Both Gaza and Israel were rocked this weekend by new milestones in the brutal war that has raged since Oct. 7, 2023. In Gaza, the grim occasion was the 50,000th Palestinian life lost to Israeli attacks. In Israel, it was the turnout of over 100,000 people in a massive protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
On Sunday, Israeli bombs killed 26 more people, pushing the official death toll registered by hospitals to 50,021. Some methodologies, such as one proposed by The Lancet medical journal, suggest the actual count of dead could be as high as 163,000.
The Gaza Health Ministry emphasized that the true cost of human lives is far higher than the official count, as thousands remain buried beneath the rubble of bombed-out apartments, houses, schools, and other structures. There are at least 11,000 people currently listed as missing, with essentially all of them presumed dead.
Troops re-entered the town of Rafah on the Egyptian border Sunday, ordering all Palestinians to evacuate to the north, where Israeli warplanes are carpeting the area with bombs and troops are staging an assault on the town of Beit Hanoon. As they have been repeatedly over the course of the war, Gazans are left with nowhere to hide or seek shelter.
Israel air and ground forces have been pounding Gaza again ever since the Netanyahu government tore up the ceasefire agreement on March 18 that it had with Hamas. The Israeli prime minister and his backers in Washington have tried to alter the terms of the deal while pointing fingers at the other side.
Netanyahu blamed the Islamist militant group for the resumption of hostilities, claiming it refused to agree to a new Trump administration proposal to free all remaining Israeli captives immediately before Israel would move ahead to the phase two withdrawal of forces agreed upon originally.
For weeks, Israel had already been failing to abide by the agreement, as it did not complete the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, especially from the Philadelphi corridor, as agreed. It also stepped up its assault on the people of the West Bank, driving at least 40,000 from their homes in recent weeks.
Flush with fresh supplies of arms from Trump, however, Tel Aviv no longer felt compelled to even pretend it was upholding the ceasefire. The new U.S. president has floated the possibility of the U.S. “owning” Gaza and re-developing parts of it into a beach resort playground for the world’s wealthy elites. Such a scheme aligns with the desire of extreme right-wing elements in the Israeli state to completely erase the Palestinian presence in the Strip.
While Gazans were skeptical the Israeli government would ever stick to the agreement long term, Netanyahu’s order to resume his military’s attacks at this exact moment appears to have been largely motivated by domestic political concerns.
Al-Ittihad, the leading Arabic-language daily Marxist newspaper in the Middle East, cited Haaretz military analyst Amos Harel last week, who determined “the decision to return to fighting was not merely a security move.”
Netanyahu’s political survival is in doubt as his coalition faces a series of crucial votes in the Knesset in the coming days but has no guaranteed majority. The most notable measure before the legislature is the 2025 budget; if it fails to pass, the government could fall, and the country would be plunged into elections.
With his popularity ratings scraping new lows, it is likely that new elections would eject Netanyahu from office and subject him to investigation and possible prosecution on corruption charges.
So, while they fit in with the larger goal of cleansing Gaza of its Palestinian residents, the latest attacks are an effort to convince Itamar Ben-Gvir—head of the Religious Zionist Party and former Minister of National Security—to rejoin the Netanyahu coalition and provide the prime minister with the votes necessary to keep his government alive.
Ben-Gvir left the coalition two months ago in protest of the ceasefire agreement, and he has made the continuation of the war a prerequisite for his party’s political support.
Netanyahu’s resumption of the brutal assault on Gaza is not going unanswered, however. On Saturday, the Israeli capital Tel Aviv was consumed by a monster protest of over 100,000 people. Marchers condemned the resumption of war, demanded a deal to bring home the remaining Israeli captives, and declared they won’t rest until Netanyahu is removed from office.
Demonstrators also slammed the prime minister for his firing of Shin Bet security agency head Ronen Bar, a move the Supreme Court blocked on Friday. Bar is in the crosshairs of Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and other extremists over his investigation of far-right infiltration of the Israeli police and military.
Bar told the press that his dismissal was intended to suppress “the pursuit of truth” over what happened on Oct. 7, 2023. He has raised questions about how Hamas was able to penetrate Israel’s defenses so easily in its attacks that day, which led to 1,100 deaths, the capture of several hundred more, and sparked Israel’s massive assault on Gaza.
There is speculation that the Shin Bet leader is hinting certain elements within the Israeli government turned a blind eye to Hamas’ financial and other preparations for its Oct. 7 attacks and may have even allowed them to proceed in order to create a justification for a war and the annexation of Gaza.
At the mass march on Saturday, criticism was centered on Netanyahu, with many accusing him of destroying democracy in Israel and not caring whether the remaining captives live or die. “The most dangerous enemy of Israel is Benjamin Netanyahu,” 63-year-old Moshe Haaharony told Reuters, because he “doesn’t care about the country, doesn’t care about the citizens.”
Danny Elgert, the brother of a kidnapped Israeli who was killed in captivity, said “The prime minister is entrusting national security to racist and messianic fascists.”
Injecting a strong anti-war message into the protest was the “anti-genocide bloc,” which charged Israel’s army with war crimes in Gaza. Behind a banner reading “Stop the Massacre” in English and Hebrew, a group chanted “Security will not be achieved by bombing hospitals.”
They drew attention to Israel’s repeated destruction of hospitals and clinics in the Gaza Strip. Mass graves of hundreds of murdered Palestinians have been previously discovered at the Nasser and al-Shifa hospitals after Israeli forces withdrew.
In Washington, meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declared last week that Trump “fully supports Israel and the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and the actions that they have taken in recent days.”
With U.S. arms again flowing into Israel at unprecedented rates, it’s clear that action by the U.S. peace movement to exert pressure to shut down the campaign of terror in Gaza is as crucial as ever.
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