Israel’s self-declared Gaza safe zones are Catch-22 death traps

 

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Israel’s self-declared safe zones trap the Jewish state in the contradictions of its nine-month-long failed campaign to destroy Hamas.

It’s one and one is two that Hamas operatives seek cover in such zones.

Determined to target Hamas wherever and whenever, no matter the cost to Palestinian lives and infrastructure, renders Israel’s notion of safe zones meaningless each time it violates the zones' sanctity. The zones are a pillar of Israel’s claim that its military is among the world's most moral.

Saturday’s Israeli bombing of Al Mawasi, a one-kilometre wide, 14-kilometre long barren piece of land along the Mediterranean coast, proves the point. It aimed to kill Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif.

Al Mawasi destruction. Credit: DPA

The optics of fighter jets and drones pounding the tents of displaced Palestinians instructed by Israel to move to Al Mawasi overshadow the fate of Mr. Deif.

Hamas has denied that Mr. Deif was killed, while Israel has yet to confirm whether it succeeded in killing him.

The attack, like numerous such earlier assaults, raises questions of proportionality and Israel’s sincerity when it attacks areas it has declared safe for innocent Palestinians because it believes it has an opportunity to target a Hamas operative.

The attack killed 90 Palestinians and wounded 300 others, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Reports that the attack hit a gas complex and a water station days after Israel worked to restore electricity to a nearby desalination and water plant that would supply Al Mawasi, an area void of essential services, further highlight the self-defeating aspect of the safe zones.

Like all the assaults on safe zones and innocent Palestinians, Saturday’s attack deepens the reputational black hole Israel has dug for itself.

 

Source: X

It’s a hole that will only become deeper once the guns fall silent in Gaza and independent access to the Strip is eased, generating a new wave of stories about the horror and devastation experienced by Gazans.

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert warned in an op-ed this weekend that International Criminal Court “arrest warrants will be issued against the prime minister, leaders, cabinet ministers and commanders personally – but it is the State of Israel that will be tried in the end.”

To be sure, Hamas, too, will not emerge from those stories untainted. The court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, has asked for arrest warrants not only for Mr. Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, but also for three Hamas leaders, including Mr. Deif.

Whether Mr. Deif, a man with near-mythical status in Gaza after escaping capture and surviving several assassination attempts during and before the war, including one in 2002 when he lost an eye, was killed in the latest attack, Saturday’s assault is either an opportunity to achieve a breakthrough in ongoing ceasefire talks or a serious setback that delays the inevitable.

Mohammed Deif. Source: Tehran Times

Israel sees Mr. Deif, one of its most wanted men, as a mastermind of Hamas’ October 7 attack in which some 1,200, primarily civilians, Israelis and foreigners were killed, and 251 taken hostage. Israel assaulted Gaza in response.

Israel imprisoned Mr. Deif in 1989. He built Hamas’ military wing, the Al Qassem Brigades, after his release.

Israel accuses Mr. Deif of planning and supervising bus bombings, which killed tens of Israelis in 1996, and of involvement in the capture and killing of three Israeli soldiers in the mid-1990s.

Mr. Netanyahu needs Saturday’s attack on Al Mawasi to have killed Mr. Deif in his uphill battle to deflect criticism of Israel’s indiscriminate, disproportionate, and sledgehammer approach to pursuing Hamas that turns safe zones into death traps.

Mr. Deif’s death would offer Mr. Netanyahu an opportunity to declare a significant success in a war that has failed to achieve any of its goals: the military and political destruction of Hamas, the freeing of Hamas-held hostages, and preventing Gaza from being a launching pad for Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.

Theoretically, Mr. Deif’s death could enable Mr. Netanyahu to soft-peddle his insistence on a temporary rather than a permanent ceasefire so that he can resume the war once an Israeli-Hamas prisoner swap has been completed.

Mr. Netanyahu’s insistence is the main stumbling block in indirect talks with Hamas, mediated by the United States, Qatar, and Egypt. Hamas demands that the ceasefire lead to an end of the war.

More likely is that Mr. Netanyahu, irrespective of whether Mr. Deif is dead or alive, will maintain his insistence on continuing the war.

Mr. Deif’s death would strengthen the prime minister’s assertion that the war can only be won militarily. Similarly, a failure to have killed Mr. Deif in Saturday’s attack would reinforce Mr. Netanyahu’s resolve.

The tragedy is that Mr. Deif’s survival would likely strengthen Hamas in its determination to emerge from the war, by definition, a winner as a result of Israel’s failure to achieve its war goals, while his death would not put an end to Palestinian resistance.

On the contrary, Mr. Deif would become one more martyr for a generation of Palestinians traumatised by the war with no prospects and nothing more to lose – a sense likely to be reinforced when Palestinians return to the rubble that once was their home.

The “loss of family security in an already insecure environment risks pushing children to the brink of a mental health crisis and poses a significant threat to children's fragile coping mechanisms… Only by…focusing on…finding a durable and just solution will children have a more hopeful future," said Save the Children mental health advisor Marcia Brophy already before this Gaza war erupted.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.