For over a year, a systematic and unprecedented Israeli campaign of death, injury, and ruin of entire communities has been taking place in Gaza, and in recent months, in Lebanon. Unlike some previous unchecked campaigns against civilians (such as what occurred during the Second World War), Israel’s brutality is carried out publicly, and is documented and seen live around the world. Why is Israel, a United Nations member state, carrying out this monstrous violence? Why have the world community, international bodies, and a variety of powerful countries and organizations failed to stop it?
Israel’s Questionable Justifications
Israel and its supporters repeatedly insist that its actions are necessary to fulfill its pledge to “wipe Hamas off the face of the Earth” after the group perpetrated the October 7, 2023, cross-border attack against Israel.
This justification fails to explain the huge number of civilian deaths and wholesale destruction. It fails to explain why so many children and women have been killed, and why hospitals, churches, mosques, bakeries, and universities, as well as entire residential areas, have been systematically destroyed by Israel. Videos that show mosques being blown up indicate that the Israeli army’s engineering staff had plenty of time to place the explosive equipment in a non-military building before filming, and thus did not face an imminent security threat.
The prolongation of the war serves Israeli domestic politics.
Israeli and international experts have argued that the prolongation of the war and the sustained bombing of Palestinians has little added security or even negotiation value—but that it is continuing for Israeli domestic political reasons. One such reason, analysts contend, is that the war ensures the continuation in power of a government coalition dependent on two radical racist parties—Jewish Power and Religious Zionism—that want the war to keep going. Another argument is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to avoid an official inquiry into the October 7 events. Other observers posit that he wants to continue in his position in order to protect himself from a corruption trial that could lead to his imprisonment. Still others state that the Israeli assault on Gaza is a one-off response to a particular event and will end when the hostages are freed.
Most Palestinians would state that the war is simply a continuation of a decades-old Zionist colonial policy of ethnic cleansing that uses the cover of a violent conflict to conduct what is difficult to do during regular times. They most likely think of other motives behind the scale of brutality used by Israel against them, of which the following are important ones.
The Desire for Revenge
Another plausible explanation is that Israel’s criminal violence is motivated by a desire for revenge. Unable to score a quick military victory against Hamas, the Israeli leadership gave its military a free hand to do what they wanted in Gaza. This has been illustrated by the celebratory videos that Israeli soldiers filmed of themselves as they were looting Gazans’ homes, blowing up buildings, and causing sheer havoc. Activists have documented many such acts and even identified the soldiers involved. Yet these soldiers have faced no accountability, indicating that they knew that they could get away with their actions.
The revenge issue is also apparent in the humiliating treatment that Israel has inflicted on rounded-up Palestinians, including forcing them to strip and transporting them in trucks. What happened in Israeli jails to both those arrested before and after October 7 has also been documented. Videos of Palestinian men being raped by Israeli soldiers have gone viral, and testimonies of released prisoners tell harrowing stories of their treatment in detention, where Israel has denied them basic rights and food rations. Scores of Palestinian prisoners have died in jail as a result of physical attacks and lack of medical care.
Lack of Care for Civilian Casualties
From the moment Israel began its war of revenge against the people of Gaza, the goal appeared not to be the freeing of Israeli hostages as much as the killing of Hamas combatants and Palestinian civilians. Israel has systematically destroyed civilian buildings, including schools and even tents where internally displaced people were sheltering. Israel routinely claims that Hamas fighters were hiding behind civilians in such locations, but reporting indicates that Israel has targeted civilian infrastructure and knowingly killed civilians.
International law is extremely specific about the responsibility of warring parties to spare civilians, but this does not appear to have been part of the instructions that Israel’s leadership gave to the army. The vast number of civilian deaths and injuries and the overall destruction point to a different purpose: pressuring the combatants to surrender. Indeed, Israeli forces on many occasions were caught using civilians as human shields. Thus, the brutality has two broader objectives, beyond simple revenge: reclaiming deterrence and creating a public backlash in Gaza against Hamas to force it to surrender. So far, Israel appears to have lost on both counts.
Displacement of Palestinians
Another of Israel’s clear goals was to cause the depopulation of the Gaza Strip. Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians, and other Arabs vehemently opposed the plan, recalling the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) and the 1967 Naksa (setback) when Palestinians who left their homeland were never allowed to return.
Israel has succeeded in forcing nearly 2 million Palestinians to relocate within Gaza.
Over time, Israel has succeeded in forcing nearly 2 million Palestinians to relocate within Gaza. But many who moved to safe havens were killed by Israeli attacks. The most prominent of Israel’s displacement goal was the forced movement of Palestinians from northern Gaza to the center and south. On November 14, 2024, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a major report on Israel’s mass displacement campaign, warning that “the destruction is so substantial that it indicates the intention to permanently displace many people.” The report referred to numerous statements by Israeli government ministers regarding the possibility that “Gaza’s territory would decrease, and that land would be handed to Israeli settlers.” The report also stated that “the evidence shows [forced displacement] has been systematic and part of a state policy. Such acts also constitute crimes against humanity…and [amount] to ethnic cleansing.” These acts facilitate the ultimate Zionist goal of making room for potential exclusive Jewish settlements in Gaza.
