DAILY TRIFECTA + 1: Finalizing Netanyahu's "Solution" For Gaza
Be careful when fighting monsters...
TITLE: Why moving to the Sinai peninsula is the solution for Gaza's Palestinians - opinion
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-779510
EXCERPT: The battles in the northern Strip generated significant damage and destruction of buildings utilized by Hamas. Damage to the immense terror-tunnel system further destabilized the metropolis’s substrate. Major portions of the metropolis are considerably incapacitated and cannot be simply fixed. Rather, the damaged and destroyed structures must be completely torn down. The tunneled – and consequently exploded and bulldozed – soil must undergo extensive environmental and engineering rehabilitation.
In other words, the metropolis has to be fully evacuated, redesigned, monitored, and only then rebuilt to provide habitable and economic conducive conditions. Such an effort requires unique expertise and immense funding and will take considerable time that cannot be calculated. Therefore, the war is anticipated to end with a unique humanitarian challenge of how to construct a better future for the people of Gaza.
Since Israel’s unconditional turnover of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority in 2005, Gazans have completely failed to generate a productive Palestinian-administered entity, despite generous economic support, mainly from America, Europe, Qatar, and the UN. This may be associated with the coupled effect of an intrinsic hatred-focused, fanatic, anti-Israel Islamic culture, and links with Iran, along with limited geographical conditions, poor natural and human resources, and a high population density. This situation raises serious doubts that any type of future self-sustainable efforts will yield a stable and free socioeconomic culture and promising future in the Strip. A creative solution is needed ASAP.
The adjoining Sinai Peninsula, in essence, is the exact opposite of the Gaza Strip, comprising one of the most suitable places on Earth to provide the people of Gaza with hope and a peaceful future. Covering 60,000 km² (165 times larger than the Strip), its population is barely around one-third of Gaza’s, making it one of the emptiest places in the Mediterranean region. Although under Egyptian governance, it is an integral geographic-geological continuation of Israel and the Gaza Strip, with which it shares a 200 km. and 14 km. long border, respectively.
Therefore, the geographic setting of the Mediterranean coast of northern Sinai is also a physical continuation of the Gaza Strip with ample, shallow groundwater in the northeast. Here, due to the intensive smuggling of arms to Hamas via Sinai in the last few years, Egypt fully destroyed the residential infrastructure bordering the Gaza Strip, and expelled the local population.
In northwestern Sinai, Egypt has invested immensely in building for agriculture, including freshwater canals. Furthermore, Egypt has surprisingly wired Sinai with excellent infrastructure, overshooting its civilian and industrial needs. These include an array of paved roads and highways connected by tunnels beneath the Suez Canal to mainland Egypt.
The facts demonstrate that the northern Sinai Peninsula is an ideal location to develop a spacious resettlement for the people of Gaza.
TITLE: War on Gaza: Netanyahu looking for countries 'to absorb' ethnically cleansed Palestinians
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-israel-palestine-netanyahu-countries-absorb-palestinians.
EXCERPT: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told his supporters that he is working on finding countries ready to "absorb" Palestinians from Gaza.
The Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom said Netanyahu made the comments at a meeting of his Likud party on Monday, in which he sought to clarify Israel's plans for after the war had ended.
"Our problem is countries that are ready to absorb them and we are working on it," Netanyahu said.
"The world is already discussing the possibilities of voluntary immigration,” he said, adding that a team must be established to “ensure that those who want to leave Gaza to a third country can do so. It needs to be settled. It has strategic importance for the day after the war."
His words align with statements made by other senior Likud figures. Former Likud minister Danny Danon, for example, has publicly called on western states to accept refugees from Gaza.
Palestinians have long said Israel's current campaign in Gaza is aimed at ensuring their permanent expulsion from the area.
Israel's military strategy is seemingly aimed at making Gaza uninhabitable by destroying anything that sustains life, hoping that Palestinians will then “voluntarily” leave.
TITLE: Israel has waged one of this century’s most destructive wars in Gaza
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2023/israel-war-destruction-gaza-record-pace/
EXCERPT: The Washington Post analyzed satellite imagery, airstrike data and U.N. damage assessments, and interviewed more than 20 aid workers, health-care providers, and experts in munitions and aerial warfare. The evidence shows that Israel has carried out its war in Gaza at a pace and level of devastation that likely exceeds any recent conflict, destroying more buildings, in far less time, than were destroyed during the Syrian regime’s battle for Aleppo from 2013 to 2016 and the U.S.-led campaign to defeat the Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, in 2017.
The Post also found that the Israeli military has conducted repeated and widespread airstrikes in proximity to hospitals, which are supposed to receive special protection under the laws of war. Satellite imagery reviewed by Post reporters revealed dozens of apparent craters near 17 of the 28 hospitals in northern Gaza, where the bombing and fighting were most intense during the first two months of war, including 10 craters that suggested the use of bombs weighing 2,000 pounds, the largest in regular use.
“There’s no safe space. Period,” said Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who visited Gaza on Dec. 4. “I haven’t passed one street where I didn’t see destruction of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals.”
The war has wounded more than 53,320 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 7,700 Palestinian children have been killed, and women and children make up around 70 percent of the dead, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which also says that 1.9 million people have been displaced, equivalent to 85 percent of the population. The vast majority of Gazan civilians fleeing the invasion are not allowed by Israel and Egypt to leave.
“The scale of Palestinian civilian deaths in such a short period of time appears to be the highest such civilian casualty rate in the 21st century,” said Michael Lynk, who served as the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories from 2016 to 2022.
TITLE: Israel’s military campaign in Gaza seen as among the most destructive in recent history, experts say
https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-bombs-destruction-death-toll-scope-419488c511f83c85baea22458472a796
EXCERPT: By some measures, destruction in Gaza has outpaced Allied bombings of Germany during World War II.
Between 1942 and 1945, the allies attacked 51 major German cities and towns, destroying about 40-50% of their urban areas, said Robert Pape, a U.S. military historian. Pape said this amounted to 10% of buildings across Germany, compared to over 33% across Gaza, a densely populated territory of just 140 square miles (360 square kilometers).
“Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history,” said Pape. “It now sits comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.”
The U.S.-led coalition’s 2017 assault to expel the Islamic State group from the Iraqi city of Mosul was considered one of the most intense attacks on a city in generations. That nine-month battle killed around 10,000 civilians, a third of them from coalition bombardment, according an Associated Press investigation at the time.
During the 2014-2017 campaign to defeat IS in Iraq, the coalition carried out nearly 15,000 strikes across the country, according to Airwars, a London-based independent group that tracks recent conflicts. By comparison, the Israeli military said last week it has conducted 22,000 strikes in Gaza.