And resuming forced starvation by blocking aid to the Gaza Strip is just one aspect of it.
Once upon a 19th century, famed Prussian general and military strategist Carl von Clausewitz wrote that “war is the continuation of politics by other means”.
Two hundred years later, Israel has put a new spin on the phrase with its current ceasefire-that-isn’t in the Gaza Strip. Were he alive today, von Clausewitz might very well detect the opportunity to observe that, in the case of Israel, “ceasefire is a continuation of war by other means”.
Indeed, Israel’s comportment in the aftermath of the truce which began in January has demonstrated a profound lack of interest in actually ceasing hostilities. Not only does Israel continue to kill Palestinians on a regular basis, pushing the official death toll closer to 50,000; but it has also refused to abandon occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor on the border between Gaza and Egypt.
The first phase of the ceasefire deal between Israel and Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza ended on Saturday, but the Israeli government has predictably stymied negotiation of the second phase. In Israel’s view, after all, agreements are made to be broken – which goes a good way in explaining why the much-promised two-state solution has never materialised, and why Israel periodically feels the need to conduct massacres of Palestinians whenever things seem a bit too peaceful.
In the latest obscene manifestation of ceasefire as a continuation of war, the Israeli army on Sunday blocked all humanitarian aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip – in what amounted to a straightforward admission that Israel would be using starvation as a bargaining chip.
Of course, it should come as no surprise that the army that was just wielding starvation as a weapon of genocide in Gaza has once again opted to impose forced hunger as a continuation of war.
What should be surprising in any remotely moral world is the extent to which Israel has managed to normalise utter depravity, all with the faithful bipartisan backing of the United States. In addition to donating billions upon billions of dollars to the Israeli war effort, the US reportedly also coordinated with Israel the recent blanket blocking of aid – as if the global superpower were not already up to its ears in complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity.
Following Israel’s starvation announcement, the White House tripped over itself to blame the blocking of aid on Hamas, with National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes stating: “Israel has negotiated in good faith since the beginning of this administration to ensure the release of hostages held captive by Hamas terrorists. We will support their decision on next steps, given Hamas had indicated it’s no longer interested in a negotiated ceasefire.”
The European Union, for its part, issued a statement condemning Hamas and likewise suggesting that the Palestinian group is responsible for Israel’s decision to block aid, which could “potentially result in humanitarian consequences”.
You don’t say.
The announcement of the renewed starvation of Gaza received a rather underwhelming reception in the Western media, which preferred to cast the move’s obvious distinction as a war crime as merely an allegation by Hamas that Israel is engaged in “cheap blackmail” and a “war crime”, quotation marks included.
As ever, Western officials and media are standing by to replace fact with fantasy and rewrite contemporary history. Any glance at real and non-fabricated data reveals that Hamas has been interested in a negotiated ceasefire since forever, while Israel is interested in neither negotiations nor a cessation of mass slaughter.
To be sure, the muted Western response to Israel’s outright starvation programme simply underscores how Israeli crimes have been rendered mundane via their continuous repetition. It is a dark day indeed when enforced famine – previously employed as a weapon of war by none other than the Nazis – elicits hardly a bat of the Western eye. In Clausewitzian lingo, it is simply a continuation of policy as usual.
At the end of the day, however, war for Israel is not just a continuation of politics by other means. War is life itself.
Without war, the Israeli enterprise would cease to function, predicated as it is on the very concepts of genocide and ethnic cleansing that today are being carried out not only in the Gaza Strip but also in the West Bank, where more than 40,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes since January 21 as Israel wreaks lethal havoc throughout the territory.
As the ceasefire in Gaza moves forward – or doesn’t – Israel is engaged in a typical act of moving the goalposts, as it has done many a time in Palestine and Lebanon. Per the Israeli approach, any ceasefire agreement boils down to whatever Israel says it does at any given moment – and it is up to the other side to comply or else.
Now, Israel is taking advantage of the current “ceasefire” to continue genocide by other means. War is Israeli policy – and no ceasefire will ever change that.