After a heated 10-hour debate Aug. 8, the Israeli government approved a new offensive aimed at decisively defeating Hamas and extending Israeli military control over all of Gaza. The Security Cabinet voted to instruct the Israeli army to take over Gaza City, one of the Tehran-backed group’s last remaining strongholds.
Some 1 million Palestinian civilians living there would be evacuated to designated safety zones, prior to Israeli soldiers wresting control from Hamas.
The decision was “strongly” condemned by the governments of Australia, Germany, Italy and the U.K. in a joint a statement. They restated their call for an immediate end to Israel’s war to destroy Hamas and for a “two-state solution” to be imposed.
President Donald Trump said the decision was “pretty much up to Israel.” His administration had previously pressed Israel to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas.
The decision was made amid an international campaign by a host of imperialist governments, backed by the middle-class left and the bourgeois media, falsely claiming Israel has caused a famine and is carrying out “genocide” in Gaza.
Hamas is the main reason there are food shortages in Gaza. The terror group tries to violently disrupt the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Fund aid distribution. According to the U.N., 87% of its separate aid shipments are stolen by armed bands before reaching warehouses. The U.N. uses that as an excuse for leaving truckloads of aid at the border untouched.
Claims that Israel is starving Palestinians are aimed at preventing Israel from dismantling Hamas once and for all. But it was Hamas that started the war, Oct. 7, 2023. In collaboration with the reactionary regime in Tehran, it murdered 1,200 people in Israel, took 251 hostages and raped dozens of women in the worst anti-Jewish pogrom since the Holocaust.
Stepping up the pressure on Israel, 147 governments currently recognize a Palestinian state, even though Hamas says it will never renounce its aim of wiping out Israel. The German government recently announced a partial arms embargo against Israel.
Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad boasted about its massacre of Jews. “The fruits of Oct. 7 are what caused the entire world to open its eyes to the Palestinian issue,” he said Aug. 2.
Hamad claims Hamas is fighting for Palestinian “freedom.” In reality, Hamas crushed the ruling Fatah forces after Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005. The Nazi-like outfit imposed a brutal dictatorship on the people of Gaza to advance its goal of annihilating Israel. Political opponents were tortured and killed, women’s rights were restricted, and strikes by workers crushed. Hamas cynically uses Palestinians as human shields every time Israel responds to its attacks.
Soon after Israeli forces responded to the Oct. 7 pogrom, Washington and other capitalist governments began pressing Israel to reach a “permanent” ceasefire deal with Hamas. The U.S. capitalist rulers see the war in Gaza as an obstacle to extending their political, economic and military domination and plunder of the Middle East.
Israel won’t commit suicide
In an Aug. 10 press conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that no matter what other governments say, the war will continue. “We’re not going to commit national suicide.”
The heated debate over the road forward in the Security Cabinet is a reflection of the semi-civil war in bourgeois politics in Israel. This conflict is sharpening as high-ranking officials in the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet intelligence agency, along with bourgeois opposition parties — who share the outlook of U.S. imperialism — push for the war to end, even if that would leave Hamas intact, able to recruit, rebuild and carry out more massacres.
They argue that Hamas cannot be defeated, but only “contained,” and that turning over control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, which administers much of the West Bank, would provide Israel with security.
Israel Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir vehemently opposed the cabinet plans to take over the entire territory and move civilians to areas outside Hamas control. He argued instead that the IDF should encircle Gaza City and stage targeted raids to try to wear down Hamas.
Organizations of hostage families that oppose Netanyahu have called for a nationwide general strike in Israel Aug. 17 to protest the government’s decision to continue the war. They say that getting back the remaining living 20 hostages and the bodies of 30 more is the only thing that matters, even if that means giving in to Hamas.
Their call is backed by a number of middle-class organizations, including the Israel Bar Association, organizations of owners and employees of some high-tech companies and hedge funds, and the administrations at several universities.
The Histadrut, the largest trade union federation in Israel, decided to not endorse the strike.
The bourgeois press, like the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, point to actions like this to claim the decision to defeat Hamas is unpopular and the Netanyahu government is isolated. They ignore the fact that Israel, like all capitalist countries, is class-divided.
Most workers want to see the fight to destroy Hamas carried through to the end.
These biased news outlets almost never quote working people or hostage families who argue Hamas must be defeated.
“Don’t use my son” as an excuse to shut down the country on Aug. 17, Eli Shtivi told Channel 14 News. Idan Shtivi’s body is one of those being held by Hamas after his murder at the Nova music festival during the Oct. 7 pogrom.