The surprising casualties of Benjamin Netanyahu’s torrent of terror | Israel-Palestine conflict

Palestinians have long been the world’s forgotten people.

The dreadful deprivations, starvation, trauma, forced marches, massacres, and countless other outrages they have endured for generation after generation no longer provoke shock or much fury among the so-called “international community” – just resignation and shrugs.

So, it is hardly surprising that, rather than being hauled in shackles before the dock where he surely belongs, the accused war criminal responsible lately for every foul ounce of that premeditated suffering and grief, Benjamin Netanyahu, is being welcomed these days with handshakes and honour guards by prime ministers of Greece and Hungary as a “dear friend”.

Their hearty embrace of Israel’s strutting prime minister means – whether Athens and Budapest are prepared to admit it or not – embracing Netanyahu’s sinister plot to rid Gaza and the occupied West Bank of Palestinians permanently.

These enlightened “Christian” leaders who hail from enlightened European capitals have endorsed the genocide being committed with ruthless efficiency against Palestinians, and the unfolding ethnic cleansing of millions of defenceless children, women, and men from their ancestral lands.

Their miserable legacies will be etched in memory.

Still, there is another, rarely acknowledged aspect of their shameful coddling and appeasement of a wanted man that deserves attention.

Their dear friend Bibi has, by deliberate design, abandoned the remaining Israeli captives held by Hamas in the evangelical pursuit of a sick plan –  sanctioned by US President Donald Trump – to erase Palestinians from what remains of Palestine.

That has been the end game all along for Netanyahu, his equally fanatical cabinet and the millions of complicit supporters in Israel who have cheered him on as he goes about realising the Zionist fever dream of seizing the shattered remnants of Gaza and the West Bank for good – and to make way for a string of Jared-Kushner-approved beachfront resorts.

I am convinced that Netanyahu and culpable company consider the surviving Israeli captives the expendable cost of achieving their genocidal aims that today appear within tantalizing reach.

Nothing and no one will rob Netanyahu of the gratifying chance to impose Israel’s hegemonic blueprints – caked in horrors and despair – on a sovereign nation.

Indeed, an emboldened Netanyahu emerged from a cabinet meeting last week to reiterate that Israel’s paramount objective is not the safe return of a few desperate captives but to exploit the historic opportunity afforded to Israel – by and with Trump’s explicit encouragement and consent – to annex Gaza and the West Bank.

“We will implement the Trump Plan,” Netanyahu said. “This is our strategy.”

That “strategy” is based on a lie conceived to camouflage the truth driving Netanyahu’s quest to exact his obscene prescriptions to the Palestinian problem.

The “crushing” of Hamas is the rhetorical pretext to destroy all of Gaza and the West Bank, to reduce it, bit by bit, to an uninhabitable landscape where survival is near impossible and escape from the dystopian inferno is the only available option.

How else to explain the halting of aid shipments carrying the stuff of life to hungry and homeless Palestinians, the bombing of Gaza’s only specialist cancer hospital, the murder, reportedly “execution-style”, of 15 paramedics and rescue workers, and, on Thursday, three separate attacks on schools-turned-shelters in Gaza City that claimed the lives of dozens of children and women?

The intent of this torrent of terror is to drain Palestinians of the will to resist and, failing that, to force their wholesale capitulation by depriving them of food, water, and sanctuary.

In this odious calculus, the Israeli captives are an afterthought, a forgettable footnote that can and will be sacrificed by Netanyahu for the “greater good” of a state consumed by a killing lust that burns like an out-of-control wildfire devouring everyone and everything in its pernicious path.

Netanyahu has accelerated the expulsion of Palestinians by ordering his crime-against-humanity-addicted shock troops to push deeper into Gaza and “divide” the besieged enclave into two.

The goal is not, as Netanyahu claims – absurdly – to pressure Hamas to free the captives. It is, instead, the next, predictable step to compel exhausted Palestinians to make a grim choice – be killed while standing on Palestinian soil or flee their home to save themselves and their children.

The thousands of Israelis protesting Netanyahu’s refusal to abide by the terms of the agreement brokered by regional governments earlier this year that required the release, ultimately, of all the captives, now recognise, I suspect, that they have been played by a calculating regime more interested in self-preservation and quenching its imperial appetites.

Their remonstrations are futile since Netanyahu is, by nature and temperament, a rampaging settler in a well-tailored suit. He has not, and will not, be moved by appeals to return to talking in place of killing.

If Netanyahu treats Israelis hoping to be reunited with their loved ones with such contempt, why would anyone believe that he or his extremist government would ever act in good faith with Palestinians?

Given his career-long allergy to diplomacy, Netanyahu has never been interested in negotiating a lasting truce or implementing stages 2 and 3 of the deal that envisioned a sustained calm, followed by the reconstruction and humanitarian recovery of Gaza and the weary souls who populate it.

Stage 1 was a ruse meant to convince the gullible that Netanyahu was “open” to compromise.

Netanyahu secured himself and Israel valuable time to rest, re-arm, and arrest thousands of Palestinians to replenish its dungeons where boys die without being charged.

He could claim credit, too, for bringing most of the captives home before lifting the pause on Israel’s genocide.

Netanyahu and Israel will not stop because he and Israel have no reason or incentive to stop, and Washington, London, Berlin, Brussels, and Paris are not inclined to stop him or Israel.

The genocide will go on. More Palestinians will be killed. More of Gaza and the West Bank will be razed and occupied. The Israeli captives are unlikely to see Israel again.

For Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel, “victory” and the new “promised land” are close by, there beyond the blood-drenched horizon.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.