While eyes remain peeled on Israel’s increasingly violent and expanding campaign in Lebanon, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is proving ever more predatory with the Gaza Strip.  With aggrandizing impunity, more territory is being acquired for familiar reasons: Hamas is on the run and needs to be crushed further (the organisation is proving oddly resilient and contradictory to Israeli objectives here); Palestinian autonomy, even in so small an area, would be a future threat to Israel unless heavily invigilated and policed; and, well, there is that old desire to ethnically cleanse the territory.

Speaking at a conference on May 28, Netanyahu outlined his plans for further seizures.  “We are currently squeezing Hamas; we now control 60% of the territory of the Strip – you know this.  We were at 50, we moved to 60.  My directive is to move to…” (at that point, an enthusiastic voice in the crowd interjected with “100”).  Not wishing to state it that obviously, the PM went on to say that the IDF would “go step by step.  First of all, 70.  Let’s start with that.  We’re pressing them from all sides, we’ll deal with the remnants.”

On May 27, the Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz wrote on his X account that the government “had pledged to eliminate everyone who led the October 7 massacre, and that is what we will do.”  The agenda of elimination in the Strip is an ongoing one, with the announced killing of........

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