Farrukh Abadi
Almost exactly two months after the Gaza ceasefire deal went into effect, Israel launched a number of airstrikes across Gaza early in the morning on March 18, so far killing over 200 Palestinians and injuring hundreds more. Israeli tanks have also begun shelling Rafah in southern Gaza. Genocidal Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office claimed that they are going to “act against Hamas with increasing military strength”–speaking more to his attempt to stay afloat amid Israel’s deepening crises rather than a clear military strategy. Israeli forces were recently defeated by the Palestinian resistance in spite of Israel’s all-out war, during the course of which resistance forces grew and became increasingly consolidated and militarily sophisticated.
Netanyahu’s cabinet claims the attacks are aimed to preempt an alleged Hamas attack. While Israel states they targeted Hamas military and political officials, on-the-ground footage shows many children among the murdered in the indiscriminate strikes across the territory. The Trump administration had been briefed on the attacks and gave the approval for them despite having been engaged in negotiations with Hamas supposedly to extend the ceasefire. Israel and the US continue to justify their crimes behind the blatant lie that Hamas rejected all proposals, something that the Biden administration also used to justify his continued arming and funding of the genocide. While Hamas repeatedly pressed for the implementation of the initial ceasefire deal, the US and Israel kept changing their word and violating the terms of the ceasefire.
The attacks on Gaza come after an extensive US airstrike campaign against Yemen and Israeli forces and US-backed Syrian forces simultaneously attacking Lebanon.
The resistance forces remain unfazed and have already begun counterattacking. The Yemeni Armed Forces report having “successfully targeted the US aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman in the northern Red Sea with two cruise missiles and two drones, and targeted a US destroyer with a cruise missile and four drones,” forcing them to retreat.
Hamas announced: “Netanyahu and his Nazi government resume their aggression and genocidal war against defenseless civilians in the Gaza Strip,” adding, “Netanyahu and his extremist government have decided to overturn the ceasefire agreement, exposing the prisoners in Gaza to an unknown fate.” Hamas still has 59 prisoners of war, both dead and alive.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad explained the desperation underlying the attack: “This new aggression will not give the enemy the upper hand over the resistance, neither on the ground nor in negotiations. It will not extricate Netanyahu and his bloodthirsty Nazi government from the crises they are escaping. Rather, it will further weaken them and accumulate more failures, leaving them humiliated and submissive.” They added, “We affirm that what Netanyahu and his barbaric army have been unable to achieve over fifteen months of crimes and bloodshed, they will again be unable to achieve, thanks to the steadfastness of our oppressed people and the bravery of our fighters in the arenas of jihad and resistance.”
Yemeni anti-imperialist organization Ansar Allah connected the US attacks against them to the genocidal escalation in Gaza: “The aggression by the zionist entity is based on unlimited American support at all military, logistical, and political levels. The coincidence of the zionist escalation against the Gaza Strip with the American aggression against Yemen aims to impose the equation of desecration of the nation and impose a grim reality.”
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine also highlighted the US’s role in the genocide: “The occupation committed its crimes and massacres against our people in the Gaza Strip, targeting homes and innocent civilians, with prior planning and American partnership and support, as part of the comprehensive genocide war it is waging against our people.”
Genocide is not simply a policy of imperialism and its lackeys, but a fundamental aspect of it—it is an attempt to resolve the complex contradictions it finds itself enmeshed in with the hopes of total annihilation of resistance. Israel was unable to defeat the Palestinian resistance, both through all-out war and at the negotiation table. As Israel sinks beneath the weight of its military, political, economic, and morale crises, it carries out increasingly grotesque acts in the hopes of prolonging its wretched existence, increasingly fueling its own destruction.
Photo: “A large fire broke out in tents for displaced Palestinians in Khan Yunis, following the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.” Retrieved from Resistance News Network.
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