Israel has begun the final stage of its genocide. Palestinians are being forced to choose between death or deportation. What we are witnessing dwarfs all the historical assaults on Palestinians.
By Chris Hedges, Reposted from Mondoweiss, March 23, 2025
Oct. 7 marked the dividing line between an Israeli policy that advocated the brutalization and subjugation of the Palestinians and a policy that called for their extermination and removal from historic Palestine. What we are witnessing is the historical equivalent of the moment triggered by the annihilation of some 200 soldiers led by George Armstrong Custer in June 1876 at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. After that humiliating defeat, Native Americans were slated to be killed with the remnants forced into prisoner-of-war camps, later named reservations, where thousands died of disease, lived under the merciless gaze of their armed occupiers, and fell into a life of immiseration and despair. Expect the same for the Palestinians in Gaza, dumped, I suspect, in one of the world’s hellholes and forgotten.
“Gaza residents, this is your final warning,” Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz threatened:
The first Sinwar destroyed Gaza and the second Sinwar will completely destroy it. The Air Force strikes against Hamas terrorists were just the first step. It will become much more difficult and you will pay the full price. The evacuation of the population from the combat zones will soon begin again…Return the hostages and remove Hamas and other options will open for you, including leaving for other places in the world for those who want to. The alternative is absolute destruction.
The ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was designed to be implemented in three phases. The first phase, lasting 42 days, would see an end to hostilities. Hamas would release 33 Israeli hostages who were captured on Oct. 7, 2023 — including women, those aged above 50, and those with illnesses — in exchange for upwards of 2,000 Palestinian men, women, and children imprisoned by Israel (around 1,900 Palestinian captives have been released by Israel as of March 18). Hamas has released a total of 147 hostages, of whom eight were dead. Israel says there are 59 Israelis still being held by Hamas, 35 of whom Israel believes are deceased.
The Israeli army would pull back from populated areas of Gaza on the first day of the ceasefire. On the seventh day, displaced Palestinians would be permitted to return to northern Gaza. Israel would allow 600 aid trucks with food and medical supplies to enter Gaza daily.
The second phase, which was expected to be negotiated on the sixteenth day of the ceasefire, would see the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. Israel would complete its withdrawal from Gaza maintaining a presence in some parts of the Philadelphi corridor, which stretches along the eight-mile border between Gaza and Egypt. It would surrender its control of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.
The third phase would see negotiations for a permanent end of the war and the reconstruction of Gaza.
Israel habitually signs agreements, including the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Peace Agreement, with timetables and phases. It gets what it wants — in this case, the release of the hostages — in the first phase and then violates subsequent phases. This pattern has never been broken.
Israel refused to honor the second phase of the deal. It blocked humanitarian aid into Gaza two weeks ago, violating the agreement. It also killed at least 137 Palestinians during the first phase of the ceasefire, including nine people, — three of them journalists — when Israeli drones attacked a relief team on March 15 in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza
Israel’s heavy bombing and shelling of Gaza resumed on March 18 while most Palestinians were asleep or preparing their suhoor, the meal eaten before dawn during the holy month of Ramadan. Israel will not stop its attacks now, even if the remaining hostages are freed — Israel’s supposed reason for the resumption of the bombing and siege of Gaza.
The Trump White House is cheering on the slaughter. They attack critics of the genocide as “antisemites” who should be silenced, criminalized, or deported while funneling billions of dollars in weapons to Israel.
Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is the inevitable denouement of its settler colonial project and apartheid state. The seizure of all of historic Palestine — with the West Bank soon, I expect, to be annexed by Israel — and displacement of all Palestinians has always been the Zionist goal.
Israel’s worst excesses occurred during the wars of 1948 and 1967 when huge parts of historic Palestine were seized, thousands of Palestinians killed and hundreds of thousands were ethnically cleansed. Between these wars, the slow-motion theft of land, murderous assaults, and steady ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, continued.
That calibrated dance is over. This is the end. What we are witnessing dwarfs all the historical assaults on Palestinians. Israel’s demented genocidal dream — a Palestinian nightmare — is about to be achieved. It will forever shatter the myth that we, or any Western nation, respect the rule of law or are the protectors of human rights, democracy, and the so-called “virtues” of Western civilization. Israel’s barbarity is our own. We may not understand this, but the rest of the globe does.
Chris Hedges is a journalist, author, commentator, and Presbyterian minister.
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