“Israel is laying the groundwork for long-term control of Gaza,” leading Israeli human rights defender alleges

The director of B’Tselem, Israel’s most prominent human rights organization, told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that the Israeli government is “cynically” exploiting the collective trauma inflicted on the country’s citizens by the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 last year to “violently” advance its project to cement its control over the entire land.

To that end, Yuli Novak added, Israeli authorities have been committing war crimes almost on a daily basis in Gaza as they wage war on the entire Palestinian people.

“This has taken the form of expulsion, starvation, killing and destruction on an unprecedented scale,” she said. “This goes beyond revenge.”

Novak was speaking during an emergency meeting of the council, called for by Israel to discuss the killings this week of six Israeli hostages in Gaza, and by Algeria in response to an escalation of violence in the West Bank and the ongoing humanitarian crisis in war-ravaged Gaza.

She accused Israeli authorities of pursuing an ideological agenda designed to render Gaza uninhabitable for Palestinians.

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“By driving Palestinians out of entire areas and displacing millions, Israel is laying the groundwork for long-term control of Gaza that could lead to reestablishing Israeli settlements there, and in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” said Novak.

The Israeli government is already exploiting the circumstances to create irreversible changes in the West Bank, she added.

“Since October, Israeli forces have killed 640 Palestinians there, including at least 140 minors,” Novak said. “Settlers are attacking Palestinians and carrying out pogroms in broad daylight, with support from the government.

“They have so far managed to drive 19 Palestinian communities out of their homes, and recently the military launched a huge operation to damage infrastructure that serves hundreds of thousands of people in the northern West Bank.”

The veteran activist lamented the fact that the international community has failed to halt “Israel’s criminal policy of massive harm to civilians in Gaza. Now, this cruel policy is spilling over into the West Bank.”

She added that “the war on Palestinians is also happening inside prisons,” noting that since last October, Israel has arrested thousands of Palestinians and is holding them in “inhumane conditions.”