Image by Tahir Osman.

Twenty years ago, Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza after the post-1967 years of occupation and settlement. An overriding factor governing the decision to withdraw was the issue of demography. With a population of over two million Palestinians, Gaza has always represented a significant part of a broad demographic problem facing the self-declared ‘only democracy in the Middle East.’ Within Israel and the occupied territories (the area that has been under direct or indirect Israeli control for 58 years) there are over 14 million people. Approximately half are Israeli Jews, the other half, Palestinians. This underreported reality stands sharply at odds with the notion of a Jewish and democratic state, especially one which aspires to the land borders of a Greater Israel.

Twenty-one months after Israel re-entered, Gaza stands in ruins – obliterated, to use the current Trumpian term. The State of Israel has unleashed terror upon the Strip on an unprecedented scale. The different elements of the collective punishment of Gaza have become familiar but still make for shocking reading: the indiscriminate bombing; the sniper and drone attacks; the withholding of aid; the domicide; the ongoing forced displacement; the restriction of access to water, food, healthcare; the targeting of civilians and razing of infrastructure.

That these things add up to genocide is hardly a matter for debate anymore. Instead, we need to ask where all this is headed. We can’t simply accept the hasbara narrative that Israel only wants the return of the hostages and the destruction of Hamas. The current state of the Strip cannot support this. There is no access to Gaza, but we can look at satellite photographs. We can look at the footage provided by Palestinians. We can also listen to Israelis in public, political and media spaces. More is going on here. This is a war that is going way beyond the oft-repeated objectives.

It seems perverse on the part of many Western commentators not to link the devastation of Gaza to current public discourse in Israel and to Zionist concerns about demography and Palestinian fertility. There are........

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