The Israeli Psyche And Anger Over The Hamas Attack, Key To Knowing Why It Launches Offensive In Northern Gaza
The Oasis Reporters
May 22, 2024
The world is stunned that immediately after the announced indictment of Key Israeli figures including the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the defense minister Yoav Gallant as well as three Key Palestinian officials by the International Criminal Court (ICC), the country’s military still went ahead to invade northern Gaza.
An understanding of the psyche of a people whose parents and grandparents were victims of genocide orchestrated by Adolf Hitler of Germany in which six million Jews were exterminated in gas chambers because they are Jews can lead to unlocking the reasons why they harbour a deep resentment towards the invasion of their country by the Palestinian group, Hamas and their determined vengeance in Gaza.
And the Israeli Defence Forces may not stop until they crush Hamas and bring it to submission, indictment or not.
They are angry and their religion actually believes in a tooth for a tooth scenario.
The Middle East matter is a deeply sad one, and all the more troubling because religious and historical documents uphold the facts that the Arabs and the Jews both belong to that strip of land. With a group not agreeing to the rights of the other group living in that land may ultimately be behind mutually assured conflict.
Here’s a Foreign Policy Report on the latest military action, titled:
Northern Gaza Offensive
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pushed deeper into the northern Gaza city of Jabalia on Tuesday. Tanks and airstrikes targeted the city’s 75-year-old refugee camp, Gaza’s largest such encampment.
Medics said Israeli strikes there killed at least 15 people and injured dozens of others on Saturday. Two major medical centers—al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals—also came under fire on Tuesday.
Israel declared the end of major operations in northern Gaza in January but renewed military offensives there nearly two weeks ago to prevent Hamas from retaking the area.
Last weekend, the Israeli Air Force said it “struck over 70 terror targets [in the Gaza Strip] during the past day, including weapons storage facilities, military infrastructure sites, terrorists who posed a threat to IDF troops, and military compounds.”
Meanwhile, the IDF launched a raid in the West Bank city of Jenin on Tuesday that it said aimed to counter terrorist activity linked to the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant groups. At least seven Palestinians were killed and nine others wounded in the major military operation.
Fissures have erupted within the Israeli government over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the conflict.
Benny Gantz, a minister in Israel’s three-member war cabinet, threatened on Saturday to resign and withdraw his party from Netanyahu’s emergency coalition if the prime minister does not agree to a day-after plan in Gaza by June 8.
Gantz has proposed a six-point plan regarding future rule in the enclave, wherein Israel would retain security control over Gaza while a temporary U.S.-European-Arab-Palestinian system would oversee civil administration.
However, most Israeli officials—including Gantz—have unified behind criticism of the International Criminal Court, whose top prosecutor announced on Monday that he is seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as three Hamas leaders.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said the court has “reasonable grounds to believe” that these individuals “bear criminal responsibility” for war crimes and crimes against humanity conducted during the Israel-Hamas war.
If the ICC’s pretrial chamber approves the arrest warrants, then Netanyahu and the other officials could be arrested if they were to step foot on an ICC member’s soil.
In an interview with ABC News on Tuesday, Netanyahu accused Khan of being “out to demonize Israel.”
U.S. President Joe Biden and other world leaders appeared to back Netanyahu’s claims. “What’s happening is not genocide. We reject that,” Biden said on Monday regarding the situation in Gaza, though the ICC charges do not include genocide.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken hinted on Tuesday that the Biden administration may be open to working with the Senate on legislation to sanction the ICC over the decision.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a former president of the European Council, agreed with Washington’s assessment, adding on Tuesday that “an attempt to show that the prime minister of Israel and the leaders of a terrorist organizations are the same … is unacceptable.”
Whereas Israel and the United States are not parties to the ICC, Poland is.
But not all foreign officials have denounced the ICC’s announcement. France, Belgium, and Slovenia—all ICC members—released statements on Tuesday supporting the court’s autonomy. In response, Netanyahu dispatched an envoy to Paris to try to bolster European support for country’s war in Gaza.
FP
