Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
Israel has once laid siege to Gaza, this time in full coordination with the Trump administration. All goods are being blocked from entering the enclave, including humanitarian aid. This comes after a 15-month US-backed Israeli bombing campaign deliberately made it impossible for people to survive in Gaza without extensive amounts of aid.
The move is an effort to pressure Hamas into changing the terms of the ceasefire deal they agreed to in January by shifting to a new Trump administration plan to extend the first phase of the deal instead of negotiating the second stage as scheduled.
So Israel is breaking international laws against collective punishment by laying siege to an aid-dependent population in order to force changes to a ceasefire deal. You might assume such a straightforward act of psychopathic criminality would be correctly conveyed by the headlines of the western press, but if you assumed such a thing you are adorably naive.
As we anticipated yesterday, the official western propaganda line is spinning this to blame Hamas for rejecting a peace deal, but some of the headlines have been even worse than I would have guessed.
“Hamas rejects extending first phase of Gaza ceasefire, ties hostage release to phased deal,” reads a headline from Reuters.
“Israel halts aid to Gaza as Hamas rejects revised ceasefire proposal,” says the Financial Times.
“Israel says it will block aid going into Gaza until Hamas agrees to ceasefire extension,” says CNN.
“Israel Halts All Aid Into Gaza as Cease-Fire Expires,” says The New York Times in its signature passive-voice framing.
“Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu presses for Gaza ceasefire extension,” reads a particularly obnoxious headline about the story from Australia’s state broadcaster ABC.
To be clear, it is Israel who is rejecting the ceasefire, not Hamas. Hamas already agreed to a ceasefire, and has been honoring it. It is Israel who is pushing to change the terms of the deal instead of moving forward with the deal as agreed. Israel is doing this because moving ceasefire negotiations on to their second stage would entail moving toward a commitment to lasting peace and the removal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
A new deal isn’t even necessary to extend the first phase of the ceasefire; as Muhammad Shehada noted on Twitter, phase one would renew automatically as long as phase two negotiations are ongoing. Phase one of the ceasefire isn’t the issue here: killing phase two is.
And it’s important to understand that Netanyahu never intended to move forward to the second phase of the ceasefire. As soon as the agreement was signed in January the Netanyahu-aligned factions of the Israeli press were already asserting that the prime minister would never allow the ceasefire to move on to phase two. In early February the Israeli outlet Haaretz reported that according to insider sources Netanyahu intended to sabotage the ceasefire before it could move to its second stage.
It’s important to be aware that Netanyahu always intended to sabotage the ceasefire because it shows that none of the reasons being given for Israel’s actions today are the real reasons. It has nothing to do with hostages. It has nothing to do with anything Hamas has done since the signing of the agreement. It has nothing to do with the Bibas family. Those aren’t the reasons, they’re the excuses. The excuses for Netanyahu to do what he always intended to do.
It’s probably also worth noting at this juncture that Donald Trump has publicly admitted to being bought and owned by the world’s wealthiest Israeli, virulent Zionist Miriam Adelson. The president openly acknowledged on the campaign trail that the first time he was president, Miriam Adelson and her late husband Sheldon were at the White House “probably almost more than anybody” demanding favors for Israel like moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and acknowledging Israel’s illegitimate claim to the Golan Heights, which he eagerly granted. Miriam Adelson gave the Trump campaign $100 million last year.
It used to be considered an antisemitic conspiracy theory to say that Trump is controlled by Adelson cash; back in 2020 Roger Waters was internationally denounced as an evil Jew hater for saying what Trump himself openly admitted to last year. Now here we are, watching Trump rush weapons to Israel and push to permanently ethnically cleanse Gaza of all Palestinians while Netanyahu happily commits war crimes in full confidence that he will be supported by the Adelson asset in the White House.
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Featured image via Dan Scavino/The White House (Public Domain).
