Afrasianet - Chris Hedges - This is the final chapter of genocide. It is the final bloodstained push to expel Palestinians from Gaza. No food, no medicine, no shelter, no clean water, no electricity.

Israel is rapidly turning Gaza into a site of human misery, where Palestinians are killed by the hundreds, and soon, again, by thousands and tens of thousands, or forced to leave without return.

This last chapter marks the end of Israeli lies: the lie of the two-state solution. The lie that Israel respects the laws of war that protect civilians. The lie that Israel bombs hospitals and schools only because they are used by Hamas. The lie is that Hamas is using civilians as human shields, while Israel forces captured Palestinians into tunnels and potentially booby-trapped buildings before its forces.

The lie is that Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad are responsible – often by stray Palestinian rockets – for the destruction of hospitals or UN buildings or Palestinian casualties.

The lie that humanitarian aid to Gaza is blocked because Hamas seizes trucks or smuggles weapons. The lie that Israeli children were beheaded, or that Palestinians gang-raped Israeli women. 

The lie is that 75% of the tens of thousands killed in Gaza are Hamas "terrorists." The lie is that Hamas, because it was rearming and recruiting fighters, bears responsibility for the collapse of the ceasefire agreement.

The naked face of genocidal Israel is now exposed. I have ordered the evacuation of residents of northern Gaza, where desperate Palestinians are camped out amid the rubble of their homes.

What is coming now is mass starvation – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on 21 March that it had only six days of flour supplies – deaths from diseases caused by contaminated water and food, and dozens of deaths and injuries every day under a barrage of rocket, shell and bullet shelling.

Nothing will work: bakeries, water and sewage treatment plants, hospitals – Israel blew up the damaged Turkish Palestine Hospital on March 21 – schools, aid distribution centers or clinics. Less than half of the 53 ambulances run by the Palestine Red Crescent Society are operating due to fuel shortages. And soon nothing will remain.

Israel's message is clear: Gaza will not be livable. They left or died.

Since Tuesday, when Israel violated the ceasefire with heavy shelling, more than 700 Palestinians, including 200 children, have been killed. In just 24 hours, 400 Palestinians were killed. And this is only the beginning. None of the Western powers, including the United States, which supplies Israel with weapons, intend to stop these massacres.

The images of Gaza during the nearly 16 months of devastating attacks were horrible. But what is coming will be worse. The most heinous war crimes of the twentieth century, including mass famine, mass pogroms and the razid razor leveling of the Warsaw neighborhood by the Nazis in 1943, would be comparable.

The seventh of October marked a dividing line between an Israeli policy aimed at subjugating and oppressing Palestinians and a policy calling for their extermination and displacement from historic Palestine. 

What we are witnessing now is a historical moment similar to what happened after some 200 soldiers led by George Armstrong Custer were killed at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876. After that humiliating defeat, it was decided to exterminate the Native Americans or to crammand the rest of them into family camps, later called the "Reservations", where thousands died of disease and lived under the watchful eyes of armed occupiers, in a state of misery and despair. Expect the same for the Palestinians in Gaza, where they will most likely be buried in one of the earth's hell and then forgotten.

"Gazans, this is your last warning," Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant threatened: "The first Sinwar destroyed Gaza, and the second Sinwar will destroy it completely. The air force's strikes against Hamas terrorists were just the first step. Things will get harder, and you will pay the full price. The evacuation of residents from combat zones will begin again soon. Return the hostages and get rid of Hamas, and another path will be opened for you, including leaving for other places in the world for those who wish. The alternative is total destruction."

The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas is designed to be implemented in three phases. The first phase, lasting 42 days, calls for a cessation of hostilities. Hamas releases 33 Israeli hostages captured on 7 October 2023 – including women, the elderly and the sick – in exchange for the release of some 21,000 Palestinian men, women and children detained by Israel (Israel has released some 1,900 Palestinians as of 18 March).

Hamas has released 147 hostages so far, including eight deceased. Israel says 59 Israelis remain in Hamas custody, 35 of whom it believes have died.
Under the agreement, Israeli forces will withdraw from populated areas of Gaza on the first day of the truce. On the seventh day, displaced Palestinians are allowed to return to northern Gaza. Israel allows in 600 aid trucks a day carrying food and medicine. 

The second phase, which was supposed to be negotiated on the sixteenth day of the ceasefire, involved the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. Israel is completing its withdrawal from Gaza, while maintaining a presence in some areas of the Philadelphia Corridor, which runs along the Gaza-Egypt border. He also took control of the Rafah border crossing to Egypt.

The third phase was devoted to negotiating a permanent end to the war and the reconstruction of Gaza.

But Israel has always signed agreements – such as the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Accords – that include stages and timetables, and then violates them after achieving what it wanted in the first phase. This pattern has never changed.

Israel refused to abide by the second phase. It blocked humanitarian aid from entering Gaza two weeks ago, in violation of the agreement. It also killed 137 Palestinians during the first phase of the truce, including nine people – three of them journalists – when Israeli drones attacked an aid team on 15 March in Beit Lahiya, north of Gaza.

Israel resumed its heavy bombardment of Gaza on March 18, while most Palestinians were sleeping or preparing for pre-dawn suhoor in Ramadan. Israel will not cease its attacks, even if all hostages are released – the stated reason for the resumption of shelling and siege.

The Trump administration encourages these massacres, along with Democratic Party leaders such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. They attack critics of the genocide as "anti-Semites," who must be silenced, criminalized or deported, while pumping billions of dollars in weapons into Israel.

Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza is the culmination of its settler-colonial enterprise and apartheid state. The seizure of all of historic Palestine – including the West Bank, which Israel is soon expected to annex – and the displacement of all Palestinians has always been the goal of the Zionist movement. 

Israel's worst atrocities occurred during the 1948 and 1967 wars, when it seized large swathes of historic Palestine, killed thousands of Palestinians, and forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands. Between those wars, slow land theft, settlement expansion, bloody attacks and continued ethnic cleansing continued in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

That calculated dance is over. This is the end. What we are witnessing now surpasses all historical attacks on Palestinians. Israel's insane genocidal dream – the nightmare of the Palestinians – is about to come true. It will forever debunk the myth that we, or any Western country, respect the rule of law or defend human rights, democracy and the "virtues" of Western civilization. Israel's barbarism is a reflection of us. We may not realize this, but the rest of the world is fully aware of it.

American military writer and correspondent