This update was recorded on Wednesday morning, 9th July, while Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington DC meeting with Donald Trump. The previous day, Israel announced that it was creating a “humanitarian city” in Gaza where Palestinians would gather before being offered the opportunity to move elsewhere because Gaza is now uninhabitable. However, in reality this is the creation of a concentration camp to hold the Gazans in transit before being forcibly displaced to other countries.
As we quite rightly focus our attention on Gaza and monitor the daily atrocities, we must understand that Gaza is a phase in what is now the end game of Israel’s settler colonial agenda as it replaces the indigenous Palestinian population with the Israeli Jewish population.
Israel has criminalized Palestinian resistance and violently suppresses it in Gaza as well as in the West Bank, especially in the north where currently the refugee camps are being demolished, and tens of thousands of Palestinians are forcibly displaced.
Settler colonialism always involves genocide and ends by “normalizing” the facts on the ground which Israel has done with support from the United States and the Arab states.
Netanyahu’s meetings with Trump have been revealing because when Trump was asked about his solution to Israel/Palestine, he repeatedly turned to Netanyahu thus Netanyahu is the one who will decide the end game and what happens to the Palestinians.
As a matter of urgency, Jeff calls for coordination with other organisations who will step up to look at the “big picture” connecting the dots of where we are today and to work out how we should move forward with our Palestinian partners.
The update concludes with Jeff announcing that from now on we will simply be known as ICAHD because we are removing “Israeli” from our name.
See Jeff's May update for further information on the threat of normalization.