The Biblical Justification
Although Netanyahu is a secular Jew, he has used biblical references to explain the brutal Israeli attack on Gaza. On October 28, 2023, in the early days of the war, Netanyahu recalled verses in the Hebrew Bible to justify the wanton violence by referring to Palestinians as Amalek, a nation that was a rival of the ancient Jewish people. In the first book of Samuel, it is recorded that “God ordered” King Saul to kill every person in Amalek. “This is what the Lord Almighty says,” the prophet Samuel tells Saul, continuing, “I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites, and destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children, and infants, cattle, and sheep, camels, and donkeys.” With his biblical reference and his statement to Israelis that “you must remember what Amalek has done to you,” it seemed evident that Netanyahu was openly endorsing the full destruction of Gaza.
Pressure to Influence Negotiations
Despite the reality on the ground in Gaza and overwhelming visual evidence, Israeli officials still try to explain their actions to be benign. But their claims run against logic and often are debunked by mainstream media outlets—and even by Israeli security experts.
One of the oft-repeated assertions is that harsh military action is a tactic to force the other side to soften its negotiating position. But Netanyahu has been known to regularly move the goalposts, making unacceptable changes to deals that he had previously appeared to accept. A September 2024 report in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot (covered by CNN in English), for example, explained how the Israeli leader introduced eleventh-hour conditions that caused the derailment of a Gaza ceasefire deal at the time.
Netanyahu has been known to regularly move the goalposts, making unacceptable changes to deals that he had previously appeared to accept.
The use of violence to improve the Israeli negotiating position is often offered as a legitimate reason for military pressure. Speaking in the Israeli parliament in December 2023, Netanyahu claimed that “we wouldn’t have succeeded up until now to release more than 100 hostages without military pressure, and we won’t succeed at releasing all the hostages without military pressure.” But both Israeli security officials (often retired) and hostage families have regularly stated that the military pressure will result in the death of the hostages rather than their release, and US officials have pressed for a ceasefire as the best way to save the hostages who remain alive.
No Worries About Accountability
Sometimes leaders pay close attention to the consequences of their actions during armed conflict, especially when they are in the red zone of war crimes. Netanyahu and the rest of the Israeli leadership have kept an eye only on one place, the United States, as the ultimate protector of Israel in the international arena. A clear example of such US protection is Washington’s immediate and bipartisan rejection of the latest action by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which in November 2024 issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes committed in Gaza. (The ICC also issued a warrant for Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, who may have already been killed.) The United States immediately rejected the court’s move, accusing ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan of rushing the process. When Khan sought arrest warrants from the court in May 2024, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson (R-LA), called on the ICC to “stand down on this immediately” because “Israel has the right to defend itself from terrorist organizations seeking to destroy it.” Close backers of incoming US President Donald Trump are urging him to sanction the ICC and to punish countries that comply with its orders. Trump’s ambassador to Israel during his first administration David Friedman recently wrote on X, “It’s time for [President] Biden to restore threatened sanctions before the ICC becomes a kangaroo court.” And Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a leading Trump supporter in Congress, warned US allies that if they attempt to enforce the warrants, the United States will “crush” their economies.
Israel has also reacted angrily toward the potential of accountability delivered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The Court ruled in January 2024 that it is “plausible” that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Prior to the ruling, Netanyahu lashed out against the ICJ, proclaiming that “nobody will stop us–not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anybody else.” After the Court’s finding, he issued a defiant video in which he declared, “The vile attempt …is blatant discrimination against the Jewish state…The charge of genocide leveled against Israel is not only false, it’s outrageous.”
Almost 14 months after the al-Aqsa Flood operation, Israel has systematically destroyed Palestinian lives and properties, especially in Gaza. And it has not been able to offer a legitimate security justification for its actions. This has left fair-minded observers to surmise sinister goals of ethnic cleansing and of using Palestinian civilian lives to try, in vain, to pressure Hamas to surrender.
The world community—especially Washington, London, and Berlin—have been complicit in Israel’s war crimes by giving Israeli leaders a blank check and by supplying them with weapons in a war of annihilation against the people of Palestine. This lack of accountability has whetted the appetite of the Israeli warmongers but has done little to achieve their desired objectives. On the other hand, reluctance to make Israeli leaders accountable to their crimes in Gaza (and in Lebanon) will only encourage others like them to sidestep international humanitarian law in their pursuit of their sinister objectives.
The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
Featured image credit: Shutterstock/Mohammad Abu Elsebah
