is a journey of horror that built a haze over the bloody terrorist assault of October 7 that triggered this crisis with the result of the murder of 1,200 civilians, one of the most serious episodes against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
Above that background and due to how this war was faced, we only see the images of a devastating military bulldozer turning Gaza into
the largest refugee camp in the world
covered in the rubble of what were its cities, hospitals, temples, schools and housing.
Something has gone wrong. The strategy of Benjamin Netanyahu and his influential fundamentalist ministers is not innocent, but it has locked the government in double external and internal pressure. Every week, lately daily, marches are repeated in the country demanding that the premier in charge of the war
resign and anticipate elections.
According to surveys, seven out of ten Israelis demand it.
Wide distrust in the premier
This enormous majority agrees that Hamas should be eliminated but
does not trust the president
because it warns that he has turned the conflict into a political tool for personal use, as they blame him from the White House. The tension worsened this week when opposition leader Benny Gantz, a popular politician and former general, minister in the war cabinet created by the conflict,
after a trip to the United States, proposed moving the elections forward to September, which would force the fall of the Executive.
A serious wedge in the power structure.
Joe Biden and the Israeli premier. On Thursday they engaged in a tough telephone conversation in which the American leader placed harsh conditions on the Israeli president. AP Photo
The ruler tries to ignore these pressures because he knows that his allies cannot abandon Israel and essentially because if he returns to the plain he would have to face corruption processes that could almost certainly land him in jail.
At the same time, the partners of the ultra-nationalist and ultra-religious minority parties that accompany him protect the alliance because
they aspire to cleanse that territory of native Palestinians
and ideally also the West Bank, administered by the weakened secular government of Ramallah, an enemy of Hamas. It is an absurd and dangerous illusion. There are five million Palestinians, two in the Strip, the others in the territory occupied by more than 800 thousand settlers. On both borders they have no intention of abandoning their lands.
The consequence of these fundamentalist ambitions, which are not new, is that sooner rather than later Israel will have to take care of the entire population because
it has blocked
the only sensible solution, the creation of a Palestinian State to protect them. And he has done so by clandestinely strengthening Hamas to keep the adversary camp divided, as his political colleagues reproach Netanyahu.
In this confusing panorama, which adds the inexplicable absence of a consistent plan for the day after the war, the coalition slides on a knife edge. No one would be wrong if they assume that the government is facing
the moment of greatest risk to its stability
. That is why suspicions arise regarding a series of serious events in recent days.
The leader of the opposition and former Minister of Defense, Benny Gantz EFE
Last weekend, Israel
caused nearly fifty deaths
in an unprecedented bombing of Aleppo in Syria, mostly soldiers from that country and militiamen from the Lebanese organization Hezbollah who guarded large weapons depots there.
Shortly after, this Monday, its planes destroyed the headquarters of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, a diplomatic building protected by the Vienna Convention and which is also the residence of Tehran's ambassador.
The attack killed a handful of prominent officers, including Mohammed Reza Zahedi, the leader of the Revolutionary Guard abroad.
The last chapter happened on Tuesday when a humanitarian caravan with supplies for the desperate civilians of Gaza, with the vehicles widely identified and on a
route agreed upon with the army
, were devastated by three missiles, one of them hitting the logo on the roof directly. of one of the cars of the NGO in charge, the
World Central Kitchen
of the Spanish American chef José Andrés. Seven international operatives of the organization were killed in the attack.
A common thread would seem to link these episodes. The two blows in Syria, the first against Hezbollah and the second against Iran, were a test of resistance to produce a reaction that if configured would ignite
an expanded war in the region.
Such an escalation would produce several effects. It would trigger an automatic alliance of the Western powers with Israel that would dissolve the current questions. At the same time, the current Executive would be preserved by diluting internal pressure and demands for early elections due to the threat that such a conflagration would imply.
The attack against the diplomatic headquarters in Damascus also exposed the limits of the United States in containing and putting its difficult ally on track. All of this happens as Washington is on track to approve the sale of F15 fighters to Israel in a
$15 billion package,
White House sources confirmed to CNN.
Massive marches in Tel Aviv against Netanyahu and his extremist partners in the government. AP Photo
In this context, this step, in addition to other weapons already agreed upon, carries a significant political cost for Joe Biden in the midst of an electoral campaign whose bases reproach him for the partnership he maintains with Israel.
Donald Trump has
also distanced himself from Netanyahu
for the same reasons, in addition to the fact that the tycoon seeks liberal voters in his party who do not see Netanyahu as an equal nor do they approve of his behavior.
This background explains the new harsh conversation between the leaders this Thursday in which Biden warned Netanyahu that he will condition American aid on the verifiable protection of civilians and the provision of an immediate ceasefire. It is not clear that this last point will occur. The White House knows this and is considering not authorizing the use of its weapons for the assault that
the Israeli leader plans in the city of Rafah
on the border with Egypt, where more than a million and a half desperate people are gathered, with the cost in lives. which it supposes.
An attack that stopped humanitarian aid
The attack on the humanitarian convoy aborted the alternative of a naval route from Cyprus that would provide an important and decisive flow of food and health assistance to the Gazans. The NGO ships, with
tons of undistributed food,
left Gaza and the other organizations on the ground retreated.
An evolution that is celebrated by the ultra government formations that
reject aid to the population of Gaza
with the pretext that it would benefit Hamas, but with the undeniable hope that the aggravated calamity will produce a stampede and people will flee to Egypt never to return. Hunger as a weapon.
Netanyahu was quick to apologize to his soldiers for the attack, saying
“it was unintentional. Things that happen in wars
,” he sputtered. Biden repudiated it: “It is not an isolated incident,” he said, noting that it is a method. Erin Gore, the head of Chef Andrés' organization, rightly
denies the error status of the episode and maintains that it was a “directed military attack”
against them as a reprimand and warning to humanitarian organizations. The famous chef has noted the same: "It was not an unfortunate mistake in the fog of war... they seek to reduce humanitarian aid to desperate levels."
In a suggestive statement during those hours of the incident, military sources admitted to the newspaper
Haaretz
their
“frustration”
over what happened, revealing that “
units in the field decide to launch attacks without any preparation and far from the protection of our forces.”
Remarkable autonomy.
It is worth concluding with this brief memory. Recently the
BBC in London
published a report on the West Bank that included interviews with settlers, including a leader of the Nachala (Homeland) movement, Daniella Weiss, who "organizes"
the future move of her followers to Gaza,
preferably to the beach area facing the Mediterranean. .
Confronted by journalists about the presence of the Palestinian population, she dismissed it.
“The world is wide, Africa is big, the world will absorb the people of Gaza, the good Arabs do not want to live there.”
The woman does not deny that what she proposes is
ethnic cleansing,
"call it what you want, cleansing or apartheid,"
she said, "
I choose the way to protect the State of Israel."
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