Zeina Shareef

Netanyahu's goal is to destroy Gaza's political and social infrastructure, not destroy Hamas. Destroying Hamas is merely a battlecry, a promise he's selling the Israeli public. If he believes it, then he has no basic understanding of history or physics. Netanyahu wants to exert Statelessness over the Palestinian People, both as a physical state of being and—most importantly—as an inescapable political fate. It will be his swan song, as he knows his position as Prime Minister will likely end with the end of this war. The targeting of government ministries, hospitals, universities, and media institutions (and the professionals that run them) isn't arbitrary or irrational. It is a precise and calculated effort to render Gaza irredeemably uninhabitable. One, to forcibly create a population of refugees and, two, to abort all of the Strip's political prospects. The news that a US-Israeli team is already discussing how to use Gaza's gas proves what many have been saying: this is about occupying our lands and natural resources. This is about expansion and domination. But even if a new status-quo is forced on Palestinians, Netanyahu knows, as history has taught us, that violence begets violence. The genocide waged in Gaza is Zionism stripped naked, a process accelerated by one man's desperate attempt at a dramatic exit.